Had an e-mail from a friend commenting on recent FreeCulture News interviews I’ve been doing. He mentioned that Skype sound quality reminded him a little of Max Headroom with the occasional digitized blip and distortion. Slight technical defects aside, what a truly great tool. For the additional cost of zero I can talk to people all over the world enabling me to interview people virtually where ever I want at no additional cost. Uplifting!
Yesterday my trusty Mac G4 gave me my programmed task alarm, reminding me of Skype interview with Jonathan Coulton at 11:00PM last night. I said to myself, “no that’s wrong, it should be for today.” Well I was wrong and I left Jonathan hanging. Hence my perfect record of punctuality of the previous 8 comes to an end. I know I’ll get him to re-schedule. Should also have Aron, Ms. V., Nicholas, Steve, Dave, et al. in near future.
Yesterday’s e-mail brought a welcome name from the not too distant past. My buddy Debbie from the Windy City. Deb is a hard working gal that’s done a good job setting up Asian operations for several medium-size US companies. Looks like she might have an opportunity to do her own thing. Good for you Deb-you’ve busted your butt for others, it’ll be good to put that sweat equity to work for your own enterprise. We all hope the best for you and we are eager to cooperate where ever we can.
Last couple of weeks I’ve been interviewing some cool and interesting people via skype. I love it. Nice change of pace and I get to ask questions that I’m genuinely interested in hearing the answers to. One of my favorite of the interviewees-Dave Slusher just announce that his new pet Web 2.0 application AmigoFish is now ready to be announced and blog/blabbed about. The cool thing about this Fish is that it is somewhat intuitive in making podcast/blog/vlog content reccomendations to you, based on your likes and dislikes of other content which you rate. Thanks to Ken Nelson for info. Don’t know how Ken finds the time, so busy wiping all of those little butterfly noses.
Kind of funny-lately making friends from my hometown on the net/skyping has got me missing the place again. Larry and Rob very much in the thick of NYC living. Can’t ever forget the place. Don’t think I’d want to live there again, winter is horrible, summer only slightly better. Sure would like to visit soon, though. There is nothing like the juice of being there, the food the fun, the eye, ear, and no-nose candy.
Aronski has been telling me to sign up for Firesign Theater’s podcast for a while(I finally did a little while ago). Dave Slusher has been talking about the church Of SubGenius for a while. A total scream. This picture above from their blog. These guys are side-splitting funny.
Nothing like getting some fresh air and exercise first thing in the morning. Here in Taiwan many middle-aged and elederly people have regular daily exercise ranging from T’ai ch’i to meditation (FaLunGong-the group that is banned in mainland China), walking and jogging. Hence walking around the outer oval path in nicely landscaped park with bridged stream with floating water lilies in it, is quite the cultural experience. There are more Taiwanese eyes staring at our large western exteriors, than our “round eyes” staring back at them in their “Chineseness.” Suffice it to say, we’re all getting some exercise while being culturally enlightened in a nice setting. I can think of many worse things, and few better.
Some people are artists (yes, some of them are artistes), some people are businessmen, and ocasionally you find artist-businessman hybrid. A friend of mine just arranged his frst concert. He’s got a notion for what it entails now, juggling businessmen ,artists , personal needs, and desires. A growth experience for sure. He says he’s feeling kind of tired. Haha, growing pains young brother.
While podcasters certainly like to talk about each other, well wait just a second. Why is it so odd to talk about people who you find interesting, are passionate about their art, and show an interest in you? Isn’t that the kind of person that most people would talk about? Interesting, passionate, friendly all qualities that stimulate the mind and leave you feeling pretty good. I’ll have to think on this one a little bit more-unfortunately it’ll have to wait until I’m done listening to some podcasts. Umm, I need to do a couple more podcasts of my own first too. Just leave a comment on the blog.
It’s getting close to election time again in Taiwan. One of the prices to pay for the expanding democracy here is massive “noise pollution.” Political hopefuls hire advertising trucks to broadcast the voice of the candidate telling us how, “he loves Taiwan more than the other guy, and how he would never steal “too much” because he “really” loves us. You know the drill. Just like the Who said, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!”
I’m thrilled that Taiwan is becoming more and more democratic-but this method that needs to be retired. It’s really rather nerve-wracking. Strangely, it’s not just we expat foreigners living here that can’t stand all this racket. The locals don’t like it either, but so far nothing’s been done about it.
I would still opt for the “garlic chicken”, or medicine herb chicken vendors of yesteryear on the horn first thing Sun. morning over these clowns.
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