I just finished reading Nick Sagan’s idlewild. A very good first novel, in my opinion, certainly heavily influenced by some of his father’s works.(He is Carl Sagan’s son.) It felt similar, in some ways, to Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles in terms of some of the storyline, and the type and structure of the characters. It however, is nothing like those books in terms of the place and time in which it occurs. The tone of the book was striking to me, and I look forward to digging into Edenborn, the sequel almost immediately, that is as soon as I finish watching the Yankees. If you are a fan of science fiction, I think this book is a must read. I think that Nick Sagan may be one of the best new voices in this genre over the last few years.

Some of my Atlanta crew and I went to see Cadillac Jones last night at the Echo Lounge. Good music that ranges from jazzy Shaft-ish tunes to downright funk. The crowd was unusual, in my opinion, for the type of music. Unfortunately, they had some issue with their turntable setup, because I suspect that the addition of the turntablist aspect to their musicianship would have been really nice.

Jacques Derrida passed away. His thoughts on death. His writings, especially the essays I read in college, changed my way of looking at the world in many ways, none of which I find easily explainable here with any sort of brevity. (via Metafilter)

Peeper allows you to peer beneath the shell of apps for images, icons, etc.

Design In-Flight looks like a lovely, well designed, PDF magazine. I wish that they had provided a sample that contained actual editorial content, as that is what I am interested in, not the table of contents, in sample material.

Nader Says He Can’t Win Single State because “the system is rigged.” Perhaps, Mr. Nader, it is because you aren’t qualified to be a dogcatcher, let alone the President. The right to cast your vote for whomever you want is one of the precious things in this country, and I don’t begrudge anyone that right, however, I, personally, would never vote for someone who could not do the job.

More Information on Jot Wiki from Web 2.0. I’m waiting for a beta account now so I can try this out, sounds like a tool I would relish using.

Despite all the security problems, and all of the issues with spyware and popups, despite the fact that Microsoft has been slow to update their browser, AOL is building themselves a new stand-alone browser and they chose IE as the core. I hate to be so hard on them, but the people making these decisions must be morons.

Damon points out that ColdFusion is ten years old today. Hard to believe, but true.

I already posted this to my linkblog, then started playing with it and realized just how neat and useful it really is. Google has launched Google SMS, from your sms enabled phone, you can do comparison shopping, look up phone numbers and addresses, and get dictionary definitions. This is incredibly useful. (via Backup Brain)

Mark, or “scoop” as I am now calling him, breaks the huge news. The next season of the Real World will be in Atlanta.

I went to the first game of the Braves/Astros series tonight. You can find some pictures here.

Jotspot, which is an applied wiki product, has launched. I applied for the beta.

TextMate has been released.

As you can see by looking at my Blogger profile, the amount of text I have posted using the tool has now exceeded one hundred thousand words. It’s worth mentioning that before I started using Blogger as my posting tool in March of 2000, I had been manually posting for three years, and those posts are currently both not on the web and not included in that total. I have been thinking of ways to get that stuff back up on the site lately. Mainly, I need to change hosting companies.

Evan Williams is leaving Blogger/Google. Wow. I have to say that I totally appreciate the sentiments in his post. This industry grinds you. Launching projects grinds you. Starting companies grinds you. For all this grinding, there is a lot of fulfillment that comes from building things and seeing people interact with them. I think I’ve learned, over the years of working in this field, a way to manage my energy levels that works for me. Evan is a smart guy, and a really nice one. I hope he finds the recharge he is looking for. I don’t think it is a coincidence that his former Pyra co-founder also decided to step away from “the business” recently.

There’s a new Zeldman in town.

New Gmail Features include an atom feed of your incoming messages. Now that is cool and useful.

Hey all you Georgians, today is your last chance to register to vote. You can find more information in the Voters Information Guide for the 2004 US Election. Please, please vote.

I just love Sundays when I don’t have to work.(Which is every other Sunday during the golf season.) Today is one of those Sundays, and I have taken full advantage thus far. I rolled out of bed around 10am. It would have been earlier, but I went out and had a few beers last night, catching up with friends, and watched Ohio State lose in overtime to Northwestern. (Imagine that.)

After the whole morning Hygiene routine, I proceeded promptly to my favorite neighborhood coffee shop, bringing two books with me, one already in progress and one I hadn't started yet. Grabbing my traditional coffee with two shots of exspresso, I proceeded to read both books to their completion. This freed up two spots in my reading queue, so I went to the bookstore.

Next, I returned home, and am currently munching on Salt and Vinegar chips and sushi while watching football on TV, and my fantasy football league scores on the computer.

I should apologize for the mundane nature of this post. I was just loving the day so much that I wanted to record it.