Happy birthday, Jonah!

It’s true: 35 is the new 25!

Lucky and Hanna: One year anniversary

The cats have been here one year now and, at long last, are calming down and turning into lap cats.

MMORPG gold farmer-turned-author interviewed by NPR

Fresh Air (no “jazz hands” this week: it was a guest host, alas) interviewed a former Ultima Online gold farmer who turned his experiences into a book about the whole selling virtual goods for real life currency industry thingy:

Journalist Julian Dibbell talks about his book Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot. He explores the world of online role-playing games, where hundreds of thousands of players log on to operate fantasy characters in virtual environments. One of the most popular games, World of Warcraft, has six million subscribers.

(As of this week, WoW is actually at 7.5 million, but why quibble?)

NPR has a lot of folks who apparently haven’t played a videogame since Pac-Man so they’re always flabbergasted at the very notion of MMORPGs and the subculture that surrounds them, so there’s a story like this every year or so.

The amazement of the interviewer — with its implicit message of “all you 10.5 million people are nuts” — was a little tiresome, but it’s otherwise a very good interview.

Seasonal music?

I mentioned today that Pigeon John’s new album sounds very “summery” to me.

Peter was baffled by the notion of music having seasons, but there’s always been music that seemed like summer or winter music to me. Gnarls Barkley’s ridiculously huge (although lots of fun) hit “Crazy” was a definite summer song this year, for instance, full of make-you-move music and a real sense of fun.

In contrast, last fall and winter, I spent a lot of time listening to the quietly moody Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie and, sure enough, as the days rapidly grow shorter again this year, I’m listening to the Postal Service cover of “Against All Odds.”

Is this a manifestation of seasonal affective disorder (I become a grumpy grumpier son of a bitch in the winter, normally), or are there others out there who find they enjoy certain types of music more on certain times of year? (And no, not Christmas music.)

TiVo to add video podcasts

From Wired News:

Facing up to competition from cable and dish providers at one end and from the likes of Microsoft and Apple at the other, TiVo will now offer web video podcasts sourced from both major networks and subscribers.

The video is free of the DRM yoke and requires the $25 Plus codec pack for TiVo’s Desktop media management interface. Deals with CBS Interactive, Reuters and Forbes have already been struck, meaning that TV and news will be among the first available content bridging these companies’ websites and your DVR.

Nice!

I can’t imagine the $25 buy-in will last very long.

TiVo-owners, check out Tiki Bar TV when this gets added to your box. (I know, it’s not the trendiest of video podcasts, but it’s popular for a reason.)