Probable podpeople nonperson

Kathryn Ryan is a deeply useless radio host at the best of times, and I wouldn't be at all suprised if somebody somewhere puts her in a cauldron with a cow and poured pe-

But let me put a positive spin on this: podcasts.

In recent years RNZ has rolled out an excellent website, making available much of their content for download. So taken to its logical conclusion this could forever prevent disasters like hearing Ryan.

But then there are accidents.

I mistakenly downloaded today's tv review. Before I could stop her Ryan was, flea-ishly, in my ear patronising life, the universe, and - while discussing the new TV3 show - librarians:

"What do they do with librarians? Do they try and pretend we're still back in the [days] with big thick glasses and most unfortunate long skirts, or what.?"

Or what. Where's my cauldron.

Feed me, see more

If I have to manually search for a feed there's something wrong. Either I use the Bloglines button on my toolbar or - at least in Firefox - there's usually an RSS button in the address line. So either way getting a feed is no more thought-provoking than adding a bookmark.

For the sake of experiment here I tried three different ways to manage the staff-stuff: in my blog, in my browser, and in Bloglines. The upshot of which was.. not surprising: the more feeds you have the better served you are by a Reader like Bloglines. It scales.

I wanted to like the 'clippings' function, only it's too clumsy, too - of all things - linear. There has to be a smarter way to organize, probably involving having your own imax screen wallpapering your house with surface-like software, so you can spread everything out and link it up visually..

Andsoandso, Bloglines. Here's a public feed for us, help yourself. By the by, the look is a tad blunt - you lose most of the layout effects - all that web2.OHishness. Which is kinda ironic, neh?

That liquefaction of his prose

BlogList is a nifty new tool Blogger has added to Layout. I've chosen to have the list set to a "rolling boil" so the blogs most recently posted rise to the top. It's a bit of a chore for what are temporary blogs though. I wonder how the rolling affects the PageRanking. Just makes it more fluid I guess.

Anyway, is it inevitable to compare information to water? Just because it moves? So do turtles and ants. Actually Rudy Rucker wrote a novel about information-as-ants; as did Terry Pratchett.

You see such metaphoring all the time: datastream, datapipes, streaming video, the Matrix code raining down the screen. Kind of ironic really as real water messes with networks. Not that it ever rains in Auckland.

Still, unless you can think of another way to pistol-whip the ants into line you've got to go with the flow.