Tvindy

Podcast Listening Made Easy

I've been pretty busy lately getting married, moving to Brazil, and podcasting, so this blog has been seriously neglected these past few months. It's not dead, though. I will be back but not quite yet. It has surprised me that almost no one who reads this blog has checked out my podcast as an alternate source for news about my life, but a recent comment by 'mouse clued me in to the fact that not every blog reader knows how to listen to a podcast. With this in mind, I'm posting a simple Pickle player that should make it easy for anyone with a computer to listen to episodes of Brazilianisms. Enjoy!

The Wedding Date(s)

It's hard to believe I've been in Brazil for two months now and still don't have an exact wedding date. The bureaucracy here is truly astonishing. On December 5th, we will have completed our 45-day waiting period and can then set a date (assuming the marriage is approved). Since marriages can only be performed on Wednesdays and Fridays, we're shooting for Dec. 7th, but we don't know if we can get that day at the last minute. Therefore Dec. 12 and Dec. 14 are our backup dates. If anyone wishes to attend, just hop a plane to Belo Horizonte, Brazil and stay from at least as early as Dec. 7th to at least the 14th, and you can see the wedding.

Any readers of this blog are welcome to attend, but I would especially like to invite the following from my blogroll:

• Bakerina: She could bring Lloyd, and it would be a pleasure to take them around and expose them to the unique cuisine of Brazil. Also, Bakerina could bake us a fabulous wedding cake.
• Bill Stevenson: He will freak out when he sees that the iPod Shuffle goes for nearly $200 in Brazil.
• Jenny and Geoff: They're already in the southern hemisphere, so it would be a quick and easy trip for them.
• Michael Moore: (No, not the Michael Moore.) He could bring the whole family, and the trip would give him and his daughter something to blog about. Apparently nothing blogworthy has happened in their lives since July.
• 'mouse: He's a lawyer. My fiancée is a lawyer. They can talk about lawyering stuff.
• orionoir: I'd love to see the pictures he'd take around here. (But I shudder to think of the adventures he'd wind up having in Brazil!)
• Snow: She really really needs a vacation!
• Teka: She already speaks Portuguese. This would be a great opportunity for her to show James around Brazil.
• Will: He's never been abroad and needs to see the world. Plus we could put together at least a few truly awesome podcast episodes, perhaps even reviving The Dynamite Coalition.

Anyone on the above list is welcome and would have a place to stay if they came. (That is unless they all end up coming, in which case I am screwed.)

Some Updates

I really don't know what the future hold for this blog. I certainly don't find myself posting to it very frequently, but I definitely won't be taking it down any time soon. (I get a lot of hits on some of the older entries.) Certainly, updates are owed to my readers, so here goes.

• As listeners to the podcast already know, I'll be getting married in September and moving to Brazil. Probably, we'll be living in an apartment in this building (in case you want to check out the floor plan).
• Before leaving the country, I'll be attending both Inconjunction and DragonCon. If you happen to be going as well, let me know, and we can meet in person.
• I've been honored at the Podcast Pickle with the task of selecting the Featured Podcast of the day every day for four months. (That's 120 casts I have to find and write about!) You can see my selections on the main page.
• I'm gradually putting up thousands of photos (mostly old ones) on Flickr.
• You can also find me on twitter.
• My podcasts can be found here and here.
• Blog posts, podcast episodes, Flickr photos, and twitter entries all theoretically show up on my Jaiku page, your one-stop site for all things tvindy.

Saturn's Hexagon

[Addendum: About a day after writing this, it occurred to me that people might assume it is some sort of April Fool's joke. Amazingly it is not. However, I have managed to discover a more plausible explanation for Saturn's hexagon.]

Remember the Cassini probe to Saturn and its moon Titan? Well, it's still going strong. The above image shows a distinct hexagonal formation directly above Saturn's north pole. The shape is 15,000 miles wide (large enough to encompass nearly four Earths). Apparently the Voyager probes had detected it on their flybys in the 80s, but this is the first time that the entire hexagon has been captured in a single image. And it confirms that this is a real longterm (perhaps permanent) phenomenon. What I find interesting is that so far, scientists haven't put forth even the most tentative theory as to how such a structure could form or maintain itself. (Obviously it was built by intelligent Saturnians.)

Saturn's south pole has a radically different, yet no less dramatic, appearance. It actually looks to have a form more appropriate to Uranus.

Tweaking

I may not be posting, but for some reason today I was motivated to do a bit of tweaking. I guess I was getting tired of the old banner, so I put up a new one.

Who Would You Choose?

One thing I've been thinking about lately (for no reason in particular) is who I would pick for my advisors if I was ever elected President of the US. That's not very likely to happen any time soon, but it makes for an interesting thought experiment. Here's who I came up with:

Cork Harvest

 

Manifold Super Funny

Four Men and a Tram

Time to Mow the Roof!

I pity the residents of this apartment building who still have to contend with mowing the lawn, which seems to exist without a purpose.