It looks like the Collegian now has someone on staff who believes in updating the website. This is goodness and light. I only wish they'd post all the articles, rather than just 2 or 3 of them. I'd especially like to see the letters to the editor online, with the possibility to have online discussion about them. It's also good to see discussion from the intranet site make it back into the newspaper conversation. It'll be interesting to see if, and how much, the two conversations feed one another.
Last night we finished reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Dicamillo, once again, is simply amazing. Although the style is simple enough for kids, the character is believable, and the book is heartbreaking all the way to the last page. It's a story of a toy rabbit who gets lost, and learns what it means to love. To tell you more would be unfair. You've got to read it for yourself.
Dicamillo is also the author of The Tale of Despereaux and Because of Winn-Dixie. I think that, of the three, I've enjoyed this one the most.
I'm about 100 versions back on the Habari code, since I've been rather too busy lately to update and reimport to the new database schema. So I imagine that this won't do the desired thing. But I recorded last night, and here it is.
This is The Bear, by Robert Frost.
Enjoy.
I have been listening a lot lately to Jonathan Coulton, and have been delighted with most of his stuff. It's fascinating how, when one dispenses with such things as tact, one can have fascinating insights. The songs Shop Vac, and Someone is Crazy, in particular, are descriptions of folks that I'm sure all of us know - perhaps some of us are that person.
Some of you probably encountered Coulton when his song Code Monkey did the rounds of the geek community a little while back. That is indeed one of his better songs, but there's a lot of good stuff where that one came from.
The time has come again. Tomorrow night I'll be doing my third annual performance of "A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas", by Charles Dickens. It takes about 3 hours, including brief breaks between the staves, and I'm expecting about 8 people to show up. At least, that's how many people have told me that they are coming. Others have indicated that they might, so hopefully they won't show up 15 minutes into the reading.
I'm rather less prepared that I was last year - there's a lot more going on in my life now than there was this time last year, and I still haven't unpacked from my trip last weekend. But I think it will be enormously enjoyable. At least, for me. And, after all, this event is for me. I just let people show up so that I can have an audience. :-)
Somewhere, there is a DVD iso image of last year's performance. I don't know where it is, or if I even have a copy, but I know Skippy has a copy somewhere. And there are mp3s of last year's performance too. I'm pretty sure that the story will turn out the same way it did last year, so if you want to attend virtually, you can listen along, starting at 6:30pm Eastern time.
Yes, I know it's not Christmas. Christmas was even more hectic than this month, and so I postponed a few weeks.
--- Edit:
Found them:
