BilikFamily.com

Humor - Saw this today and couldn't resist posting...

It pokes fun of global warming, fashion trends, and the sexual revolution all in one cartoon. I was going to simply file it under the Political Cartoon of the Day Webnote page, but thought it rated a little more exposure…

Miyazaki - This week Claire, Abby, Michelle and I finally got to see the recently released "Howl's Moving Castle" (Netflix, trailer, official site). Aside from one or two violent films, we've seen all of Hayao Miyazaki's major anime movies. Cartoon Network is showing a few this month. Miyazaki is highly regarded as an animator in Japan - beyond Disney or Pixar here in the US. They are always beautifully done, especially considering how little computer generated imagery is used.

Daily Breakfast - Whereas most young people fill their spare time listening to music, I use my commute and desk time listening to the wide variety of podcasts now available. To me, podcasting is "narrowcasting" - the ability to generate something like a radio program, but aimed at a niche audience that normally wouldn't bring in enough revenue to sustain a radio program.

One of my favorite daily listens is called the Daily Breakfast with Father Roderick. Every episode has a variety of segments covering a range of topics from Catholic news to geek news to health, video games, movies, TV series, music, etc. His show is usually a top ten in the religion genre. A couple of weeks ago in one of his segments he was talking about gadgets and mentioned an announcement that an upcoming handheld GPS device was going to support podcasting. I wrote him the following email feedback:

Hi Fr. Roderick,

I was sitting at my engineering desk here at ATI (the graphics company) listening to you talking about future podcasting on the TomTom GPS. The irony was I was listening to your podcast on my Garmin Nuvi GPS.

It is a nice hybrid of automotive GPS, MP3 player, and JPEG viewer/slideshow. I can listen to your DailyBreakfast or other Catholic podcasts while I commute to and from the office. It periodically pauses your podcast MP3 file, gives me a spoken update on directions (ie. "in 200 feet, turn left on Main Street"), and then resumes your podcast. All the while the display shows either audio player controls or the typical "moving map" — depending on your preference.

When I sit here at my desk, it is simply a nice MP3 player. At five ounces and roughly the size of a PDA, the thing is amazing and makes my 46 mile (each way) commute much safer and more enjoyable. If you need more details about how it loads its audio content, drop me an email.

As always, thanks for all that you do to mix Catholicism and current events into a fun daily show.

God bless.
—
Scott

A few weeks went by and I figured my message was just one of many he gets and doesn't have the time to respond to. I was driving to my office a couple of days ago when Father read most of my email message "on the air". It was weird hearing him talk about my listening to podcasts on my Garmin GPS while I was commuting and listening to it! If you care to give his show a try, look here. The episode he replied to me was #90 (fast forward about 17 minutes into the show).

Photos - I've been toying with the idea of writing yet another daily run perl script, just like the weather, events, and other scripts and bits of duct tape that keep the web site powered. The one I was contemplating writing would grab a couple of random pictures from the album archives and put their thumbnail images and links on the front page. Do you think that would be interesting or just a waste of time? I figure it could be fun for jogging up memories of events past. Your feedback welcome...