Words That Never Were

This is something that I've been personally using for a while, and figured I might as well throw it out there in case anyone else in the general public would enjoy it.

I have written a few simple scripts that generate a podcatcher-friendly XML feed containing two old-time radio shows from OTR-Reviews.com every day at 9pm EST. The series are random each time, but the episodes within each series are followed sequentially (and loop back to the first one after the last one has played). I've just reset all the counters, so all shows will start at episode one starting today, but the vast majority of the series don't follow much of an overarching storyline, so it's safe to jump in and enjoy them at any time.

If anyone is interested in getting a copy of the perl scripts to run their own personalized feed (perhaps with some shows omitted), just get in touch with me. This feed is in no way affiliated with OTR-Reviews.com, and I'm not sure how they'll feel about people using their bandwidth through it. If someone over there has a problem with it, just let me know and I'll take it down.

You can subscribe to the feed at http://www.rudism.com/otrcast.xml.

The iPhone is tantalizingly close to my perfect device. I wanted it to replace three other gadgets that I used regularly: my 60gb iPod video, my Dell Axim x50v, and my ancient nokia cell phone.

The iPod and phone are no-brainers. I've also always wanted a GPS, so that's a bonus (even without turn-by-turn directions). I was a little hesitant about the move from 60gb to 16gb, but I can live with just a subset of my library, and Pandora more than makes up for it. The sticky point is the Axim. The iPhone needs a few things to be able to satisfactorily replacece my old PocketPC:

Birthday and Anniversary Notifications
The fact that it doesn't do this is, quite frankly, idiotic. You even have to jump through hoops to ensure all your birthdays and anniversaries show up in your calendar. The iPhone is broken until Apple does something about that.

File Management
Really, Apple? A device with beautiful image and text viewing and zooming abilities, with a full web browser, image browser, and PDF viewer—with no way to sync eBooks, images larger than 640x480, or PDFs? WTF? Fix plz.

Space Trader
Funnest mobile game ever. Nuff said.

Also! A night sky astronomy app that let you take a snapshot of the sky, and used the GPS and data service to identify the stars in the picture to tell you their names would kick ass.