I know I've recommended Skype in the past, but there's a new kid on the block and it's very nice. Gizmo is a free voice chat program like Skype. It has free voice-mail, built-in call recording and conference calls of unlimited size. These features set it apart from Skype and make it a good choice for recording podcasts. It doesn't have text chat, which is a nice feature of Skype, but since it's an open project, this and other features can be added by the community of developers. We used Gizmo to record some tonight and the quality is about the same as Skype, which is good. Download it and try it out. My id is personman and Brendan's is brendoman.

I'd like to congratulate two of my very good friends, Tim and Angie. Yesterday at 1:45 pm they had a son. Isaac Matthew Hudson. He was 7 pounds and some-odd ounces. Sorry, ladies, I don't remember the other stats. He says he'll post some pictures soon. Congrats, guys!

smash's world 6.8g: How to play the iTunes 500-millionth Song Competition without actually Buying anything

They're giving away several iPod Minis. Follow these instructions to enter without buying anything:
1. Go into the iTunes Music Store.
2. Click on any Album or Song or whatever.
3. Click on 'Tell a Friend' at the top.
4. Send the message to 'itunes500@apple.com'. (just leave a blank message)
5. And you're all set.

(via Digg.com)

Regular showers may be health risk - Insert your own joke here.

(via Digg.com)

I'm just about finished turning a website template called Uneven (from Open Source Web Design) into a b2evolution skin. I've been browsing the site looking for other templates that could make good blog skins. So far these two have caught my eye:

Plain 1.0

KDE Clean

Take a look and let me know which one you like better. Or maybe you can look through the other designs and find something better.

CNN.com - Podcasting

CNN has some podcast feeds now. Subscribe in your favorite podcatching client (mine's iTunes 4.9) and get audio news updates delivered to your desktop.

(via digg.com)

National Geographic News Photo Gallery: Giant Catfish May Be World's Largest Freshwater Fish - But I'm sure the one that got away was much bigger.

(via Slashdot)

I've created a new photo album with pictures of the garden, the cat and Emma. You can see that my greens have gone to seed, but my tomato and cucumber plants are blooming. Also, check out Emma's new tattoo.

FOXNews.com - Views - Iraq: Bush Myths vs. Reality

I could barely believe my eyes when I saw this article. Could Fox News really be fair and balanced after all? On the same page I saw a link to another: President's Stubbornness Delays Social Security Solution. But wait, both articles come from the same author: Martin Frost. Frost is a Texas Democrat who served in the US House of Representatives for 26 years until 2003 when he lost after some redistricting forced him to run in a Republican-friendly district. Frost then lost his bid for DNC chairman. I guess we can add Frost's name to the short list of liberals that work at Fox News. Now Alan Colmes* has someone to talk to at the water cooler.

*Actually Alan Colmes is more of a moderate than a liberal.

Fox News apparently doesn't mind hiring a liberal or two as long as they meet three out of four of the following criteria:

• Lost recently
• Funny-looking
• Not actually very liberal
• Jewish

I did a bit more reading and I was surprised to learn that Wesley Clark now works for Fox News. He comes close to meeting my requirements. He lost in 2004, he is fairly conservative and he has a bit of a Jewish heritage. But there's no denying that he's a handsome man.

I've been spending a lot of time working on the B2evolution project lately. I upgraded brendoman.com to the newest version of it, then I had to reapply the hack I had made before. I'm working on rewriting it as a plugin that will be easier to install and will be able to survive upgrades like this. The project needed some help sifting through antispam reports and maintaining the central blacklist, so I volunteered to do that. And I submitted a skin to the skins repository. I have another one under development now. And I've been reading through my new book: Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP and MySQL by Kevin Yank.

That's the boring, geeky stuff I've been up to. Yesterday morning Sara and I flew with Dad to an airport in Kansas. We ate breakfast at the restaurant at the airport with some of his pilot friends that meet there once a month (including Private Pilot Magazine writer Leroy Cook). The day before that I went with my sister to the Apple Store to help her pick out an iPod Mini. We got an FM transmitter for playing music in the car, but the quality was really terrible and we could hardly find a place on the dial that wasn't getting interference from other stations. I think we can come up with something better.