Tid Bits: Pattern Recognition, Jungle Disk, Podcast

I've been on a Gibson catch-up kick lately and I've made my way through to Pattern Recognition now. I'm about a fourth of the way through and enjoying it immensely. Gibson's books are interesting because there's an obvious closing of the gap between how far out/fantastical his work and how contemporary his worlds seem. I think it's an obvious mix of maturity in his writing style and the fact that the future is just catching up with him too fast... Pattern Recognition is interesting because it's almost a novel of examples from some near future marketing textbook, and isn't boring in doing so. It involves a main character with an allergy to classic trademarks [1] and revolves around what Hugh has been calling "Social Objects"... The idea of the marketing object not being a one-way-street brand item like a logo or a trademark but something intentionally designed to spark conversations and spread in the ways that we speak to each other... Plus, my copy of Pattern Recognition in this case is itself a social object for me. I found a hardcover copy in Half-Price Books in amazing condition with what appears to be Gibson's signature in it. No idea how it ended up in a Half-Price Books but I find it interesting to speculate.

I've decided that S3 via Jungle Disk is the right "set it and forget it" backup solution for me. I've also been slowly moving some of the more static elements of this website to my S3 storage as well. I doubt anyone has much noticed that media.worldmaker.net (and thus all my CSS, JS, images on most pages) now is entirely S3 served. Some times it's even faster than previously...

I finally moved the Umphrey's McGee podcast from Google Reader where it wasn't doing me much good to Banshee and... wow. The podcast episodes now get mixed in with my normal crazy full-library shuffle thing that I do and every one that I randomly end up on has been just fantastic and well worth the cost of admission (free podcast). Makes me wonder if I own enough of their albums... On the other hand, their ranking on my Last.fm profile should shoot up even further from all the podcast episodes...

[1]	I can certainly empathize. I've gotten to the point where my own auto-immune response to advertising seems almost like an allergy. Nowhere near as bad as the protagonist's, because mine manifests more in cynicism, derision, and tourette's...