I wrote up today’s Top 10 feature on Lifehacker, Top 10 Tools to Get Blogging Done. I wrote about how tools like Tumblr, Foxmarks, and others can make getting your ideas written and posted much easier.

And, yeah, I haven’t posted anything of substance here in a long time. I have no less than five half-thought-out, one-third-written, not-quite-ready posts in draft form. Even when same-day inspiration strikes (New restaurant! New writing clip! Funny thing I found!), it always seems to dissolve when I hit the admin page on this thing, like lime juice into water (I’m really thirsty at the moment).

The biggest reason—blogging for Lifehacker makes up the bulk of my work-work these days. I’m still digging how fun it is to write on-the-fly about technology, but sitting down to write a blog during the off hours feels kind of like, I dunno, returning home from a real estate office and planning how to sell your own home. I’ve also come to realize the value of away-from-the-screen time, both for getting things done on the home front and for my eyes/mind/hands.

I’ve toyed with the idea of giving myself a topic, and a regular schedule, to write about here: Buffalo, food, maybe even blogging itself. I’ll get around to making a decision sooner than later—assuming blogging doesn’t kill me first.

Our local ABC affiliate WKBW, suffering for years under serious cutbacks, accidentally turned the studio microphones on during the big finale of this year’s Oscars (post-spoiler: “No Country for Old Men” won). Rather than embarass their last-in-the-market station, however, the staff provide some astute inadvertent commentary. I question whether an apology was truly necessary.

My favorite line (in response to co-anchor Joanna Pasceri asking “What’s it about?”) is from Keith Radford: “Guy with no expression, keeps blowing up everything?”

I agree with New York Magazine on this one: Give this guy his own live-blog during next year’s telecast. (via Buffalo Pundit, though his link is to the non-embeddable version with better sound).

If you’ve spoken to me recently, or if you’re one of about six people I forced to read my last post on my defunct first blog attempt, you know that Sunday night was a pretty frickin’ huge event for me.

The last season of the best television project I’ve ever seen, The Wire, started its run, leaving me both fulfilled and really, actually nervous about how the last chapter will play out, how it will integrate a topic—journalism and its discontents—near and dear to my heart, and how it will affect the show’s legacy.

I say write “chapter” intentionally, because, as umpteen pundits have pointed out, the show is more “televised novel” than “Dramatic Series” (or whatever category the Emmys have UTTERLY SNUBBED it in). I write “legacy” intentionally because I’m all too aware that the show pulls fewer viewers right now than even a modest hit like “Big Love,” so its best chance of actual impact lies in that new kind of never-ending memorial service known as a DVD boxed set.

But blah blah “What the show means” and yada yada “Where is this season headed?” (for that kind of thing—but good—bookmark Slate’s TV Club for this season). Here’s just a few take-aways, good and bad.

The Good

• Bunk—The first shot of the first scene of the first episode is a long, multi-line mind-f#$% by homicide Detective William “Bunk” Moreland on a gullible murder suspect, and it’s a great “welcome back” for long-time fans. The man just carries any scene he’s in, bringing menace, mirth and wisdom to moments like this.
• Bubbs—Nobody can envy Andre Royo’s lot in this season, as he takes Bubbles/”Bubbs” down the well-worn “recovering addict” path. This being The Wire though, you know he’s going on his own, with no system to catch and comfort him, and that even if he keeps clean, there might not be a great life waiting for him—kinda realistic, you’d have to imagine.
• The Humor—I’d never watched “The Wire” with more than one person until last night, when I hosted a low-key “Season Five Party” at my place for two other couples. Yes, we are all white and middle-class, and yes, I scolded myself many times for throwing a “party” for a show depicting the utter abandonment of the predominantly black, overwhelmingly poor American City. Yet watching the show in a group made me realize how skillfully little moments of humor are woven into what would otherwise seem like a daramtized Howard Zinn tale, with swearing. The opening scene drew five laughs, some in disbelief. A later scene, when a politician sees their face under a gotcha headline and mouths her discontent, brought the whole room up in “Ohhhh!”s. And the little moments of gritty truth the show is sprinkled are way more fun to smirk and nose-breathe at with a crowd.
• The One True Newspaper Moment—Critics seem to be lining up evenly on both sides of how realistic or human the characters in this season’s pseudo-Baltimore Sun are. The language and overall tone, however, seem right on. I’ve only had a bit more than five years’ experience in the newspaper trade, but there’s one moment involving an executive editor back-handedly spiking a story—using a sentence that starts off with, “I was talking with [name] at [institution] the other day, and …” that rings all too true, from my own recollections and coffee break tales I’ve heard.

The Bad

• Those Other Newspaper Moments—At this early point in the season, I’m a bit wary of how rootsy and truth-seeking they’ve made the obvious hero, City Editor Augustus “Gus” Haynes, and how blatantly clueless his higher-ups come across. And if you know anything about David Simon’s decades-spanning beef with his former editors at the Baltimore Sun, you know that well goes much, much deeper—maybe a whole season’s worth. Then again, I might be a bit too familiar with it to really see it, and I suppose Burrell and Rawls likewise came across as Skeletor and Megatron, at first.
• The Electric Piano Borrowed from “Law & Order” in the New Theme—See clip above. I love Steve Earle, but the new opening credits track makes me think someone’s always going to get done right before the commercials at 32 minutes.
• No Omar—I used to fall in with the crowd who thought Omar should have been dead about 20 episodes ago. After the wait between season four and five, however, I just want the duster-wearing, shotgun-toting, Deus-Ex-Machina-serving man back in the game

I’m going to try this again after next week’s episode, hopefully in a more timely fashion (thanks, On Demand!).

I love autumn, but I’m not a fan of Halloween. Sure, I dug the free candy and seeing my family all abuzz when I was a kid. But those simple joys are gone, and in their place are gouge-priced costumes, cheap-looking lawn inflatables and “parties” that confirm Hell is other people in “Sexy Cop” or “Dwight Schrute” costumes.

Yeah, I’m jaded, and maybe I just need a good party to be invited to, or a home to dish out candy from. Recently, however, I discovered one thing I could legitimately get excited about — pumpkin carving.

My parents always bought the pumpkins and spread the newspaper on the kitchen floor for my sister and I, but neither of us progressed much beyond the two triangles and half-moon mouth scheme — not that it mattered much. My friend Josh and his girlfriend, however, have an infectious enthusiasm for Oct. 31 and all its trappings, and managed to raise the gourd gashing ambitions in myself and my wife.

You just knew typing “Tux” and “pumpkin stencil” into Google would bring back hits, and while I was kind of amused to learn that stencils are an actual business for some artisans, the open source nature of my favorite penguin means that nobody can, or at least should, charge for his likeness. My wife chose the panda logo from the World Wildlife Fund for the same kind of mix of altruism and unbearable cuteness.

Basically, I’m really looking forward to showing up at next year’s party with my own roll of specialty pumpkin knives and three-level shade stencils of Buffalo’s skyline. Or, uh, Sexy Tux.

Over at Lifehacker, I took a screenshot tour through installing the latest release from Ubuntu, 7.10, or “Gutsy Gibbon,” as it’s code-named. I plan to offer a few more comments here on what’s still missing from the most popular/buzz-worthy Linux distribution, but overall, I’m pretty satisfied.

The official release drops Thursday, and anybody can try out the system without touching a thing on their computer by downloading a “Live CD” at Ubuntu.com. Pop the CD in your drive, restart your computer and see what works, what doesn’t, and why Digg is always yakkin’ about the ‘buntu.

It might not generate the same kind of heat as the next OS X release, but for open source fans, it’s a twice-a-year scene, and it totally freaks us out.

Well, this, namely.

It also partially explains why I haven’t had a post up here in a while, because I’m doing my own life-hacking and working to fit all my schedules together.

I’m looking at the upcoming weekend as one of the last before holiday matters (Pop-singer-performs-Christmas-standards discs are already on sale!), work demands and yet another wedding leave me heavily obligated. I’m thinking it’s time crack out the ol’ GTD again and commit to it.

For now, me and the 20-minute nap might start getting to know one another a lot better.

I didn’t really notice that I had an AM station on my car radio while I was driving home tonight … until I heard a CBS News announcer say this:

Well, those looking to escape the “Karma Police” have their chance … the band Radiohead is asking fans to …

And you probably know the rest of the story, despite head-scratching lines like that. It’s cheesy and kind of sad, yet somehow not the worst one out there! Inspired Sickly fascinated, I ventured into the relevance-clutching music journalism (and blogging!) to see if there was anything even better worse. Here’s the bounty:

• OK, Now What, Mr. Computer?: Cinema Blend reaches just beyond the lengths of anything relevant to the story to pull out this gem. Saved only by the fact that it is, after all, a pretty ridiculously great album.
• What’s at the end of Radiohead’s Rainbows?: Points for actually mentioning the underlying news that the world’s most critically-acclaimed band is releasing a new disc. Demerits for making the boys from Oxfordshire into leprechauns.
• RADIOHEADING IN A NEW DIRECTION: NY Post headlines are like fresh guacamole — you always forget how good they are until the next time you sample one.
• Radiohead’s digital album: Priceless: What a clever, funny headline.
• Radiohead’s Rainbows Ready to Shine: Much like E! itself, it’s kind of phoned-in and doesn’t really tell you anything you didn’t know. So, in a way, kind of perfect.

I really dig this idea (courtesy of BoingBoing) of using a trek taken by fictional questing hero-types to set a personal goal for yourself, be it walking, running or maybe even miles you want to travel on weekend “one-tank trips.”

Geeky? Yes. Slim figure, super pulse rate drop and sense of accomplishment from walking 1,625 miles? Uber-cool.

My secret shame is that I’ve never actually read Tolkien’s masterpiece; the (great) movies obviously condense the sense of travel. So I’d have to adapt a few noble journeys from my own mental mythology. A sample:

• “Stumble through Sergio Leone’s Desert”: Admittedly, it’s a terrible idea to dehydrate, suffer third-degree sunburns and be continually beaten and whipped through the desert by a depraved Mexican gangster. But even though you’d end up looking like this, you’d be able to say, “Eh, Clint Eastwood, not so tough” and be able to back it up … kind of.
• “Laugh annoyingly across Pee Wee Herman’s America”: Giant plastic dinosaurs! Historic Texan landmarks lacking subterranean living spaces! San Antonio, Hollywood and chance encounters with an undead trucker! Say what you will about Mr. Reubens, he keeps a trim figure.
• “Run and run (and run) to Maniac Magee’s Buffalo Pen”: Running continually between the East and West sides of a city can attract unwanted attention, but a steady diet of pizza, spaghetti and whatever food’s available at the local YMCA, combined with a nearly endless day of running, would have to have results.

To say the least, Microsoft’s varied efforts at stonewalling or segmenting the Linux market have gotten markedly different receptions in the U.S. and Europe.

Take, for example, this report in the Sept. 20 issue of The Economist, which summarizes the findings by a trial court for the European Union in upholding an antitrust ruling against Microsoft:

(The EU) argued, for instance, that withholding information that is needed for PCs and servers to work together constitutes an abuse of a dominant position if it keeps others from developing rival software for which there is potential consumer demand. In such cases, the information cannot be refused even if it is protected by intellectual-property rights, as Microsoft had argued.

In other words, because Microsoft’s utter domination of the business desktop market has led it to stonewall efforts by non-Microsoft server suppliers to play nice, the EU could force the Redmond giant to hand over the source code for Windows.

Over here in the U.S., it’s, well, different. The networking company Novell, which announced in November 2006 that it would partner with Microsoft to make its own Linux products play nice, is apparently glad it did so, to the tune of a 250% jump in business. [Link via /.]

[Novell director of marketing Justin Steinman] said part of its growth was directly related to the Microsoft deal, adding that Novell has billed more than US$100 million in business through its Microsoft relationship. He added that the growth was also due to the halo effect of the arrangement.

Sounds great for Novell. Note, however, that Microsoft agreed to give away a total of $240 million in vouchers for Novell-provided support as part of the deal, and Novell has cashed in 44 percent of them, according to Computer Business Review — coincidentally, that’s about $105 million.

Regardless of whose books the boost is recorded on, it’s interesting to see how Microsoft’s firm stance on “inter-operability” generates source code demands in Europe, but invoices in the U.S.