Show #25 gets back to the speculative fiction with some thoughts on losing -- and finding -- my interest in scifi, reviews of the Does My Geek, Roll 2d6 and BrickNebula podcasts, and a review of John Scalzi's military SF novel, Old Man's War. There's also news of the Nuketown beta and a possible theme song.

I'm looking for a few patient, curious readers (and listeners) to help me try out the beta site for the new Nuketown. The testing is pretty straight-forward -- I need folks to login (yes -- you can have actual accounts on the new site!), surf around the site, post some comments, fiddle with the forums.

I've been to a handful of actual libertarian events, and I gotta say, these guys are dead on. For whatever reason (possibly the large amounts of geek DNA in their bloodstreams) libertarians love to obsess over obscure, archaic and occasionally downright weird people, situations and ideas, often at the expense of scoring really points for their politics. Read the full story.

The probe had a flawless launch today. It's going to take it nearly a decade to reach the 9th planet. Read the full story.

The podcast gets back up to speed after the holidays with news about what's up with Nuketown, both on the site, and at home. There's also speculation about the possibilty of a geek workbench, and a review of the SciFiDig Podcast.

I finally got around to consolidating all of my Knights of the Dinner Table web notes into one big mega file, which now holds about 38 links. Thanks to this endevour, I'd say I've got about two and a half WebScryer columns researched now, so all I need to do is bang out the actual text. With most of these columns, writing them is actually a lot easier than researching them because finding the sites can be so infuriatingly difficult.

It never ceases to amaze me how tiny babies can be. It sounds like a trite phrase, the sort of thing everyone says, but it's true. We had Sue's ultrasound yesterday, and got to actually see Jordan's brother (or sister ... we don't want to know which until that fateful day in June). Unlike Jordan, who slept through every ultrasound she ever had, little Melbourne was a frisky little guy, holding up his/her hands, kicking feet, clinching tiny fists, and generally making the ultrasound tech work for her paycheck.

Sue's second pregnancy has gone by in a rush, as you can see by the dearth of posts on Nuketown about it, with only a single mention in Radio Active. With Jordan, I was posting at a crazed pace, intoxicated with the idea of being a dad for the first time. Now, well, I'm more buzzed than intoxicated. Excited, yes. Thrilled, yes, but there's not that headlong rush of adrenaline and panic as I wonder "are we really ready for this?" and "what if I drop the baby?" and the thousand other thoughts that ricocheted around a new dad's skull at 2 a.m.

It's not quite Neal Stephenson's virtual desktop, but Freemind still looks pretty cool. It's a Java-based "mind mapping" software, providing a visual tool for organizing your thoughts. I haven't tried it yet, but its on my list of stuff to play with this week. Read the full story.

Too cool. The next-gen Mindstorms robots can react to ultrasound, sound, light and touch, etc., and can be programmed via Bluetooth or USB (as in, one guy demoing the robot was able to control it from his freaking phone!). it's going to be expensive -- $250 -- but so was the first one. Plus, it is educational ... right? Read the full story.

This article on O'Reilly explains mdfind, which offers all the flexibility of Spotlight from Mac OS X's Unix command line. Read the full story.