Cory Doctorow's short story "0wnz0red" is available as a four-part podcast. He describes it as "a story about trusted computing, geek culture, and getting root on your body", which sounds nicely weird. I haven't listened yet, but I've got it queued up and ready to go for today's workout at the gym.

If listening to fiction isn't your thing (yes, I'm looking at you Berin) then you can always try subscribing to the episodic, RSS-based version of Doctorow's exceedingly strange urban fantasy novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. The feed delivers a few pages to you each day until you've completed the book. Read my review of the dead tree version of the book.

Radio Active starts glowing again as the Great Fall Painting Project of '06 winds down. This time around I've got updates on said project as well as the far geekier AirTunes setup I finally got working. Sites of Note looks at Jonathan Coulton music videos shot using World of Warcraft, the world-building third season of the Harping Monkey's Round Table and the very cool (and very geeky) Portable Apps web site, which provides geeks with self-contained versions of Firefox, Open Office and other programs they can stick on a thumb drive. Finally there's the much delayed review of A Feast For Crows, the fourth book in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series.

Note: There was a problem with the show's MP3 when it was first posted that prevented iTunes from downloading it. The problem's been fixed; you should be able to snag the show now.

We've entered Phase III of the Great Fall Painting Project which involves spackling, priming and then painting the ceiling, arch and door in the foyer. With my trusty iPod shuffle having slipped off its mortal coil and my ancient iPod in need of an extended recharge, I'm trying a different way of listening to podcasts: streaming them.

The headline pretty much says it all: according to the gym scale, I've now 215 lbs. It was something of a surprise -- I haven't been hitting the gym as hard as I should have been the last week (going something like 3 out of 7 days) but I've still been watching what I eat and walking to working so I was still able to make some progress.

I'm switching to rabbit food (with an occasional helping of humus and some Triscuits) for lunch, which is undoubtedly healthier than my normal roast beef sandwich. Combined with drinking water instead of Coke, I've probably cut 350 calories out of my daily diet with that change.

John Williams' original Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone soundtrack was a whimsical, wondrous album with a hook that was instantly as memorable as anything he'd done for Star Wars or Jaws. The Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire soundtrack retains elements of Williams' themes, but its musical evolution is nowhere near as impressive as the film it scores.

It's fall -- students are back on campus at the college where I work, the Pennsylvania air is starting to turn cooler and crisper, and Jordan is getting ready to start preschool.

Preschool … wow. Jordan's gone from being this tiny little baby that I spent hours walking with in order to sooth her crying to a little girl -- sorry, big girl -- who's potty trained, amazingly creative and alternatively fiercely independent or exceedingly needy.

Running role-playing games online is a kind of hell. Be it by blog, forum, e-mail or some sort of real-time hookup, sustaining a game can be near impossible. While I have no hard data on this, my guess would be that only 1 in 10 online games succeed, and that's probably wildly optimistic -- the real number's probably closer to 1 in 50.

The problems are legion, but mostly come down to a question of time: players not having enough time to post, game masters not having enough time to respond, and everyone having a sense that the game is moving a glacial speeds. This fractured time warp leads to disinterest and apathy, which leads to the dissolution (or more likely, outright abandonment) of the game.

The Dungeon Magazine Index provides a searchable, filterable list of adventures published in Paizo's dungeon-master-friendly magazine. Visitors can search based on article name and can filter based on level and setting. As a DM who's spent more than one Saturday coming through old Dungoens looking for adventure fodder, I can safely say that this tool will be a real time saver.

As part of our home improvement project, I convinced my wife to turn our large interior foyer wall into a three-print gallery of sorts. The idea is that we'd put literary/magazine inspired prints there, which fits with the theme of our first floor (you can see the large wall-covering bookshelf in the library when you walk in the front door).

What inspired this idea was the discovered that the web site Vinylz Art is selling 24" high by 32" wide posters of Analog Science Fiction and Fact covers from the late 1960s and early-to-mid 1970s. Browsing through their collection, I found two that I think would be particularly good for the foyer. Both involve space ships, which makes them kid friendly (my daughter Jordan loves spaceships, but is less-than-thrilled with aliens).

In the two weeks since my last fitness post I've started to see some improvement as measured by the gym scale: I now weigh 218 lbs., down from 224 on August 30. I'm approaching the eagerly anticipated "36 Waist" threshold.