I know a couple people who have worked in Japan for a while over the years. The latest is Kim Selling, who is writing about her experiences in her journal.

I have a pair of Grado SR-80 headphones. I bought them one wet, rainy evening about eight years ago, when Marianne and I went shopping down on Shattuck in Berkeley. I’ve bought several other pairs of headphones over the years, even tried out Charles’s expensive noise reduction jobbies and nothing comes close. I bought a pair of Sennheiser noise reduction headphones last August, used them and like them very much. I let the old Grado’s fall out of use, but then a while ago all the fiddling around unpacking the Sennheiser’s just got too annoying and I plugged them into Bob the B2 Stealth Walkman, and damn if they didn’t sound good. Need to find a new pair of foam ear pads, but other than that, they’re the best thing I’ve ever heard. If you ever need headphones, start here.

The good folk at Interaction have announced the 2005 Hugo Award nominatees. Many congrats to K.J. Bishop, the first Australian (to my knowledge) to be nominated for the John W. Campbell Award.

We here at Coode Street know how to live dangerously. As we sit on the cusp of the release of the final Hugo ballot for this year, we’d like to bring you the 2006 Hugo Award nominees for best novel:

The Hallowed Hunt, Lois McMaster Bujold
Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
Olympos, Dan Simmons
Accelerando, Charles Stross
Spin, Robert Charles Wilson

We can’t wait to see if we’re right, will something surprise us? We’ll have to wait for Los Angeles and next year.

Matt Cheney writes about Norman Spinrad this morning, Spinrad reluctantly admits that he is an SF luminary, and Cheney says horseshit (about something else). Go see.