1. The Locus Poll has closed. Hope you voted.

2. I note who sends me Spam and then don’t buy their products. Would Verizon please stop leaving comment spam.

I’m curious. Podcasts are no longer new, but they are still cool and seem to be getting more popular. Is it something that the readers of Coode Street might warm too? Let me know in the comments field. BTW, for my money the best podcaster in SF right now is Cory Doctorow. Check out  his Hugo nominated story “I Robot” on his website. And, if you like that, the “Anda’s Game” podcast is dynamite.

I’m in the process of resuming normal posting, but in the meantime: iTunes! What gives?!? The music store is like totally wrong. I had to give them a few million times more information than I would give to a bricks and mortar store, and that was to retrieve a (very welcome) gift voucher. Apple needs to rethink (quickly) what its doing or the only choices will end up being either to download music for free from bittorrent (at higher quality and available earlier) or buy it from the bricks and mortar guys. At the moment, I currently download freebies as previews and buy the disk if I want it (deleting the downloaded files on the way). I want to buy music. I’m happy to pay creators, middlemen and the whole crowd. Hell, I’ve been doing it since I was eight years old. Why would I stop now? But buying low quality DRMd files from a bunch of dumbass California hippies who want account information and such? Not ever again.

Well, I’m back from Conjure. Many thanks to all who helped run the convention, all of the volunteers and organisers, and everyone who turned up for the panels. I had a wonderful time, and am very grateful indeed for the opportunity to attend. Special thanks too, to the ABC, who paid a lot of attention to the event, took it seriously, and were a very welcome presence. There were a lot of highlights: the juvenilia panel, the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest disco, Bruce’s GoH speech, Cory’s talks on DRM. The best things, as always thought, were seeing old friends and meeting new ones. The science fiction family only convenes from time to time, so I hope to see you all at the next stop.

Not me. The ABC Arts journal, Articulate.  I did an interview with ABC journalist Gary Kemble, the ABC’s James O’Loughlin, and with Paul Voermans at various times over the weekend, and just prior to the convention. Articulate has what I think is the interview I did with Gary, which you can find here.