ten items

Posted on By Wil

A bunch of random thoughts that I need to get out of my head so I can write some other stuff that’s in my head:
Item the first:
WWdN reader Gia sez:

“. . . my sister and I are running a marathon in just over 3 weeks. My sister is running for Team in Training, just as you and Anne did. My sister still has just over $1000 to raise by Oct. 10th.
This is a message from my sister:
I am running in honor of my boss, Lynn. She was diagnosed with lymphoma 4 years ago (when she was 34). Her daughter was only 5 years old at the time. I just can’t imagine how difficult that was to face death with such a young child.
My minimum fundraising goal ($4700) covers ONE night’s hospital stay and care for a newly diagnosed blood cancer patient. Considering that treatment can last months to years, and there are over 500,000 Americans living with blood cancers, there is a HUGE need for donations. Thanks to BushCo, 40% of Americans do not have health insurance. My boyfriend, daughter and I are part of that unfortunate group. Hopefully, my fundraising efforts can help someone fight the cancer and survive to see their child grow up.

Here is her sister Sari’s Team In Training Homepage. She needs about a thousand bucks. Are there one hundred WWdN readers who can part with ten bucks each? I think it would be awesome times a billion if we could send the power of WWdN her way.
Item the second:
What’s your favorite RSS reader? I’m looking to try some different ones out. Bonus points if it runs on Linux.
Item the third:
Opie and Anthony got the royal fucking shaft job by Viacom, and they just came back on the air this morning, on XM 202. It’s $1.99 a month for the show, and it’s totally worth it. O&A fucking rule, and they are way ahead of the curve by making this move to satellite radio.
Item the fourth:
After reading Viva Las Vegas, a lot of people have asked me to tell them my favorite poker books. I talked about them in my Poker Lizard interview, (which now has a second part that’s all about Hollywood, I’ve just discovered) but here are my top three “how to be a better player” books, ranked according to how much profit they’ve resulted in for my game:

  1. Winning Low-Limit Hold’Em by Lee Jones

  2. Hold’Em Excellence: From Beginner to Winner by Lou Krieger

  3. The Theory Of Poker by David Sklansky

I have left off the great no-limit books, like Super / System or Cloutier’s books, because I don’t play no-limit very often. In order to be a winning no-limit player, anyway, you have to be a great limit player, and I’m still developing my skills as a limit player. When I can consistently win at limit and move up, I’ll figure out a list of no limit books.
Item the fifth:
The Mount St. Helens Volcano Cam is producing some amazing images right now. Go look.
Item the sixth:
There is no item the sixth but you all knew that already, didn’t you?

Item the seventh:
I have no idea what HYPNOTIZE is, but it comes to us from The Absolute Kimiaki Yaegashi, where quality and performance have no substitute, apparently. It’s weird and wonderful, and not for everyone.
Item the eighth:
WWdN reader Graham sez:

I was on a rare trip to London (London, England, as you colonials call it), waiting outside the club where I was later to enjoy 2 pints of Guiness and a superb gig by the astonishing Carlos Guitarlos (How cool is he? He has Marcy Levy in his band, that’s how cool he is) when I sensed a presence….
Turning round, I saw your face glowering at me from the windows of Foyle’s bookshop, via several copies of Just A Geek.
Now, 98 year old Foyles is infamous in London as although it is probably the biggest bookstore in the capital, you can *never* find anything in it, as they mostly order the books by publisher.
So, since your book is published by O’Reilly & Associates, JAG is not in the StarTrek section, nor in the biography section. It is in the geek section. In the window it was between “how to configure OSX” and “WiFi hacking tricks”.
Not bad, eh?

Not bad at all, Graham. Not bad at all! Thanks for sending this awesome news!
Item the ninth:
It turns out that Entertainment Weekly listened to the tons of WWdN readers who wrote letters and e-mails to them about their “Whiner of the Week” thing, and they printed the following:

Triumph of the Wil
I’m very disappointed in the misrepresentation of Wil Wheaton as “Whiner of the Week” (Books.) Wil has matured into an exceptional writer and comedian, and his weblog speaks brilliantly for Gen-Xers. The use of his acting experiences to jump-start a few personal stories falls far short of whining and doesn’t represent the tome of a well-written and entertaining book.
Ellen Rhatigan
Staten Island, N.Y.

I’m stunned that EW would print anything in my defense, and I’m even more stunned that they didn’t take another shot at me. I know for a fact that this wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t gotten a TON of letters from people, and I have to thank everyone who spoke up on my behalf. As I said before, I was upset because I was misrepresented, and the fact that they ran that letter is a victory for The Truth. Ellen, and everyone else who wrote letters: you ROCK! \m/
Item the tenth:
I absolutely can’t believe that my Dodgers not only made the playoffs, but also made them by coming from 3-0 in the bottom of the 9th to beat the hated Giants! It happened while I was at Gnomedex, and I didn’t get to see it on TV . . . but I think that Finley’s grand slam is going to take its place next to Gibson’s 1988 homer in the halls of Dodger lore. Awesome.

Okay, now that all these items are out of my brain, they’ve cleared the way for my gnomedex report, which should follow shortly.
Or maybe tomorrow . . . it’s really nice outside.

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Comments (100)

  1. No Helmuth book, eh? Guess I’m in the minority there as being a fan. Anyway, glad to see EW published that letter, I’m sure they got over a hundred of ’em!

  2. What about your plans/ideas for WWDN that we are on tenderhooks for. I’m chewing my toes off in antici – pation.
    Julian

  3. Well, for my RSS reader, well… um… I use Mozilla FireFox/ThunderBird.
    As for sports, I’m just glad to see the ‘Hawks kicking butt and taking names (as they gave the ‘Niners their first shut-out loss in 420 games!).

  5. I’ve been enjoying your column in Dungeon – keep up the good work. The art this time was a bit bizarre. For those that haven’t seen it, it was Wil, bulging biceps straining to rip through Fantastic Four shirt. Oh yeah, and he was wearing a diaper.

  6. Re: item the second
    I just started using Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) to read RSS feeds, because I can use it from work. So far, no problems.

  7. If only all P.R. connected to Leni Riefenstahl could go this well.
    It’s nice they were able to finally able to say something good about you. Still doesn’t make them any less a bunch of gits.

  8. I’ve also been fascinated with the Volcano-cam. It’s awesome when a fly lands on the lens, looks like a Japanese SciFi monster movie come to life. Looking for some red flames shooting from the volcano, but hasn’t happended yet.

  9. Hm.. RSS reader?
    Try http://www.bloglines.com I love it. Its an online RSS reader so it will run on Linux, not to mention any other OS with a Browser including Palm and PocketPC (there is a mobile version).
    Is pretty full featured and is free!
    The FireFox Live Bookmarks are pretty cool too.
    I wish O&A weren’t “premium” content as I would have liked to check them out.

  10. I concur with Audrey. Bloglines.com is bad-ass… And the Bloglines notifier plugin for Mozilla/Firefox (to tell you when your RSS feeds have been updated) is SO kickass.

  11. Another satisfied bloglines user here!
    And a general comment, everything seems to be rockin’ in the wheaton world these days and that is just woohoo cool. 🙂

  14. It doesn’t run on Linux, but I’ve been using an RSS-reader plugin for Trillian Pro to read RSS feeds. It works great because I’ve almost always got Trillian sitting there on the edge of my screen and it pops up little boxes in the corner when a new item appears on an RSS feed. The only problem with it is that it still only reads RSS 0.9 and not 1.0. I’ve been waiting for an update to the plugin forever, I should check again soon, it’s been a while since the last time.
    On a completely different note, I was really suprised that none of your items was about the X-Prize. 🙂

  15. For RSS I use KNewsTicker, can be run either in its own window or as a panel applet. How lots of sites preconfigured, so its only a matter of ticking sites you want to monitor.

  16. Did Opie & Anthony end up in CA? They used to be out of a local Boston station (WAAF) and were suddenly booted after starting some kick-ass mischeif (what else is new) and refusing to back off– the start of WOW + others. This was 7 years ago, or something like that. Last I knew they were out of NYC area. Nice to know they still refuse to submit 😉

  17. Regarding the RSS Aggregator question…
    I’ve been using Bloglines for many months now. It’s absolutely wonderful. You can check your RSS feeds ANYWHERE. The UI isn’t completely straightforward, but all the features you want are there, somewhere.

  19. YABU – Yet Another Bloglines User. It’s really great, because I can read my feeds at work or at home and not have to read ‘repeats.’ Also it has a handy blog page for me, so that I can do my own blog very simply (not great and not very customizable but it’s so easy I just had to start one).

  20. Oh, I forgot to say, both Straw and Liferea are available through Dag if you run FC2. It makes it easy to get through yum or apt.

  21. Re: Item the Second
    I use the Sage plugin for Firefox. I tried Thunderbird’s built-in rss for a while, but finally decided to go back to Sage because I like seeing multiple articles onscreen at once.

  23. You CANNOT be a true Dodger fan and even CONSIDER replacing Kirk Gibson as the facilitator of the Greatest Sports Moment Of All Time with a salami that merely clinched the division with games still in hand.
    Gibson’s jack WON that title in 1988. Hershiser was great too, yes, but you could have thrown the cast of The Facts Of Life for games 2-5 and the A’s wouldn’t have been able to come back from that emotional crash.
    I moved on when Fox traded Piazza and I no longer knew who the team was, but I urge you to pay the proper respect to great memories. 🙂

  24. Team in Training is a non-political group, and I think it is inappropriate for someone to conflate their political views with The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s work. OTOH, as a TNT veteran myself, I think it is great that you are using your personal influence with your friends and fans to raise awareness of the group.

  25. Wil-
    Red v. Blue? If the Red Sox and Dodgers meet in the World Series, we are SO GOING. I will find tickets somehow and I will laugh as Manny, Tek, and Ortiz go yard on your boys. 😉

  26. RSS Readers:
    Another vote for KNewsTicker. I run the panel applet and watch for interesting headlines. All of the sites being monitored can also be tracked from the panel applet menu.
    Other favorite reader is Sage for Mozilla Firefox. Links to a bookmark folder so all you have to do is right click the RSS, XML, or ATOM logo/link and throw it into the folder. Should work anywhere mozilla works.

  27. I hate to point this out…but the Dodgers aren’t going to the World Series. The Cards are going to eliminate them in the first round….So don’t get your hopes up too high. LOL But it should be a good first round playoff, though. I expect some good games.

  28. my favorite does not run on linux but it does run on the mac os (which i assume you run sometimes) which is omniweb. its a nice browser to boot.

  29. I don’t really understand how O&A got “the royal fucking shaft job”. Don’t get me wrong, I love em, but lets face it. First, they get fired for an april fools joke about the DEATH of the mayor in a terrible car crash, then after getting a second chance they get fired when some of their listeners have sex in a cathedral to win money from them.
    -Brendan

  30. I’m all for helping raise money for cancer patients, but it’s hardly the fault of this (or any other) administration that a large percentage of Americans are without health insurance, and the number is certainly nowhere near forty percent.
    Congrats on the EW “apology!”

  32. RSS Readers: I’ve used Straw, which seems simple and adequate. ..the only thing is I have to load it up every time I use it (I’d rather have something continually on my desktop).
    gdesklets has a sweet looking rss reader for your desktop. Made for Gnome but I run it nicely on xfce4. Seems to use a lot of resrouces, though.

  33. This doesn’t really have much to do with this post, but bear with me. My boyfriend came home with Guiness Saturday, and all I could say is, “That’s what Wil Wheaton drinks!” Dorky, I know. I saw the word Guiness and remembered that.

  35. Found out about O&A when I saw Jim Norton on Last Comic Standing and he was wearing the O&A XM shirt. ROCK! They so needed to be back on the air! Re: Item 6…Yay for the Python reference! There is NO rule 6! G’day Bruce! Thanks Wil!

  36. Hey Wil,
    We have an London, Ontario so we do say London, England because of the two different places.
    Glad EW printed that letter in your defence. It’s about frigging time someone there got a backbone.
    Enjoy your lovely day.

  37. I would also have to recommend Bloglines for an RSS reader. Finding the best RSS reader was a mission of mine for about 6 months, I tried FeedReader, SharpReader, NetNewsWire(Mac), Sage and finally Bloglines. Bloglines works well because you can check it on multiple computers and it will remember what you have read. This is very nice if you do use multiple computers so you do not have to weed through articles you have read already when you move locations. Instead of boring everyone else with my opinions on the other programs, I will simply leave with my Bloglines recommendation

  41. My favorite RSS reader is NetNewsWire, which unfortunately doesn’t run in Linux. I also like bloglines, which works anywhere in any web browser. It’s pretty easy to move between them since both of them can import & export OPML files.

  42. Keep the suggestions coming. I’m new to the whole RSS thing, so I’m listening carefully…
    Guess someone at Entertainment WEAKly does like you, Wil. The vendetta they seem to have can’t cover the whole staff, and it looks like someone on the inside listened to Ellen (and all of us who wrote). Hopefully, that staffer bought DB and JAG, read them, discovered what hella-good books they really are, and will now pass them around to the other staffers…

  46. Dude, I could so be reading too much into things, but maybe Entertainment WEAKly slipped a barb into the title of that blurb. Maybe the gomer who wrote the blurb is too stupid to even know this, and I’m over-intellectualizing, but “Triumph of the Wil(l)” is the title of the infamous Leni Riefenstahl propaganda film made for the Nazi party. So, is ET now trying to say you’ve got some sort of mindless following here? Like I said. I could be thinking too much. But it did catch my eye. There ARE people that snarky in the world.

  47. Its about time EW listened to the readers of WWDN. And printed the retraction. When will we hear about the results from the audition?
    And other news today, The Seattle Mariniers fired manager Bob Melvin after only his 2nd year as the skipper of the Mariniers. We should have seen it coming after this year went down the crapper.
    I predict a Dodgers vs Yankees WS. and the Yankees win by game 6.
    Go Yankees, and good ridance to bob melvin.

  48. Hold up – more than 40 posts and no one has mentioned making a donation(item the first…) ??I’ll get the ball rolling on that $1000 WWdN goal with the first $10, Wil. Who needs to argue over whether it’s Dubbya’s fault the money is needed… just donate, monkeys!
    Also – I’m in Vancouver, Washington (I can see St. Helen’s from the freeway) and the whole thing is way cool to watch.

  49. re: item the second,
    I use Bottom Feeder (http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/BottomFeeder/index.html)
    I like it because it doesn’t try to change how I use my browser (FireFox, btw), like some of them do, yet it is easy to have it open items in the browser.
    Their own blurb says:
    “BottomFeeder is a news aggregator client (RSS and Atom) written in VisualWorks Smalltalk. BottomFeeder runs on x86 Linux (also FreeBSD), PowerPC linux, Sparc Linux, Windows (98/ME/NT/2000/XP), Mac OS8/9, Mac OS X, AIX, SGI Irix, Compaq UNIX, HP-UX, and Solaris.”

  50. I’ll throw another vote onto the Bloglines pile. They just announced an API that’ll allow programs like the excellent NetNewsWire to sync with it, so you can use NetNewsWire at home and Bloglines at other computers and keep all your subscriptions synced.
    Mozilla Thunderbird also reads feeds now. It also supports PGP email and has a good spam filter.

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