A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a representative from Schmap dot com, asking if I would consider submitting this photo to their Spain, Barcelona guide.

(Scroll to Avinguda Diaganol and my photo is the fourth or fifth to load.)

I did, and then, this morning, I received a message letting me know that my photo has been used in the updated, current version of their guide.

Schmap is an interesting take on map and guidebooks. Their guides are based on Yahoo Maps, but, the content is more or less user generated.  Users of the software client or website can post stories, information, links, and photos of favorite places alongside the maps themselves.

Guides can be downloaded for free to the desktop client, which works as publishing software as well.

All in all, Schmap is a very Web 2.0 approach to tourist guides for cities and countries, and I'm happy to be a (small) part.

Last summer, my wife bought me an Omega shaving brush.  I have been enjoying it immensely and had just been using a generic shaving cream purchased in the local supermarket.

But for Valentine's Day, my wife bought me a nice razor and brush stand, as well as a package of Classic Shaving Brand Lime and Coconut soap.

Fellas, it's good stuff.

Both scents are light and hard to detect after completing your shave.  However, both are still present, and reactivate whenever your face is wet, whether from washing or rain or something else entirely.

This combo is also idea for anyone who shaves in the morning as they are a pleasant eye opener and make shaving a real treat instead of a chore.

The soap lathers up easily for quick application, but comes off quite cleanly with the razor, leaving very little to muck up your shaving towel.  Similarly, it comes out of the brush with minimal effort, which will help the brush to last longer.  It also, at least so far, seems to be very nice to the blades of my razor, unlike the gels I have used in the past.

In short, guys, if you are looking for something to help make the daily shave a little more pleasant, you could do far worse than this soap.

Humor is an odd thing.  It varies from culture to subculture and from person to peer.  And it comes in many, many flavors.  There are the broad strokes of slapstick and parody as well as the more delicate and intricate details of irony and satire.  Freaks and Geeks lies somewhere in between those broad and subtle strokes, firmly in the land of "so painful it's funny."

You know this territory; anybody who has ever been a high school student knows this territory.  It's what Chris Rock and Bill Hicks and George Carlin are famous for dealing, or having dealt with, in public and on tape.  Those situations that are excruciatingly painful, so humiliating, so debilitating, that the only way to remember them is with laughter, lest the tears send you running back to the therapist's couch.

I'm not sure how this show slipped by me.  It originally aired in 1999 and 2000 and would have been a little too much salt in wounds still to fresh to be truly funny to me.  Even now, a full 15 years after high school, there are times I find myself pausing the disc to just walk away and gain some perspective before I can finish the show.  It's that good.  From the musical selections to the acting to the directing, this is quality work.  Where it stands out, of course, is the writing.  The dialogue was left largely to the actors to improvise, leaving it feeling fresh and natural; nobody speaks too cleverly in this show.  There are no pithy one liners and no guaranteed happy endings written here.

But for all that pain, for all that embarrassment, it is a funny show.  The characters survive and learn and grow and that makes these stories funny, in that hard to define, "thank God it's not me...anymore" kind of way. 

So, if you find yourself in need of a good show this summer, check out the DVD set, just make sure you've put both the knives and the yearbooks away first.

Sometime late last year, while browsing through Podiobooks,  I came across a serialized detective story called Black Jack Justice produced by a group called Decoder Ring Theater.

I subscribed to the series and soon found myself pushing each new episode to the front of my playlist.  It was not long before I had found The Red Panda Adventures as well and found it to be just as enjoyable as Black Jack Justice.

Black Jack Justice, in brief, is a radio drama featuring a hardboiled detective named Jack Justice and his partner, Trixie Dixon, Girl Detective.  The pair work through a case in about thirty minutes per episode with all the snappy patter and brilliant deductions of the best pulp novels.

On the other hand, The Red Panda Adventures are an adventure show, naturally enough, centered around the Red Panda, Canada's Greatest Crimefighter, and his sidekick, the Flying Squirrel, aka Kit Baxter.  The duo battle everything from supernatural villans to mobsters and bank robbers and every other pulp adventure trope you could name.

Both shows are acted and produced by the very talented group at Decoder Ring Theater.  The group was founded by the writer for both shows, Gregg Taylor and both shows started out in much different incarnations than they are at present.  DRT puts out an excellent product, both in terms of Mr. Taylor's writing and the excellent production quality, but the real standout is the superb voice acting talent on display in the episodes.  In particular the back and forth between the male and female leads in both shows is what keeps me coming back for more.

I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that Black Jack Justice, Season 2 has been added to Podiobooks.com and that The Red Panda Adventures, Season 2 is currently being released via the group's website.  Additionally, there have been several summer specials released recently; they're being downloaded as I write this.

The shows are available for free download from Podiobooks and the website, and archival CDs and even a script collection are available at Lulu.com. 

These shows are perfect for anyone who has read any of the great pulp novels from the thirties through the fifties, not to mention any fans of old time radio serial adventures.  The sound quality is excellent, the voice acting top notch, the stories fun and engaging, and every episode is available for free.

I cannot recommend these shows or Decoder Ring Theater enough.