User:Eric Herboso/Media

NOTICE: The entirety of this page is archival material, even if it says otherwise. I simply do not have time to update my wikipedia profile pages with the same consistency as I can my twitter profile at @EricHerboso or my facebook profile at facebook.com/EricHerboso. If you want current info, please go there. What follows below is for archival purposes only.

I enjoy many different things, including that of pop culture. Below, you will find a list of all the different types of media I enjoy most. Please note that the list is necessarily incomplete, especially in the books section. Favorites are in bold.

Music
If you're really interested in getting to know what music I truly enjoy, you may want to check out my personal internet radio stationat Last.fm.

Classical

 * J. S. Bach's Toccata & Fugue in d minor and Jesus bliebt meine Freunde
 * Peter Schickele (P.D.Q. Bach)'s New Horizons in Music Appreciation
 * John O'Reilly's Windstar Overture

Big Band

 * Glenn Miller's In The Mood
 * Benny Goodman's Sing, Sing, Sing
 * Duke Ellington's Take The A Train, In a Sentimental Mood, and It Don't Mean A Thing

Thematic

 * Nobuo Uematsu's Final Fantasy work (Diary of a Decent Journey, Dancing Mad, Aria di Mezzo Carattere, and Dream Oath)
 * Yasunori Mitsuda's Chrono Trigger and Xenogears work
 * Yoko Kanno's Escaflowne (Dance of Curse, Into Gaea, and Sora's Folktale), Cowboy Bebop (Tank! and Rush), and Ghost in the Shell work
 * The Seatbelts' Ask DNA
 * Yuki Kajiura's Noir work (Canta per Me, Copperia no Hitsugi, and Kirei na Kanjou w/ Hisaaki Hogari)
 * Taku Iwasaki's R.O.D. work (Read or Die)
 * the pillows' FLCL work (Ride on Shooting Star, Hybrid Rainbow, Crazy Sunshine)
 * Hideaki Anno and Shiro Sagisu's Neon Genesis Evangelion work (Komm, süsser Tod)
 * Frank Klepacki's Command & Conquer work (Death March and No Mercy)
 * OverClocked ReMix's various video games work (Jared Hudson's Chu Chu's Flight and Uncaptured Jewel, Ailsean's Terra in Black and One Link to Rule Them All, Scott Peeples' Another Inspiration, JigginJonT's Enter The Frog, Disco Dan's Green Amnesia, Oceabfire's Xenosphere, Russell Cox's To Zanarkand Once Again, McVaffe's Weepy Loop, AmIEviL's Death on the snowfield, etc.)
 * The Minibosses' Kraid
 * The Spoony Bards' Suteki Da Ne
 * The OneUps' Shattering the Egg of Dreams
 * Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov's Korobeiniki

Alternative

 * The Dresden Dolls' Girl Anachronism

Indie

 * Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and Two-Headed Boy

Emo

 * Enon's High Society and In This City

Metal

 * Rammstein's Amerika

Jazz

 * Josef Zawinul's Birdland

Bolivian

 * Los Kjarkas' Llorando se Fué, Siempre he de Adorarte, Wayayay, Ojos Azules , Puedo Vivir Sin Tu Amor , Ave de cristal , and Chuquiago Marca

A cappella

 * The Muppet Show's Mahnahmahnah
 * The Klein Four's Finite Simple Group (of Order 2)
 * Manhattan Transfer's That's Killer Joe and Down in Birdland

Minimalist

 * Philip Glass

Movies
I've watched a lot of movies, and enjoyed a great many of them. These are just a few of those that I've enjoyed.
 * Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich
 * Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie
 * William Goldman's The Princess Bride
 * Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
 * Joss Whedon's Serenity
 * J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy
 * George Lucas' Star Wars films
 * Adrienne Shelly's Waitress (film)
 * Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful
 * Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away
 * Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service
 * Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (film)
 * Steven Conrad's The Weatherman
 * Adrienne Shelly's Waitress
 * The Shawshank Redemption
 * Kung Fu Hustle
 * The Matrix
 * The Notebook
 * Grave of the Fireflies
 * Whisper of the Heart

Television
I don't often watch television anymore because of commercials. But I do watch videos downloaded online, or dvds of my favorite series.

Sci-fi

 * Joss Whedon's Firefly
 * Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica
 * Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek series
 * J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5
 * Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible (at hulu.com)

Nonfiction

 * Robert Kuhn's Closer To Truth
 * Penn & Teller's Bullshit!
 * Discovery Channel's MythBusters
 * CSPAN's BookTV
 * Jon Stewart's The Daily Show
 * Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report
 * PBS's Nova, and Robert Krulwich's / Neil deGrasse Tyson's NOVA scienceNOW
 * Pre-G4 take-over ZDTV/TechTV's The Screen Savers with Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, Robert Heron, Roger Chang, and Yoshi DeHerrera

Anime

 * Keiichi Sigsawa's Kino's Journey
 * Kazuki Akane's The Vision of Escaflowne
 * Shinichiro Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop
 * Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell
 * Hideaki Anno's Neon Genesis Evangelion
 * R.O.D.

Other

 * Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing
 * MTV's Daria
 * Dick Wolf's Law and Order

Radio Shows
I usually listen to CSPAN whenever I'm in the car, though occasionally I'll put on NPR or some light jazz.


 * Peter Schickele's Schickele Mix
 * Kai Ryssdal's Marketplace
 * Robert Siegel, Michele Norris and Melissa Block's All Things Considered
 * Bob Edwards' Morning Edition
 * Terry Gross' Fresh Air
 * David and Tom Gardner's Motley Fool
 * CSPAN radio
 * CSPAN's Supreme Court Oral Arguments
 * CSPAN's Washington Journal

Podcasts

 * Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, Kevin Rose, and Steve Gibson's This Week in Tech (formerly TROTSS)
 * Robert Krulwich's / Neil deGrasse Tyson's NOVA scienceNOW (via PBS)

RSS Subscriptions
In addition to these, I also subscribe to RSS feeds that keep me up to date on personal items.


 * Democracy Now!
 * The Daily Show
 * Google News
 * MathWorld
 * /.
 * digg (top stories)
 * Google Blog
 * NOVA ScienceNOW
 * This Week in Tech
 * MagicTheGathering.com (for Mark Rosewater)
 * The Skeptics Society
 * BoxedThoughts
 * EricHerboso.livejournal.com/rss (shameless plug)

Books
I read fairly often. In general, I read a book every three days or so, until I get burnt out, and then I go for a month without reading at all. Mostly I read nonfiction, and I only pick up fiction if it's specifically recommended to me.

By the way, this is an incomplete list by far. I have favorite titles across the board, and if I spent the time necessary on it, I could likely make a list five times as big and still not make a dent in listing all my favorite books.

To me, reading a book is an act of communication between beings that gets at the heart of a subject. It is like a conversation, and though it lacks in being somewhat one-sided, it makes up for it by being worthwhile, which most in-person conversations are not. So above all else on this page, it is the books I enjoy that I feel most passionate about.

If you're really interested in learning about what books I enjoy, I highly suggest you take a look at my LibraryThing account, which will eventually list every book I enjoy, along with my personal thoughts on each book, and how it affected my life.

Nonfiction
My two favorite nonfiction writers are nothing alike; Stephen Jay Gould writes beautifully, but sometimes loses his audience by being too wordy, and Douglas Hofstadter writes poetically while simultaneously remaining 'down-to-earth'. I highly respect both as amazing authors.


 * Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States
 * Richard Feynman's QED and The Feynman Lectures on Physics
 * Stephen Jay Gould's The Panda's Thumb and The Flamingo's Smile
 * Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach
 * Aristotle's Ethics and Politics
 * Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
 * John Gribbin's Schrödinger's Cat
 * Albert Einstein's Relativity
 * Kurt Gödel's On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Related Systems
 * Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival
 * Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72

Fiction
I love fiction. This may have something to do with the fact that though I read nonfiction all the time, I only read fiction when it is recommended to me, and so I end up reading only the good stuff.

Incidentally, just because I like an author's style doesn't mean I particularly like that author. This is most obvious in Orson Scott Card, who is a pompous asshole, but also in Ayn Rand, who I think is severely mistaken in her ideals.

My favorite fiction authors are hard to identify. On the one hand, Ender's Game was really badass, but Card's other works aren't nearly as impressive. Salinger's line about wanting to be a catcher in the rye when he grows up makes me tear up just by thinking of it, yet can I really say he's my favorite author when that's the only book I remember him for? Haydon wrote book after book that I fell in love with, but (to be honest) I kind of liked them due to a level of shallowness they represented. I've reread Rand more than any other author here, but does that mean I can call her a favorite author, just because I guess she holds claim to having authored my favorite fiction title?

In the end, I think I have to say that my favorite fiction author is Diana Gabaldon. Her books are fun and enjoyable, even the third time through, and each book in the series really makes me want to read the next one. And although some others have accomplished this impressive feat before (Rowling, Haydon), she is the first I've read who did so without being completely shallow in the storyline. I must highly recommend her to any and all who read these words.


 * J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
 * Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game
 * J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter
 * Plato's Gorgias and The Republic
 * Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged
 * Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila
 * Elizabeth Haydon's Symphony of Ages series, especially the Rhapsody Trilogy.
 * Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series
 * Joseph Heller's Picture This
 * George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four
 * Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
 * Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club
 * Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity
 * Nick Hornby's High Fidelity
 * D. B. Weiss's Lucky Wander Boy

Short Stories
Although technically fiction, these count separately for me because they differ so drastically from full-length fiction novels.


 * Isaac Asimov's The Last Answer
 * Isaac Asimov's Nightfall
 * Hal Clement's Uncommon Sense
 * Ursula Le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
 * Nancy Kress's Shiva in Shadow

Poetry
l(a

le af fa ll

s) one l

iness In general, I dislike poetry. But occasionally I find a piece or two that I like. Believe it or not, the list below is probably close to being complete.


 * T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and The Wasteland
 * John Milton's Paradise Lost
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias
 * Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est
 * Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach
 * e. e. cummings' l(a leaf falls)oneliness
 * Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky
 * Robert Frost's The Tuft of Flowers

Games
I love games. (c;

Video Games
If you're truly interested in the video games I play, you might want to take a look at my profile on pwned.com.


 * Lunar (Working Designs translation)
 * Starcraft
 * Final Fantasy series
 * Chrono Trigger series
 * Xenogears series
 * Desktop Tower Defense
 * notpr0n
 * Civilization
 * Super Smash Bros.
 * Legend of Zelda series
 * Metroid series
 * Advance Wars
 * MArcomage
 * Urban Dead
 * Ace Attorney series (Phoenix Wright

Board Games

 * Axis and Allies
 * Heroscape
 * Scrabble
 * Shogi
 * Go
 * Diplomacy
 * Set
 * Settlers of Catan

Card Games

 * Magic: the Gathering
 * MArcomage

Websites I'm On
What follows is a loose list of all the sites you can find me on online. If you know of a social network I'm on that isn't listed here, please feel free to edit it in yourself.


 * FriendFeed - Meta
 * JobFox - Career
 * Y! - Chat
 * Xanga - Blog
 * Wikipedia - Meta
 * Spring Hill College - Webpage
 * RSS - Blog
 * Panangelium - Blog
 * OKCupid - Dating
 * MySpace - Social Networking
 * MTGNews - Forum
 * MTG.Bore.org - Commentary
 * MTGSalvation - Forum
 * MSN - Chat
 * Geocities - Webpage
 * LiveJournal - Blog
 * Friendster - Social Networking
 * Flickr - Photos
 * Facebook - Social Networking
 * digg - Social Bookmarking
 * deviantART - Media
 * BluntTruth - Survey
 * BlogSpot - Blog
 * Academia - Social Networking
 * del.icio.us - Social Bookmarking
 * diigo
 * disqus
 * furl
 * Google Reader
 * identi.ca
 * ilike
 * intense debate
 * last.fm
 * LibraryThing
 * LinkedIn
 * Mister Wong
 * Mixx
 * NetVibes
 * Pandora
 * Picasa
 * plurk
 * polyvore
 * pownce
 * http://reddit.com/user/EricHerboso reddit]
 * stumbleupon
 * tumblr
 * twitter
 * upcoming
 * yelp
 * youtube
 * zooomr