The end of Shinders?

I had noticed that the Eden Prairie Shinders had suddenly closed a couple of weeks ago, and now I know why. And in retrospect, I had noticed that the quality of the store had been declining over the last couple of months.

It's more that it complicates my comic-buying schedule on busy weeks -- the Eden Prairie Shinders was convenient on my current commute home, and while Dreamhaven isn't that far for me, it's really a whole additional drive.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

I'm in the middle of reading Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom -- and while you can down load it for free, I'm perhaps old school enough that having the physical book to read is nice, and worth paying for.

I'm really, really intrigued by the Whuffie concept. It strikes me as putting a numeric value on something that really does drive people in their hobbies -- a numeric tally of your egoboo. We sit bits of it already -- I've seen it on Linked In, sort of, and there are lots of other reputation-based systems out there. And in it's own way, the ranking system of Google is sort of like that as well.