This is extraordinarily cool - Microsoft giving away products that enable you to make updates to your blog in a helpful and meaningful way for free.  Who knew?

I got it running fairly easily on my WordPress blogs, but was a little uncertain how it might work in Joomla.  But alas, not a problem.  It's a snap.

You need to make sure and

1. install the XML-RPC MetaWeblog API plugin for Joomla, (turn on the xmlrpc plugins for joomla and metawebblog api - turn off any other xmlrpc plugins) 
2. make sure web services are active in your Joomla Global Configuration
3. install Live Writer (http://get.live.com/writer/overview)
4. When installed you have to enter your site URL, your userID and password and then when it can't find out what kind of blog it is - tell it to use the MetaWeblog API and supply the following URL: www.<yoursite>.com/xmlrpc/index.php

That should be it - WLW then tries out a test blog entry (which it claims to be able to delete on its own - but I had to manually delete it) - but as living proof I am posting this entry using WLW! 

Love it!

Think I will try this recipe out. Ginger beer is goooood. Here's instructions on how to brew it yourself at home!

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Brew_Ginger_Beer

Watch out for explosions though - contents under pressure!

Gotta love  automatic ad algorithms keyed off of content.  But maybe we should put the brakes on these auto-systems from time to time.  Like how's about the below feature  article and the  hamburger helper ad at right.  Just saw this about 10 mins ago.  Nice.

Read this book in January.  Pretty cool

Written in a fictional documentary style "recounting" World War Z (Z for Zombie).  The zombies are just people who come down with an incurable virus or disease that turns them into walking dead - and any bite or wound spreads the disease.  It is pretty cool because it gradually fools you into believing it, the interviews are well written and seem like real accounts of historical details.  Lots of grim stories of survival and desperate strategies.

If you are into apocalyptic fiction, this is pretty neat, and it comes off as a pretty convincing "what-if" scenario - where the reactions seem like they'd be the ones we'd make if we were faced with a similar scenario.  It definitely makes you think.

The author's/book's website is pretty cool too - you can go through lists of ways in which you could improve your chances of surviving the zombie war and ways in which you should fight a zombie.

I answered a survey on their site and determined that me and my family only had a 36% chance of surviving the period after the zombie war... creepy.

Tips for fighting/surviving zombies can be found in the Zombie Survival Guide by the same author (Max Brooks).