Thanks to Kevin Lim for shooting and posting, and to BarCamp Buffalo for letting me try out an alpha-level presentation on the late-night crowd.

I’d intended to run through three areas early-morning bloggers can use to sprint through material and write faster, but ended up focusing on one app I could easily keep in the 10-minute time frame. Intrigued? Check out the full list of tools and tricks referenced at the end of the vid.

My social-media-savvy (and skilled) fellow Lifehacker Tamar Weinberg did the yeoman’s job of getting the whole editorial team to spill what we use in discussing, planning, researching, and writing the site. My own picks and preferences are about halfway down the page–they’ll stand out for all the Linux gear (plus the open admission to using Vista without a pistol to my frontal lobe).

Brian Ibbott, creator and host of the long-running, ground-breaking music podcast Coverville, agreed to chat with me last week, and the Q&A is posted at Lifehacker.

It was really weird, in a great way, talking one-on-one with a voice I’ve been hearing for years–on car trips, during dish-washing sessions, over the occasional jog, and in other spots. But he’s very candid, very honest, and didn’t mind when one of my questions went for more than a minute (which got axed in editing, by the way.

I love autumn, but I’m not a fan of Halloween. Sure, I dug the free candy and seeing my family all abuzz when I was a kid. But those simple joys are gone, and in their place are gouge-priced costumes, cheap-looking lawn inflatables and “parties” that confirm Hell is other people in “Sexy Cop” or “Dwight Schrute” costumes.

Yeah, I’m jaded, and maybe I just need a good party to be invited to, or a home to dish out candy from. Recently, however, I discovered one thing I could legitimately get excited about — pumpkin carving.

My parents always bought the pumpkins and spread the newspaper on the kitchen floor for my sister and I, but neither of us progressed much beyond the two triangles and half-moon mouth scheme — not that it mattered much. My friend Josh and his girlfriend, however, have an infectious enthusiasm for Oct. 31 and all its trappings, and managed to raise the gourd gashing ambitions in myself and my wife.

You just knew typing “Tux” and “pumpkin stencil” into Google would bring back hits, and while I was kind of amused to learn that stencils are an actual business for some artisans, the open source nature of my favorite penguin means that nobody can, or at least should, charge for his likeness. My wife chose the panda logo from the World Wildlife Fund for the same kind of mix of altruism and unbearable cuteness.

Basically, I’m really looking forward to showing up at next year’s party with my own roll of specialty pumpkin knives and three-level shade stencils of Buffalo’s skyline. Or, uh, Sexy Tux.

Over at Lifehacker, I took a screenshot tour through installing the latest release from Ubuntu, 7.10, or “Gutsy Gibbon,” as it’s code-named. I plan to offer a few more comments here on what’s still missing from the most popular/buzz-worthy Linux distribution, but overall, I’m pretty satisfied.

The official release drops Thursday, and anybody can try out the system without touching a thing on their computer by downloading a “Live CD” at Ubuntu.com. Pop the CD in your drive, restart your computer and see what works, what doesn’t, and why Digg is always yakkin’ about the ‘buntu.

It might not generate the same kind of heat as the next OS X release, but for open source fans, it’s a twice-a-year scene, and it totally freaks us out.

I really dig this idea (courtesy of BoingBoing) of using a trek taken by fictional questing hero-types to set a personal goal for yourself, be it walking, running or maybe even miles you want to travel on weekend “one-tank trips.”

Geeky? Yes. Slim figure, super pulse rate drop and sense of accomplishment from walking 1,625 miles? Uber-cool.

My secret shame is that I’ve never actually read Tolkien’s masterpiece; the (great) movies obviously condense the sense of travel. So I’d have to adapt a few noble journeys from my own mental mythology. A sample:

• “Stumble through Sergio Leone’s Desert”: Admittedly, it’s a terrible idea to dehydrate, suffer third-degree sunburns and be continually beaten and whipped through the desert by a depraved Mexican gangster. But even though you’d end up looking like this, you’d be able to say, “Eh, Clint Eastwood, not so tough” and be able to back it up … kind of.
• “Laugh annoyingly across Pee Wee Herman’s America”: Giant plastic dinosaurs! Historic Texan landmarks lacking subterranean living spaces! San Antonio, Hollywood and chance encounters with an undead trucker! Say what you will about Mr. Reubens, he keeps a trim figure.
• “Run and run (and run) to Maniac Magee‘s Buffalo Pen”: Running continually between the East and West sides of a city can attract unwanted attention, but a steady diet of pizza, spaghetti and whatever food’s available at the local YMCA, combined with a nearly endless day of running, would have to have results.