Wow, I met Derek Miller at Gnomdex and a couple other places. Maryam has been following his blog and told me his blog hit her hard today. I went and looked and he’s blogging his experiences with stage 4 colon cancer. The doctors gave him about the worst news one can get yesterday. His post today was titled “dead man walking” and that’s the harshness of it.

His posts bring life into sharp focus. Derek, I hope I get to have another conversation with you. Your posts are inspiring. YOU are inspiring!

Maryam said that Derek’s attitude is always uplifting, that he always seems to have the best attitude in the room. She asked me why does this happen to the nice people? She also noted that Derek and her are the same age (both are seven years younger than me which puts this into even sharper focus — I’ve already been given a gift of five years longer than the doctors gave Derek).

I don’t know but I sure am glad Derek is with us and sharing what life is about.

Think you’ve had bad traveling days? This guy gets back at Delta by recording his worst travel day. As seen on the Consumerist blog. Of course I also put this on my link blog (it’s the only non-tech thing I’ve put there in a while).

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Lots of my friends are watching movies that they’ve downloaded illegally off of Bittorrent. I don’t use Bittorrent because I don’t believe in stealing content. So, I’ve been looking for an alternative way to get long-form content onto my computer and my Apple TV so that I can watch movies that might not be on Netflix yet.

When I saw Jaman at the Demo conference this year I saw a major part of the answer.

Now, Jaman is only for independent films. You won’t find Spiderman on it. But you’ll find “mid-tail” content including what you’ll probably see at a film festival like Sundance.

Or, maybe you’re looking for films that come from outside our culture. My wife is Iranian, for instance, and her mom likes watching Iranian films. Jaman has several of those that I can download and let her watch when she comes over. Hey, gotta keep the mother-in-law happy, right?

Anyway, I love Jaman and it’s bringing me movies I never thought I’d watch into my home. Here’s a look with Jaman’s CEO that I recorded for ScobleShow.

If you like indie films, or discovering films that you might not see at your local theater screens you’ll love Jaman.

Oh, and look at the use of community interation on Jaman to help bring the better films to the top. Really great stuff that every geek working on Social Media should check out.