The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
-- Elizabeth Hardwick

The default "side" (vertical) dock in Mac OS X Leopard has a black background. Ugh.

I'm following the Mars Phoenix in Twitter.

• I'm closing in on Mars! Who is going to sleep tonight? Not the team, too excited/scared/anxious seeing 5 years of work come to this last day -- about 3 hours ago from web

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, by Gary Marcus. Houghton Mifflin Co; April 2008. ISBN-10: 0618879641

We find the weirdest things at the Asian grocery stores. This one is from Japan - carbonated "melon cream soda". Tastes of pineapple and banana with a lot of fizz.

Or at least a solar system. taggalaxy.de presents a handsome variation on graphical data visualization.

Gnashing and gnoshing on cables... Late night in the IT shop when the gremlins come to play.

Discover the "fairy doors" of Ann Arbor Michigan at urban-fairies.com

Have you discovered Geek and Poke?

Delightful "geeky" cartoons by Oliver Widder, an "IT-guy". I'll have to read them all.

A stop-action wall-painted animation by BLU. Painted on public walls in Buenos Aires and in Baden. Sometimes creepy. Often disturbing. Always breathtaking.

Pupusas are a tasty Salvadorian specialty, made from a thick hand-patted tortilla stuffed with one or more of cheese, pork, beans, or loroco (a flower bud), then flattened and grilled.

I recently found Acerola juice in our grocery store. The Acerola (Barbados Cherry) grows in Brazil. It has 10x the vitamin C of oranges. The bottled juice tastes a bit like peach juice, lightened with apple. Not sour. Not too sweet. Pleasant.

Watch the Channel Islands Bald Eagles nest cam.

Offered a choice between a Lindt chocolate truffle for 15 cents and a Hershey's Kiss for 1 cent, most people choose the truffle.

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

-- Winnie The Pooh

Washable, non-toxic, use over and over to remove pet hair from carpets, upholstery, clothing... Look for it at your local pet store or online.

Go behind the scenes with Alex Frankel as he learns what it's like to work at UPS, Gap, Starbucks, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, and the Apple Store. Interesting reading. Watch the Video (overview). Read the Book.

I missed my desktop kitty. Neko is again available, now as a Yahoo! Widget. Original, Tabby, Meezer, and more.