This is critical reading...

I read a bunch of security-related blogs for some reason, of which the Danger Room on Wired is... Well, one. In any event, these two threads are awesome:

How To: Terminate a Terminator

How to: Stop a 500-Foot Monster

Sans the Fat Cat

Variations on this exist, but I do love me the existential genius of "garfield minus garfield."

Lavish Dog Spas (from Mental Floss)

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/12542

Old news, but still a thoughtful, powerful, piece:

We Must All Do Our Part To Preserve This Climate Of Fear

World-o-meters

This site is a nice collection o' realtime statistics... It's pretty mesmerizing, actually, to watch the numbers tick by and visualize what they actually mean. Absolutely worth a visit.




http://www.worldometers.info/

I am the victim of stereotyping!

...about the Nintendo DS, that is.







http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2007/20070803.jpg

NEW ARRIVAL : SPECIAL DELIVERY!!!

My new phone came on Thursday! Woo-hoo!

...What? Did you think I meant something else? Weird.

Anyway, it's not the latest or greatest, but the Blackberry Pearl is a definite step up from my old phone. And the $99 price point hit the mark just right. And, more importantly, we finally bit the bullet on an unlimited data plan, so I can email and whatnot without guilt. Unfortunately, the Pearl doesn't have a wifi card, so it's a bit limited, but it's still better than smoke signals.

Book Repair Workshop

I spent today in Greenville, NC (about 2 hours NE of home) at a Book Repair Workshop. Pretty fun stuff. Not exactly "real" conservator work, but still very useful knowledge for weirdos of my ilk.

To give you an idea of what I was doing, this was one of my play books. I removed the spine, tore several pages, removed a chunk of the text block, simulated a stain, ripped the end papers, and hurled a few curses at it that I learned from the gap-toothed carnie who runs the Zipper ride at the Midco Traveling Fun Show.

Then, I put it all back together and did my best to make the book suitable for lending and reading. Like I said: Fun stuff.

FFFFOUND!

http://ffffound.com/ is a very nice little image sourcepile:

"FFFFOUND! is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user's tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!"

Really good stuff. My friend "I the Rockfall Hobbit" would love it. He'd even learn about it if he were to ever check my blog. *sniff*

A couple more Daisys, too

The Artist's Pain

Not that any of you normal people would understand, but the weight of artistic virtuosity can be a tough burden to bear... Woe is me! Still, for the sake of the masses, I soldier on. Here, then, are Xander and Cordeila, as requested by Lady D.

Groverfield

Saw the big monster movie last night: It was pretty good, I thought. Not very scary or thrilling, but I still enjoyed it. I apologize in advance, but I just can't resist spoiling the monster for you (scroll down a bit for the image):

















Oh, wait. What do you mean, "The new movie is called Cloverfield?" What the heck did I watch last night?










(BTW: I lifted this image directly from http://groversthoughts.blogspot.com/2005/12/things-i-am-getting-bunny-for-her.html)

LoC / Flickr Tagging Project

You've probably already seen this, but I still wanted to mention it, as I think it's kind of interesting. The Library of Congress has put thousands of their images on Flickr, asking for help in meta-tagging them with labels. Sort of a cool little project to help build the public information trust.

They explain the process on their blog: http://www.loc.gov/blog/?p=233

The Flickr page is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

Breaking News (thanks to KJS from SILS)!

Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book