Mostly beach/airport reads:

* “Gridlinked”:amazon by Neal Asher. Galaxy wide suspense romp. Leaves enough unexplained to be interesting. Intriguing alien constructs. Overall a very nice first novel * “Dead I well may be”:amazon by Adrian Mckinty. Wow wow wow. An awesome crime novel. An Irish hoodlum fights his way up the organization and through double crosses. Great great character, I am very motivated to read more. * “The Architect”:amazon by Keith Ablow. Unusual premise and nicely developed villian and investigator. And doesn’t wrap up all happy and neatly. * “Old Man’s War”:amazon by John Scalzi. Great story in the “Starship Troopers”:amazon, “The Forever War”:amazon tradition. Characters with depth. * “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”:amazon by JK Rowling. A fine ending. Perhaps a little too neat. But some good drama. And closure on important items.

and some nonfiction

* “Fortune’s Formula”:amazon by William Poundstone. A wander thru the lives of various information theorists, gamblers, economists, and investors, examining the development of ideas about betting systems. Interesting to hear the backstory on Claude Shannon and others, but probably not the most thorough treatment. * “An Imaginary Tale: The Story of ‘i’“:amazon by Paul Nahin. Not sure what book on number theory to take to the beach this summer? Well this is an entertaining epistle on the development of the math of imaginary numbers. A mix of history and number theory, at times way too much number theory, but I enjoyed some of the history of the math. What is so interesting is how the world view of scientists was so shaped by their ability to comprehend negative numbers and ‘i’, and how embracing these concepts allowed them to move dramatically ahead in some many areas. You have to wonder what comparable worldviews are limiting our education and thinking today. I suspect that our educational focus on classical algebraic deterministic approaches to science is an error, and someday we will want to completely reshape how we teach science, introducing quanta and uncertainty from the beginning.

* Perfect lens could reverse Casimir force (July 2007) - News - nanotechweb.org – a way to eliminate sticking forces at the nano/mems level. pretty fascinating. * Motor proteins (AAAS membership required) – “The biological cell is equipped with a variety of molecular machines that perform complex mechanical tasks such as cell division or intracellular transport. One can envision employing these biological motors in artificial environments. We review the progress that has been made in using motor proteins for powering or manipulating nanoscale components. In particular, kinesin and myosin biomotors that move along linear biofilaments have been widely explored as active components. Currently realized applications are merely proof-of-principle demonstrations. Yet, the sheer availability of an entire ready-to-use toolbox of nanosized biological motors is a great opportunity that calls for exploration.”

World Heritage Centre - World Heritage List – good resource for next trip, places i really should see

Help, there’s a poltergeist in the library! ? Coolest Gadgets – at this price, probably incredibly cheesy, but still kind of cool.

OK well mostly Rich highlights.

* Tong Family Blog: iPod Backup – Rich points to a summary of ipod backup tools. L this is what you need. * Brett on field water purification. We just had an instance of giardia in the family so this is timely * Rich on home NASes. I’ve gone away from NASes as I always have an old PC around and it just easier to whack a bunch of usb drives on it and use it as a server. * Rich on Seattle Dim Sum.. Rich you have to take me to lunch at Top Gun someday and show me what to order

* Via Make, uC Hobby ? Blog Archive ? uC Meets BJT – how to control high current devices with a microcontroller * D*Face – awesome – how can i turn ordinary structures around my house into halloween themed items? * American Science and Surplus – good source for offbeat parts

Most useful software tip of the month – 7. Deformat your clipboard text - Lifehacker – no more routing thru Notepad to eliminate formatting.

* WikiMatrix - Compare them all – lists and compares all the wiki implementations * Forummatrix – same dealy for forums * MonkeyGTD – the fusion of wikis and GTD ideas is a strong draw to me. i religiously use my blackberry todo list, i wish it could be richer and embody more GTD functionality * Pictobrowser flickr viewer. nice way to view a flickr photo album * WIndows codec installer. Amazingly sad that you need tools like this on windows. * How to use photoshop to create a mosaic effect * Bust a name – better way to find domain names * I never knew the value of CTRL-SHIFT-ESC. ANother sad commentary * Turok -- maybe I will need to get a PS3

Nutrition Facts and Analysis for Squash, winter, acorn, cooked, baked, with salt – great site for detailed nutrional analysis of any food product.

100% Electric SUV Recharges In 10 Minutes : MetaEfficient.

Vista Still Sucks, Pirillo Pissed – in my case, my reliability index hovers at about 5 and I can drive it down arbitrarily low by running games. I have seen some slight improvement but if I had the time I’d be sidegrading to XP.

A bag of tips on making OSX and Windows happy on the same machine – Hack Attack: Set Windows programs as defaults for your Mac (and vice versa) - Lifehacker – I am fairly convinced my next desktop will be a Mac so saving this for that day

EDSBS ? Archive ? THE GREATEST FOOTBALL ROOM EVER EVER – I am clearly an amateur when it comes to Buckeye-themed decor, all I have is a rug. And lamp. Some posters. Pennants. And a couple flags.

* Bell & Ross BR 01 Phantom – beautiful sparse design. Not sure I could ever justify 4-5K for such sparseness tho. * The Teslaphonic Organ – I pretty much love anything involving a Tesla coil. * Burning Rocks. They just look cool. * Ultralight Pack. If/when I ever get serious about hiking I will have to go ultralight * Electronic guitar tuner. Not sure that adding a bunch of electronics and a battery to the process really helps in guitar tuning…

Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen turned me onto the fact that you can get your google-hosted email on your blackberry: “I almost like the BlackBerry Gmail app (note, there’s two apps, one for Gmail and one for GAFYD - again with the Google Split Brain) better than the BlackBerry email itself.”. After spelunking around for a while, I found the app download link. Very nice.