Formula Drift - Professional Drifting Championship – great event. The sport is in its infancy here so you can easily get into the pits, up close to the track, meet the drivers, etc. The races are exciting although a little repetitive. They need to think about how to get more cars on the track at once, and to add some uncertainty to the event.

Oh yeah, attending Formula D does not contribute to good driving behaviour. The parking lot was a showcase of amateur drifting and the highway home was a sequence of race vignettes featuring a variety of souped-up ricers, including some really nice imports. I’ve been known to drive fast at times but I was background noise.

* French Ranges - Lacanche Stoves – beautiful ranges * Pioneer music tap – in the sonos, slimdevice space * d3o shock responding polymer – absolutely no need for this but it is cool * Van Hoy Snap Lock Knife – cool opening mechanism * Casio Youtube Camera * Belkin Vision Router – i hate most of the belkin gear i get but this is a nice innovation on your standard ugly router box * Remote Control Jousting Knights.

Formula Drift - Professional Drifting Championship

Considering a SelectComfort bed – The Fool on SCSS – recent consumer complaints – SCSS financial info

MAKE: Blog: Make a wire storage tower – need to make one of these

* Six Apart - Movable Type News - MT4: Time To Give It A Try – you can run a hosted version of MT4 on Amazon’s EC2 service. When my server hardware dies I’ve been intending to move to a hosted service, maybe this is smarter than a traditional hoster… * I wonder how Yahoo Pipes is doing. Lots of noise when it launched but I haven’t heard so much about recently * Google subscribed links included in onebox results – lots of stuff I don’t get here.

* Green Hotel To Be Built Into Chinese Quarry : MetaEfficient – this thing looks so Jetsons * Water vortex power generator – fish friendly * WiTricity – ok not really green but very cool. * Midwest’s first Gold LEED building. $30-40 a month for utilities.

When three ex-MSFTies partner: They’re Beautiful! - istartedsomething – I’d been meaning to notice these guys, looks like they are up to some cool stuff. Not sure how they make money but nice work. Good luck guys.

I’m switching from newsgator to Google Reader (4) for rss reading. I’ve been a longtime user of newsgator and loved it, especially the outlook integration. But I find myself spending less and less time in Outlook and more and more using the web version, and the newsgator web version is just too slow, and tends to block in firefox frequently. The google reader isn’t perfect but is a lot zippier.

I’ve often wished I could read a sampling of history texts used in high schools worldwide – it would be educational to see how students in different societies are programmed. For instance in the WSJ today, some of the messages that are being pushed in Russia, so different than how we teach history here: A Do-Over for Russian History? - WSJ.com

_Another teachers’ guide getting Kremlin support, meanwhile, recasts key elements of Soviet history. Dictator Josef Stalin is described as “the most successful Soviet leader ever,” for building industry and leading the country to victory in World War II. The guide explains his purges and the system of camps for political prisoners as a function of his desire to make the Soviet Union strong.

Mr. Putin himself echoed that view at the meeting with teachers, saying Stalin’s “Great Terror” of 1937 – during which at least 700,000 people were executed – wasn’t as bad as atrocities other nations had perpetrated, such as the U.S. use of the atomic bomb._

* Easy Mac Micro Maniac – watch various things being microwaved. Without having to blow up your own kitchen. * New programming stereotypes – i love to copy/paste.

* Cementex Tool Kits.pdf (application/pdf Object) – very nice, pretty expensive * Looks like a jetski/golfcart combo - the golf cruiser – would Tiger ride one of these? * I would have loved this rug as a kid – if they added a Nascar logo it would sell a billion * Motion/temp/light sensor – not sure what I need it for but might be useful at halloween

Spartan Football Unveils New Uniforms :: Nike redesign combines new technology with traditional look. featuring “improved moisture management - Both the jersey and pant are produced with Nike’s most technical uniform fabrics that hold far less moisture, thus carrying less weight. This is a very significant feature, especially in the game pants.”

A very special tap! – this is very cool looking, inspiration for Halloween – would be fun to do something like this on a small scale with cauldron.

Only one keeper here.

* “Legions of space”:amazon by Keith Laumer. Some of that old time science fiction: manly men slashing their way thru space and claiming the universe as their own. Interesting as a nostalgia piece, not sure I’d pick it up otherwise. * “Simple genius”:amazon by David Baldacci. A really crappy potboiler. My buddy Tim warned me. Sorry I spent the 2 days on it. * “Counting heads”:amazon by David Marusek. Nano-infused future society tale. Tugged at some interesting character issues but didn’t really dig into them. The ending was a little predictable as the story devolved into a typical adventure tale. * “Blindsight”:amazon by Peter Watts. Wow! A head spinning first encounter tale with a deep exploration of alienness and sentience. A deeply alien structure is encountered, and humanity sends the most extreme representatives of humanity to grapple with the situation under the theory that it takes an alien to understand one. An ambiguous, atypical, and probably unhappy ending.