Formula Drift - Professional Drifting Championship – this looks like fun. Way more exciting racing than what we typically see on broadcast TV.

* Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development * Cleanedge – “the clean tech market authority” * Venture backed companies – advent solar, energy innovations, miasole, nanosolar, powerlight * Public companies – Suntech (STP), SunPower (SPWR)

Trying to figure out what course to take this fall…

* EE graduate seminar on energy – not sure what typical content would be, but could be relevant to investing side of my life * Power Systems Economics – also could be relevant to investing side * MatSci 502 – Sol Gel processing – just because i like materials science * MatSci 510 – Binding and Structure. Also just because I like materials science, but the “rigorous” in the description is a little scary * MatSci graduate seminar – could be an interesting overview of topics * Matsci 555 – biomimetics – a very interesting topic area * Nanotech seminar – another interesting overview * Bioengineering 599E – biosensors – could be an interesting domain to learn more about

Microsoft Ignition Revs Up Tomorrow – clearly trying to leverage our brand success. Wait til we strike back with our big Vista initiative.

Been working through my modern fiction bookshelf. (I have three shelves of pending reads – “classics”, modern fiction, nonfiction. the modern fiction shelf was getting a little bloated).

* “Case histories”:amazon by Kate Atkinson. Starts out all giggly and cheerful like a bobbsey twins story and then goes horribly wrong as bodies start piling up. Good story, good attempts at characters tho I didn’t really love any of them. * “Bad luck and trouble”:amazon by Lee Child. The latest reacher story. Another great tale. Finished in less than a day. Reacher is a marvelously ruthless hero – the friend you want, the enemy you dread. * “The woods”:amazon by Harlan Coben. A solid suspense tale of a prosecutor whose past tragedies in life resurface and tie disastrously together. Coben solid as always. * “Dress codes”:amazon by Noelle Howey. OK this is nonfiction, but it is a great tale. The story of a young woman growing with a transgendered father who is wrestling with his own issues, what a complicated emotional ride. * “The shadow of the wind”:amazon by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Zafonmania! I’ve had this on the shelf for a while and for some reason I thought it was a Da vinci code type historical adventure and I just couldn’t bring myself to read it. I was totally wrong. Historical yes, but a story of love and misguided love and friendship and deception and hate and revenge. Just awesome characters. Makes me want to run to Barcelona. * “The pesthouse”:amazon by Jim Crace. The tale of a far future America that has slid back to a pre technology society, and the journey of several people through it trying to find safety and a future. Engaging and ultimately hopeful, though not without a lot of despair along the way. Characters you care for. * “Into the blue”:amazon by Robert Goddard. An exceptional suspense tale of a man in his 50s forced to wade through the failures in his life to try to understand the disappearance of a young friend. Great characters. The ending was a bit too tidy for my taste but overall heads and shoulders above most of the suspense books on the shelf.

* Unclutterer: Under stairs storage: brilliant – simple but brilliant * Scuttling spider robot – who wouldn’t want one of these? freaking awesome. the scourge of pets everywhere. * Hydrodynamic building set – it was a sad day when they took real chemistry sets away from the kids but this looks pretty awesome. * Capacitive touch everywhere – sure microsoft can give you a table that is a computer, but with this technology you can turn every surface in your house into an active surface. * The perfect charging station? * brad likes his reader. OK i actually have one of these. actually broke my first one, it is off getting refurbed now.

MAKE: Blog: Seattle Power Tool Drag Race Workshops at the Hazard Factory. – this looks stupidly fun.

* BibMe - the fully automatic & free bibliography maker (MLA, APA & Chicago) – very cool * Geni – i’m not really into family trees but this is actually kind of fun. I wish I could link trees with other users. * Mobile google calendar – i stumbled on this yesterday on my phone. nice. * Rich points to the sites to let you track private planes * Retrevo -- gadget search. Don’t know if this is useful yet or not.

* Tong Family Blog: Best Seattle Restaurants – I use SeattleWeekly for recos but this is a good list too. Remember when CitySearch nee Sidewalk was actually useful for restaurant reviews? * Lala’s music streaming plans get covered in TechCrunch * Phil keeps knocking out Beyond411 features. And the app hasn’t bloated! * Rich offers guidance on indoor sports photo lenses. I was super happy with my setup for lacrosse this spring but I will need to do something for basketball. * Rich’s guidance on media players. VLC has saved my ass as well.

* From Toolmonger, a magnetic alternative to pegboard. Pretty awesome. * USB Fairy Lights – so happy! * Steam powered RC Vehicles * Wind Turbines – when I was a kid we had a wind power generator at our cabin, mounted on the roof – the whole cabin rocked on a windy night * Animated power consumption monitor – why shouldn’t thermostats be fun like this? * Swing analyzing watch – all that separates me from Tiger. * Yet another awesome watch * Damascus pocket knife – I love Damascus steel

Seems like domain names are all super hot again – Kevin Ham, the $300 million master of Web domains - June 1, 2007

* Grizzly Drill-Powered Hobby Lathe – another clever way to reuse a power drill. Not sure how large a part you could really fabricate on this but still. Oh and here is a hand’s-on review * Alpine’s latest car deck – i love the crazy looks of high end car decks tho I have never purchased one… * The LED Jellyfish Aquarium * Universal Key Fob – just a concept but man do I want this * TEAC Bone Conduction phones – because they look cool * Generally I find USB hubs to be disasters but this one is awesome looking