* “Sunstroke”:amazon by Jesse Kellerman. Great story of a woman searching in northern Mexico for the truth about her missing boss. Great protagonist. Great supporting cast – I love the stonecutter. Very atmospheric. * “A Wicked Snow”:amazon by Gregg Olsen. Really choppy. Not a terrible story but uncomfortable to read. Where was the editor? Great cover blurb by lee child but I can’t fully recommend. * “Mission Flats”:amazon by William Landay. Police mystery set in Boston and Maine. A smalltime Maine chief of police gets involved over his head in a Boston murder conspiracy. Nice twisted ending tho I did anticipate it a little. * “Without Fail”:amazon by Lee Child. Reacher seems a little more fallible in this tale. Misses obvious clues early and often. And the bad guys show up way too late in the book, bad form for a mystery. So not the best reacher but still entertaining. * “Blue Light”:amazon by Walter Mosley. Twisty tale of alien consciousness, drugs, psychosis. Hard to tell what really happened and what was imagined. I found myself liking the characters more than I expected. * “Killing Floot”:amazon by Lee Child. Another slam bang jack reacher tale. Reacher rips the covers off a southern town conspiracy leaving a wake of bodies behind. Don’t screw with reacher. This series continues to be the best airplane books. * “From Fatigued to Fantastic!”:amazon by Teitelbaum. Good overview of chronic fatigue and potential causes and treatments. Not a cookbook, more of a collection of all the ideas around fatigue.

* Kant Slam – Stop Annoying Slamming Of Doors And Gates – OK this seems pretty useful * Arctic Cat biodiesel ATV via Martin – I have absolutely nowhere to use this * Venerable Bead Pendants – I’m a sucker for all things glass * HomeJoule – if I lived in NYC this’d be cool * Pocket Hole Joinery Made Easy – I’m not much of a woodworker * Really big duct tape – this is my kind of tool * Socket wrenches with universal joints - the joint thingy seems pretty useful. * luggable shopvac. who doesn’t love shopvacs. * Chain mail gloves -- chain mail still has a purpose in 2007 * Garden Rock cum Spotlight – and who doesn’t need more things embedded in rocks. * Swiss Bikeboard – looks like huge fun * azimuth watches – awesome looking. * Relativity Watch – I had a Goofy watch that ran backwards as a kid and loved it. * Gelaskins ipod skins – better looking than your standard skin

I can accept the US losing its lead but…Denmark??? Did Bluetooth wipe out the Internet when I wasn’t looking?

* circle fire pc multimedia bay – awesome, turn my office into a disco * self rewinding pneuma hose reel – another one i could actually use, at halloween time my garage is a mess of pneuma hoses * the worst flashlight ever to take to a hotel room * Wi-spy spectrum analyzer * pico projector not available yet but awesomely small. * Bosch impacter – another thing I actually could use * Bloomframe -- the window that turns into a balcony. Just because. * usb ipod mixer – another just because. i am not actually sure what all this thing does. * The viewtainer – stupid name but useful actually * hdmi switch – another one i bet i could actually use

OSU finally shows up. You had the sense that OSU had 4-5 chances to really put this game away and finally did. Not a perfect game, but certainly their most complete game. And nice to see Dorsey shut up.

* Audio-Technica AT-LP2Da : LP-to-Digital Recording System – rip your LPs. I don’t have many LPs left tho… * WiFi blocking paint – though I might really like WiFi enhancing paint * Beam compass heads – OK i could actually use these and at $15 not an unreasonable buy * The trixbox – overkill for the home but I am still enamored of * Tool silverware * Super Tiny Indoor RC Plane * $50 compound mitre saw. OK I could really use this too.

* “Remainder”:amazon by tom McCarthy. The tale of a severely brain injured man attempting to recover his life. Vaguely promising premise but I could never really identify with the main or secondary character. Certainly a unique tale though. * “The Shia Revival”:amazon by Nasr. i am not very well educated on modern islam – sunni, shia, wahabi, sufi, all means little to me. this was a fine first book to read – explained enough of the history to understand the genesis of the various strains, and explains the regional politics that are intertwined with the divisions in islam. and brings it all forward to the current situation in iraq, iran, and the rest of the middle east. a very helpful text. i am sure this author has some biases, it would probably be smart to read a few more texts to get a start on understanding the current conflicts. * “Creative concrete ornaments for the garden”:amazon by Hunter. Nice intro to basic concrete techniques. Purely decorative uses, not for structural elements. * “About Alice”:amazon by Trillan. Short soothing sweet read about lifelong love. Quietly inspiring. Calming.

* Andy gives kudos to ops and test folks. Hear Hear. * Rahul likes this discussion about the declining value of content. Not totally sure I buy it, aggregators are valueless if there is nothing to aggregate. But an interesting discussion. * Rich finds an even better online chinese dictionary. I am learning every day from Rich these days. * Dave on yp pricing and the coming collapse

EarlyStageVC: Web 2.0 - Over and Out – great article. Hard to get excited about Web2.0 ideas, they have entered the realm of the ordinary. When a startup says “we are going to have a social network and user generated content and feeds and etc etc etc”, it is about as distinctive as saying “we are going to have an office with a copier and a fax machine.”

Is Vista Reliable? Using Vista’s Reliability Monitor – useful tool. My Reliability Score was at 10 the first day I started up the system and has dropped every day, I am now at 5.02. In my ~4 weeks of running vista on one machine, i’ve had

* 11 Miscellaneous Failures – “Disruptive Shutdown” – whatever that is * 6 Windows Failures – “OS Stopped Working” * 4 Application Failures – “Stopped Responding” * and a whole load of failures that vista hasn’t recorded for some reason. Daily app hangs. a half dozen BSODs. One reboot where Windows told me my BIOS was no longer ACPI compatible (went away on next reboot).

Oh and I still have never been able to get a print driver working for the printer shared by the XP machine in my office. (So how do I print? You’ll find this hilarious. I open up a remote desktop connection to the XP machine and print the file from that machine.) And any number of apps I have tried to install aren’t Vista compatible.

The latest fad in creating machines that can learn – Learn Like a Human. I’ll bet now that if we ever learn how to create a human-level aritificial intelligence, it will take just as long to train as a human takes, and it will be just as opinionated and judgmental and arbitrary as a human is.

One thing I have plenty of is fog. Between my whole yard fog system and my 4-5 point fog systems, i have fog galore.

This year I’d like to do a little more with fog and lighting. Fog Machine Vortex is one idea i may try. Another I am working on is to project a ghostly image onto a dense area of fog – kind of like fogscreen but way cheaper.

Scientists collaborate to study biologically assembled quantum electronic systems – interesting, lots of people think about how to embed electronics into biological systems or how to use electronics to control chemical processes – here are some people doing the opposite, using biological processes to assemble electronics at the nano level.

* Toolmonger Finds: Snap-on’s New Micro Pneumatics – small pneumatic tools. * Yoggie, the miniature security appliance. Not sure why, it is just cool. * A bookshelf made of…books.. Wonderfully recursive. * The linksys kiss. Kind of a dvd player but with some media extender wireless goo whacked on the side. I wonder if 3 years from now anyone will still have a vanilla dvd player – i wonder if we won’t all have various combo devices (game consoles, media extenders, etc) instead. * Unbreakable screwdrivers * Wood case computers and peripherals – Suissacomputers, Woodcontour. Probably a really bad idea but cool.

Download.com has quite a few, Koolmoves has been downloaded a ton and is reasonably priced. You can get the macromedia/adobe tool but even at educational pricing it is very expensive. COffeecup firestarter is another reasonably priced choice.