Went up Mt Si this week – first time ever. 4 miles one way, I think about 3200’ vertical gain. Gorgeous day and gorgeous spot. I think I still like Rattlesnake ledge better but this was beautiful.

Along the way, discovered my hiking boots weren’t all they could be. Upgraded to some asolos.

Latest newsletter from Unitus – a charity that we support – seems like a highly leveraged way to help.

* Phil finds a dhtml spell checker. Cool. * Steve finds cool software to turn pocket pcs into aux displays. I have a spare one sitting around, I should do something with. Maybe i could turn it into a little live photo displayer on my desk. * I’m a sucker for outliners so I will try this at some point. Man I wish I could use on the bberry as well. * In case your windows machine is too stable – running windows with no services and registry edits for windows xp. Don’t call me if you screw around with these. * Bluephoneelite seems way cool. At various times in my career I’ve been involved with teams trying to manage your online presence – BluePhoneElite seems like the right way to do it – my phone is always with me, and I can use a nearby PC to augment my messaging and call experience as appropriate. * Sketchup. For the architect-wannabe inside me. My first real career ambition (when I was 14) was to be an architect and I am a sucker for the tools. * Udell on federated tagging. Interesting. * The reason I haven’t actually installed any of the above – Battlefield 2

Article about online colleges – you can get real phds from places like walden and capella and nova. Early days yet but I am betting these programs grow in popularity and quality – the traditional college system just doesn’t work that well for someone in their 30s or 40s who wants to learn new skills or refresh their education. Personally I thought about going back and getting a PhD after I left Microsoft, but the structure of a traditional program is designed for young people with lots of free time and no other responsibilities. Just doesn’t fit my life that well.

* “Crossworld”:amazon by marc romano is a dive into the world of crosswords – the people in the “industry”, their motivations, marc’s own motivations. I am a compulsive crossworder and I got something out of this book – a little bit of background on leading characters. But marc spends too much time discussing and rationalizing his own interest in crosswords, and not enough diving into the stories, behaviours, and anecdotes of others in the industry. It reads as if he did a modest amount of research, had enough material for a long essay, and then bloated it up with a lot of navel gazing. So some value in the book but not a homerun. * “One shot”:amazon by Lee Child is a classic airport book rack thriller. A lone wolf ex-military investigator uncovers and breaks up a massive criminal conspiracy thanks to his unbelievable physical skills and powers of detection. He is three steps ahead of everyone else in the story and just seems to be toying with them. This is not a unique plot, half the thrillers on the airport book stands could be summed up the same way. This story has very nice pacing, an interesting situation, and is better than most. It’d make a great movie script. * “California girl”:amazon by T. Jefferson Parker is a great mystery. Deep characters with deeply intertwined lives. A stark contrast with the prior book – California Girl is a memorable story with memorable characters that altogether makes a great book, but way too complex to ever be a movie. One Shot is an adequately entertaining book but would be a killer summer movie.

* Installed Newsgator Outlook edition 2.5. Seems faster and less resource consumptive. * As Mike says, Autoruns is a great tool, essential for monitoring what’s on your system, amazing it is free. Mike also points to XTM, a replacement for windows task manager, might be useful. * Getoutfoxed – one feature of this I love is the ability to enumerate and rate your running processes, and share this info with the community. A great way to do grass roots virus/spyware identification, not unlike the ideas behind Cloudmark * Fog Creek Copilot. Seems like a good feature to have as part of a future version of NetworkMagic * Rick Eames gave me this great tip on how to automount network drives on my mac – amazingly arcane. * Google toolbar for Firefox, finally. * Tipmonkies, lots of good software tidbits. Subscribed. * How to chkdsk your ipod – great tip * MSH (nee Monad) continues to intrique me – Monad and RSS, Monad and Yubnub. Ihaven’t had time to really play around with this as much as I should * Oh and speaking of yubnub, Phil adds yubnub support to berry411. Brilliant. * Looking forward to MT 3.2. Also might try some tagging plugins when I upgrade – MT tags plugin, MT and technorati

Made it up on one of our favorite hikes today, Rattlesnake Ledge. Gorgeous day and gorgeous spot. 2 miles and 1200 feet up. A lot of maintenance on the trail since last time I went, it was in great shape.

* Flickr viewer for XBOX media center * Tivo annunces developer challenge winners.

Still a young market, but it seems like over the next 2-3 years every TV is going to have some sort of platform box attached, and there is going to be a great market for TV apps.

* Taking online real estate to the next level – someone should hire Olivier to spec out their real estate web service. Great ideas. * Animated Atlas – growth of the US – I’m a sucker for maps. * The Spartan Life. Just strange. * These For tags are interesting – AVC, fanblogs implements

Microsoft sues Google. Wow, was this the only really smart guy Google could hire in China?

* Mandarin Chinese in schools. Hear hear. It would be interesting to see a complete curriculum redesign for the next century. I’d certainly think Chinese should be in the curriculum. I wonder how you might change the sciences curriculum – traditional chemistry seems like a bit of a dinosaur to me, I’d rather see more physics and computer science. * Storage industry facts – “…an industry that now exceeds the revenues of Hollywood…“ * Open Source economics models. I wonder how broadly the ideas of open source can apply. * The sports economist on the implications of the nba age floor – the rise of private development leagues funded by talent agencies. Fascinating, perhaps a great outcome for athletes who aren’t college-oriented.

From the MOM forums, Mainland Mart – a great source of underwater lighting and pumps.

* Adrian on PC video. The whole codec mess is astoundlingly bad. * Martin on Seattle Biodiesel. I think this is a brilliant move by Martin. * Phil on googlemaps. This kind of move seems like the way Google will really establish stickiness on the web - a bunch of sites are going to popup that just won’t work without Google. * And lots of Jobster news – John Connors joins board, Jobster acquires workzoo. The jobster team continues to impress. * John zagula on persuasive arguing

Just finished “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”:amazon. Good yarn, pretty classic mythology at play in the story. Certainly leaves you hungry for the next book as some huge issues are left dangling.

Per the pros, the Buckeyes have 7-1 odds of being the national champs, behind only USC.

OK I love the Buckeyes, but their line play was not all that strong last season, and per at least one ranking, they are not as strong as several of the other contenders in the Big10 this year. On either side of the line.

I have a hard time believing that the relative lack of line strength will result in the top finish in the Big 10, let alone the BCS.