One of my relatives recommends BetterPhoto.com for photography instruction. One of these days

Suit Names 2 Judges Accused in a Kickback Case - NYTimes.com. This case just stuns me. The plea agreement is way too lenient. And every kid who passed thru these judge’s courts should be freed immediately and have any judgement stricken from their record.

“When Will There Be Good News”:amazon by Kate Atkinson. Wow, a great book. The lives of 4 people, each with life-altering disasters in their background, come together amidst a new set of disasters. And through this they all find some sort of redemption and hope. Really excellent.

* Downloads: Fences is a Seriously Awesome Desktop Icon Organizer. This thing is pretty useful. Kind of like the “group items” feature in powerpoint. Wish there was a Mac equivalent * Free Disk Analyzer. Reasonable. * Ubiquity. Intrigued but not committed yet.

New SF&F Writers 1990-2009 – great guide to modern SF writers. Via DarkRoastedBlend

SanDisk to mass produce 64GB memory cards. I currently use a 64G USB for partial backup of my photo collection, it works great.  I need a 128G (and soon 256G) tho to backup up everything. These things are going to eat away the USB hard disk market.

Gmail keeps dropping all kinds of cool new features – offline use amongst them, which some people claim makes gmail the be-all and end-all of mail clients. A reasoned discussion of the pros and cons of native clients vs web clients is up here – Alex Payne — The Problem With Email Clients.

For me tho, all these discussions miss the mark. I make regular use of 4 email addresses – two business, two personal – which I have acquired over the years and I want to maintain. And I don’t want to forward them all to some uber address. So my minimum bar is a client that can handle multiple inboxes with multiple addresses. This drives me to: * the browser, where I can use the various web interfaces of the various systems. This is a little unsatisfying as the web interfaces vary so much across the different mail systems. * the default mac mail client which works reasonably well * the iphone which handles multiple accounts reasonably well (tho the limitation of one exchange account sucks)

I use the iphone for about 60-70% of my mail, the mac mail client for about 25-30%, and the web clients for about 5%. The innovation that google is putting into its gmail client is thus largely wasted on me. It all sounds cool but without the ability to handle multiple accounts, I will rarely use it.

Rich has done a good job scrounging up info on this camera. Now that I have one, time to take advantage of.

• [Targeted nanospheres find, penetrate, then fuel burning of melanoma

  Science Blog](http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/targeted-nanospheres-find-penetrate-then-fuel-burning-melanoma-18400.html).

• How Vision Sends Its Message To The Brain - the ability to record and study the reactions is what fascinates me
• Dynamic control of domain walls and Single Atom Quantum Dots - just a ton of innovation at the nano level as researchers try to come up with the next generation of logic elements

What’s New. Ordered.

* “Beat The Reaper”:amazon by Josh Bazell. Quite the thrill ride. The hero survives an incredible life intertwined with criminality to uncover and revenge the mysteries in his life. The final confrontation is original but nearly unreadable due to gruesomeness. * “Narrow Dog to Carcassone”:amazon by Terry Darlington. Humorous retelling of the author, wife, and dog’s trips through the canals and rivers of Britain and Europe. A trifle long but a fun read. * “The Little Book”:amazon by Selden Edwards. A very orignal tale of time travel, love, psychology, family. More about 1897 Vienna than you ever thought you wanted to know. Very well thought out. * “Never Tell a Lie”:amazon by Hallie Ephron. Eh. Compared to the other tales in this list, pretty pale. The entire story is telegraphed in the first 5 pages and nothing shocking really happens. It is not a bad thriller but nothing that interesting here.

Way to go “Trojans”:http://www.usclacrosse.com, season-opening win over Pepperdine!

* “Masters of Atlantis”:amazon by Charles Portis. Kept me engaged, but a lot of comic farce without a deeper meaning, and so ultimately forgettable. * “The Systems Bible”:amazon by John Gall. Recommended by a very smart guy, this is a great book on the foibles of designing and using large-scale systems, whether they be software, organizational, government, or whatever. Great book, wish I had read at age 25. * “Measuring the World”:amazon by Daniel Kehlmann. Two brilliant scientists struggle to make sense of the world and their lives, but never really figure out how to make human connections despite the efforts of so many around them. Very satisfying exploration of life’s meaning.

Dreambox to help Kindergartners learn math through games - TechFlash: Seattle’s Technology News Source. Congrats Ben et al!

College Football Recruiting Prediction Model via ElevenWarriors. Awesome.