• Brett on Stuff » Distilleries of Scotland. A reason to hike Scotland
• WOW – stronger authentication than your bank. What does that say about the world.
• Running DC thru the house. An idea whose time has come again?
• Indie games DB. Often way better than mainstream games
• Guided Bullets. Why not.
• Thingiverse. Kind of an open source design site.
• Denhaus – awesome pet furniture
• Nitrogen-infused golf clubs. Golfers will buy anything.
• Dutch 5 Euro coin. Awesome, wish I could order. Not the first time I have been blocked from ordering a euro product, wish I could sign up for a forwarding PO box in Europe.
• Mini Magnetosphere. Maybe we all need one of these

• Tangle of Wires: Jack o’lanterns in the tree. Does look nice.
• Zoybar. Seems like it might be a nice way to build some sound fx
• Tinker Store. I kind of like the firefly kit
• Prop Documents via Makezine. Nice to spread around possibly
• Extreme foam cutting. Learning how to work with foam is job one for halloween construction
• Vintage poison labels. Very useful for mad scientist labs
• Kurt’s handiwork this year. All his stuff is awesome
• Paintings that watch you. One way to build this.
• Free sound mod software. May be too late on this one

Looking for a place.  Homeaway, VacationRentals, Vacation Rental By Owner, OnlyInLaguna, SBBeachRentals, ParadiseRetreats seem to have bunches of listings.  Lots of overlap, obviously owners crosslist anywhere they can.

* “How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read”:amazon by Pierre Bayard. A great treatise on what the act of reading is really about – how books enter your brain, how they are retained, how they enrich you, how you connect with others about what you’ve read. If you are a thoughtful reader, this is an excellent book.

* “Deal Breaker”:amazon by Harlan Coben. I am not sure what it says about me that I immediately read a formulaic series thriller after the Bayard. But Coben’s books always please. This is the first in his Myron Bolitar series and as good as all the later in the series.

“The Black Prince”:amazon by Iris Murdoch. An aging retiree plans to head to the country to restart his writing career; family and relationships intrude and events spiral out of control. It is not clear what truly happens in the story and what is a fabrication of the narrator and other characters. Quite interesting.

* “Persepolis”:amazon by Marjane Satrapi. A very quick read, graphic novel format. Excellent true tale of growing up in post-revolution Iran, presents a lot of stunningly tough situations but in a way that is readable.

* “Avalanche: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery”:amazon by Patrick McManus. Great yarn about a smalltown sheriff and murder. Great characters throughout, I would happily read more.

Rich, with his reflections on the recent election, has inspired me to share a few of my own personal thoughts.

Like many commentators, I am inspired by the actions of the electorate, overcoming a history of bias and bigotry to overwhelmingly support a minority American. And I found McCain’s concession speech to also be very inspiring, his support of the President-elect and his call to all of us to work together on the challenges ahead was gracious and high-integrity.

I am saddened tho by the passage of gay marriage bans in California, Arizona, and elsewhere. I just don’t understand the bias and hatred that we demonstrate towards a set of our fellow citizens. Allowing loving adults to have the full legal benefits and status of a marriage certainly does nothing to threaten or compromise the quality of my marriage. I hope we continue the dialog on this point as a nation.

Tangle of Wires. – Scott has a blog now. Amazingly great Halloween constructor.

* “Down River”:amazon by John Hart. Wow wow. A real pip of a story. A young man returns to his bucolic hometown after a 5 year disgraced absence, and a whole shitstorm of family dysfunction, unresolved conflict, betrayal, assault, and murder explodes. Fun! * “Forgotten Continent: The Battle For Latin America’s Soul”:amazon by Michael Reid. Like many US citizens, my conception of South American history and politics is basically this: conquered by Spain, freed by Bolivar, a mess of revolutions ever since. That is pretty much what I remember from middle school. This was thus a great book for me, a little long and tough going in parts, but a pretty good walk through of these societies and politics over the last 100 years. Way too much to absorb but a great read.

Desks at Espasso : Design Milk. Awesome desks.

Amazon.com: Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, XP Home) Blue: Computers & PC Hardware. – supposed to have great battery life

Seven Must-Have Offline Apps For Your iPhone/iPod Touch - ReadWriteWeb. – MightyDocs is great if you are a google docs users.

* Twitchie robot kit. Looks like fun innards for a bunch of different props. * Great singing skull. * Haunted bookshelf. Don’t love the prop but really enjoy the cam mechanism, turning simple rotary motion into something more interesting.

Second time I’ve tried to post this. The WordPress PressThis bookmarklet is remarkably buggy.

• OHS - Places - Harding Home. Contains almost all the original furnishings of Harding.
• Harding Tomb – tho we always called it the Harding Memorial. When I was very very young I was skinny enough to slip thru the bars.
• Other Marion Museums – the Stengel-True Museum, Unuion Station, the Wyandot Popcorn Museum. Wyandot historically produced much of the popping corn in the country…
• Hence the annual Popcorn Festival
• The Palace Theatre, a shockingly nice theatre for this size town. Built during Marion’s heydays in the 1920s…
• Unfortunately there is nothing much to see from Marion’s industrial boom days, but from Wikipedia: “Products of the Marion Steam Shovel Company (later Marion Power Shovel) built the Panama Canal and in the 1960s, NASA contracted with Power Shovel to construct the crawler-transporters that moved the assembled Saturn V rockets, used by Project Apollo, to the launch pad. In 1911, 80% of the nation’s steam shovel and heavy duty earth moving equipment was manufactured in Marion, Ohio.” I worked 3 summers for the Shovel.
• Nearby towns – Waldo (Home of the G&R, famous for fried balogna sandwiches), LaRue (smallest town ever to have an NFL franchise)