* “An American Tragedy”:amazon by Theodore Dreiser. A compelling story of overreaching ambition, lust, and tragedy. But oh my gosh could it have used an editor – needs to be about 40% shorter. The whole first book establishing the lustful ambition of the protagonist should have been a chapter. * “Beginner’s Greek”:amazon by James Collins. Entertaining comic romance. Light and breezy, appealing leads. * “Big Russ and Me”:amazon by Tim Russert. A light autobiography, particularly poignant in light of Russert’s untimely passing. No deep messages but solid life lessons and makes you sorry that Russert is gone.

The Only Game That Matters: Buckeyes; Spartans; Utes; ah, heck, just about anybody: Commence Trashtalk Now. – making the rounds through the OSU and Michigan sites right now, unintentionally hilarious.

Solar System Exploration: Kids: Paper Models – OK these are actually kind of cool and probably a better use of government funding than 99% of pork barrel projects.

* Geekhouse Bikes Powder Coating Graphics – I never ride my bike, but wow could it look cool collecting dust * Now that I’ve installed Edison, let me burn up all my savings with this dynamic LED keyboard * Boynq Iris webcam-speaker-light-mic combo. I was just asking myself, where can I get a webcam-speaker-light-mic combo? * Cyclone metal cleanup tool. As they say, if only this worked for sawdust * Earthworm Hydro Drill. I actually could use this for routing cables for Halloween in the yard, tho it seems like it might be a disaster.

* Solar nanoantenna energy collectors – highly effective sunlight receptors based on nanoscale antennas. Now onto nanoscale rectifiers… * Another step towards cloaking devices

Add a Table of Contents to Google Docs and More – great tip here, just paste “javascript:mr(“TocSettings”);” into the address bar and you will get a TOC dialog. probably will be added to the UI at some point.

BuckeyeXtra - The Columbus Dispatch : Ohio State football results. – nice new service from the Dispatch.  9-11-1 against USC all time, 0-5 in last 5 games.  Let’s hope Tressel can reverse this trend as he has reversed others

• Yamaha Muro Sensor.  Love funky musical instruments.  These are kind of a 21st century bell choir.
• Estes Hydrogen Fuel Rocket.  Love model rockets, used to spend way too much time with them.  Almost blew up the garage once (oops Dad, I never told you about that did I?)  Thanks rich
• Utilikey.  I always have my key chain with me, love the idea of adding utility to it
• Atmos clock – runs for years powered by tempereature changes

Countdown to camp: Big dates on USC’s schedule - USC - OCRegister.com. – SoCal papers are already highlighting the Sept 13 game against OSU.

I forgot to point out that I guest-posted over on Jim’s blog this week – Jim runs an amazing crossword reference site at XWordInfo. Jim is a great and smart guy with a set of interests that sometimes intersects minge (crosswords) and sometimes is oh so different – “I have a theory that nobody loves both Fellini and Bergman. You have to pick one and that determines much about your life.”

Sanchez remembers Jim Tressel sitting behind his desk in the Buckeyes’ football office, delivering his pitch: “Mark, you know the two most important people in the state of Ohio are the governor and the quarterback for Ohio State.”

Tressel then paused before adding, “And the quarterback for Ohio State is No. 1

» “The Most Important Person In Ohio Is The Quarterback of The Ohio State University” Dotting The “I”: The Student Perspective on The Ohio State University Athletics.

Go Bucks, Beat USC!

Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen - Logitech Harmony One Remote Control Review. – Nice review of this remote.  It is a pretty good universal remote and I am also pretty happy with.  The one huge problem is lack of bluetooth support to control a PS3 as a DVD player.  But overall a pretty good experience.