Via Strange Maps, dynamic map/timeline of Olympic Medals by country up at the NYT. Very nice.

Office 2007 for Windows has some really cool features. I love the table formatting in XL, a totally obvious and good feature. And the fact that it is only in the Windows version and not in the Mac version has driven me batty, and has pissed me off so much, that I have finally converted all my XLs into Google Docs spreadsheets and dumped them into the cloud. Yes I lost some cool features. But I never have to install office software again, I don’t need to worry if the latest version is installed on the machine that I happen to be using today, I don’t have to worry about the fact that the last version of that spreadsheet is in my home office machine and not here at work, etc. I am immediately happier. I will miss table formatting, but not that much.

CrunchGear » Archive » Canadian movie theaters rent screen time to gamers – not sure this will ever pencil out or how it would even work, but the idea of playing Halo or COD4 on a giant movie screen is pretty awesome.

A guy walks into a bar in Ann Arbor wearing a Michigan jersey. And carrying a cat that also has a Michigan jersey on with a little Wolverine helmet on his head, too.

The guy says to the bartender, “Can my cat and I watch the Michigan game here? My TV at home broke down and my cat and I always watch the game together”.

The bartender replies, “Normally, cats wouldn’t be allowed in the bar, but it’s not very busy in here right now, so you and the cat can have a seat at the end of the bar. But, if there’s any trouble with you or the cat, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

The guy agrees, and he and his cat start watching the game. Pretty soon Michigan manages to kick a field goal and the excited cat jumps up on the bar, walks all the way down and gives everyone a high five.

The bartender says, “Hey, that’s pretty cool! What does he do for a touchdown?”

The guy answers, “I don’t know, I’ve only had him for 2 years.”

• Trojans have a little problem - Los Angeles Times.  Apparently jock itch running rampant thru the Trojan camp.
• Detroit sucks so much that even the dead are leaving.  Wow.

cfbstats.com - College Football Statistics.  Excellent resource

* “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.