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Sourcery *** : Another Discworld novel. 'Nuff said.

OpenStreetMap is a cool project to provide an open source map of as much of the world as possible. They have quite a bit of coverage of Portland already, but are hosting a mapping party in Portland on June 20th to fill in some missing areas. I would love to participate, but will be riding Tour de Blast that day.

The Truth About Bender's Brain: Bender-from-Futurama's brain is a 6502. I love it! (Link is to second page of article.)

Gai-jin *** : Part of James Clavell's "Asian Saga". Unfortunately, not nearly as good as his epic novel "Shogun". But still worthwhile if you've read the rest of the series or like historical fiction about Japan in the 19th century.

Here's a great article on couch surfing. I gave Phil some advice when he embarked on his bicycle trip across America last year. (The article got his trip stats wrong--he did 90 miles a day!) I wish couch surfing had been around when Eric and I did our bike trip. We probably would have met a lot more people that way. I guess we'll have to do it again one of these days...

I just released version 1.53 of Presto's Hard Drive Monitor. Check it out if you're into such things!

It's been a tumultuous week for our aquarium. I added a six-line wrasse, a Clarkii clown, 20 turbo snails, 10 crabs, a sand-sifting cucumber, a lettuce nudibranch, and two clams. Everybody seems to be doing well except for one of the clams which died after one day and the cucumber which died after four days.

I also arranged all the cabling and tubes to better integrate a Red Sea Wavemaster. And removed a ton of algae from the tank.

All of which is making the tank look better than it's looked in a long time. Unfortunately, all of the commotion caused some stress on one of the longest tank residents, a yellow tang named Scotty. I found him dead in the tank after work. R.I.P., Scotty.

If you are in the market for a new Windows laptop, it's hard to beat the Best Buy Blue Label Toshiba. I've bought over a dozen laptops for work in the past two months, and the Toshiba is my favorite overall. And at $799, it's a steal...

Sunshine *** : Makes me nostalgic for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Well filmed, but impossible physics and some ridiculous plot gyrations cost this movie a star.

If you're doing tax loss harvesting, this guide may come in handy: Approximating Total Stock Market.

I upgraded my Linksys router from DD-WRT to Tomato today. I like Tomato's clean interface and superior QoS capabilities. If Tomato runs on your hardware, check it out!

Das Leben der Anderen ***** : Must-see movie about East Germany's secret police. I was originally turned on to this movie by an article in Wired, Piecing Together the Dark Legacy of East Germany's Secret Police.

Hot Cartoon Makes Understanding Credit Crisis Simple And Fun: Educational and entertaining. Well worth 11 minutes to go and watch it!

Rocky Mountain News prints final edition: This makes me very sad. Newspapers are on life support right now and this is something we all should be worried about!

It's interesting that the government has decided to bail out the financial and automotive industries but not the newspaper industry. I would argue that newspapers are just as essential to the functioning of our society as either of those industries!