I can't say I've ever really gotten into these, but this site is incredible.  It's got over 26 thousand(!) drawings of skyscrapers, of which over 22 thousand are of existing (i.e. already built) ones.

You can restrict and order the buildings by country, city, size, and a myriad of other criteria.  The presentation is just fantastic and some of the buildings are awe inspiring.

Here's one of my favorites:

It's called the "Chicago Super Tower".  In this case it doesn't actually exist but is from the creative mind of Eduardo Segundo Hernandez.

Ooops!  I mean fasciation dandelion.  I found this in my lawn when I was pulling weeds:

The flower on the left is the fasciated dandelion, the one on the right is the normal dandelion.  The fasciated one had four flowerheads on a large, slightly flattened stem.  Pretty freaky! 

Initially I didn't know the word "fasciation", so I queried for things like mutated, aberrant, misshapen, or strange.  The only link I hit for it was a frightening page about mutated dandelions at Three Mile Island!  I'm pretty sure (though now not positive) that there's no radioactive contamination on my property, so I just couldn't believe that this is what caused this strange dandelion growth.

Thank goodness I live next to a Master Gardener and she was able to clue me into the "fasciation" term to use to describe this.

What causes fasciation?  According to Wikipedia:

"Fasciation (also: cresting) can be caused by a mutation in the meristematic cells, bacterial infection, mite or insect attack, or chemical or mechanical damage.  Some plants may inherit the trait."

It's also very rare, so I feel privledge that I actually found not one, but two plants exhibiting this type of growth.  Or maybe I should be scared?

Update:  Found an interesting page describing the causes of fasciation - http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/TRA/PLANTS/fascia.html

Got up the other day to head out the door and I saw this:

Once again, I took it with my camera phone so it doesn't look as awe inspiring as truely was.  That being said, it was soooo wierd looking.  It looked like thick icing woozing over our mountain there.  Way up high there were those dot matrix-like clouds.  One of the coolest things about this particular scene was that they were trevelling at completely opposite directions.  Amazing...

Of course, I can't just write something like this without going into some detail as to what these clouds are.  The ones up high are called "Altocumulus" - they form about 6500 to 16500 feet high.  No telling how high these were.

The thick, goopy looking cloud is some sort of Stratus cloud, though I imagine if you were unexpectedly at the peak of the mountain there you'd just call it fog.

Google announced that they now support charting in their online spreadsheet app, so I figured I'd give it a try.  I've used Excel charts for years now so I am pretty familiar with how all this should work.  Though I find Excel charts can be sometimes a maze to get working, I've yet to be symied from being able to make the chart I need - it seems to be infinitely tweakable.

I've got several little spreadsheets I keep up on Google Docs & Spreadsheets.  One is an illustration on how Bode's Law works.  I used the data from that to produce the following simple chart:

The charting feature here is pretty primitive in comparison to Excel, however it's certainly sufficient to make simple charts like the one above.  The learning curve for creating these charts is much less than what it takes to learn Excels.  There are 5 basic types of charts that can be made: columns, bars, lines, pie, and scatter.  For each time there are from 2 (pie) to 5 (line) variations.  The one in the above Bode's Law chart is a line chart, with just the dotted datapoints.

You can easily label the Y (Astronomical Units) and X (Planets) axis, and the overall chart title (Bode's Law).  I couldn't find a way to change their fonts at all - that seems to be fixed, as does their positions and orientations.

The legend (Actual and Bode's number) comes from the data in the spreadsheet itself and can be placed either top, bottom, left, right, or not at all.  In the above case, it's top.  Again, there doesn't seem to be any way to tweak their fonts, orientation, precise positions or even color.

The actual values for the X and Y axis again come straight from the spreadsheet itself.  I really wanted to be able to tweak the orientation of the X values so that the planet names could be more readable, but this was not possible - or rather, I couldn't figure it out.

It does let you save it's charts as an image - which is pretty nice.  That's how I got it here so easily.

Overall, I'd say that for simple charting, this feature is going to serve you well.  If you have any sort of sophisticated charting or if you really need to tweak the placement or fonts of things, then you should either wait (I'm pretty sure they'll improve things here) or just continue to use Excel for now.

If you want to see this simple spreadsheet and chart, here's a link...definitely NOT something you can do easily with Excel.

I used to have a friend growing up that loved to sing.  He just loved it - his whole family did!  Unfortunately they were all completely tone deaf.  They couldn't hit a note if their lives depended on it.

Due to their exhuberance, I always felt uneasy about mentioning this to them, so I suffered through their performances.

Alas, that was some 30 years ago, and tests like these were not easily around.  If they had been, then maybe I could have just sent them this link as a subtle hint to their aptitude.

http://bored.com/musictests/

There's three tests: pitch, rhythm, and tone.  My results? Rhythm 76%, Tone 83.3%, and Pitch...

Good luck!

They have the crappiest wireless access in the world.  Oh, sure...they say it's free, but it friggin' doesn't work.

Let's be clear here.  I'm willing to pay - seriously.  $10 for 24hr access is just fine for me.  Even if I only use a couple of hours of it - but, if you promise for it to be free, I really want it to work...

When it doesn't - I guess I feel frustrated.  Weenies!

Well, in the 1930's that would be about $1800.

I scanned in a bunch of old photographs from a 1930's depression era parade and posted them up on Flickr. The pictures, contract, and various documents were loaned to me by the granddaughter of the man who owned this parade.

Some of my favorites:

There's even instructions on how to generate excitement about the parade before it gets to the town it's heading to - even radio dramas! Unfortunately, I've still got to scan in that document...and find a place I can actually post it.

I've arranged the photos in a Flickr set - it includes even the contract specifying the original purchase!

This came off of KOMO TV's website of the stormiest month in the Seattle areas history.  For those of you keeping track, that would be November of 2006.

Probably the most spectacular photograph from all the big storms we had that month is this one.  Check it out:

From the photograph the lightning is striking (coming up from) both the Smith Tower and the Space Needle.  How incredibly awesome!

There's more pictures on the website, including a funnel cloud over Ballard. 

Heck, all we had to worry about was being flooded and blown away...

Hubcap Creatures!

Amazing creatures created from old hubcaps!  Sharks, reptiles, dragons, armadillos...

Many are for sale, and it looks like Ptolemy does commissions too!

I think I got lost somewhere around 7 or 8...

Interesting video...worth the watch.

These are amazing!   

Starting on November 19th of last year Stefan G. Bucher started posting his Daily Monster videos.  Each day since then he's posted up another monster that he draws before your very eyes.

He's got a blog site with all 84 (so far) videos of his drawings...and it looks like he's got no intention of stopping!  Thank goodness...

Here's his first creation - just to give you a flavor:

All these videos are also posted up on YouTube, but you should also check out his blog site because in addition to all his videos is lots of other interesting stuff he does!

I suggest starting at the first video and working your way forward...

It's nice to know when it will all end.  Finally, there's a site that'll tell you what you really need to know.

Ahhh, yes, now I know and I can go forward with my day with the secure feeling that I've got over a million seconds to fritter away before I finally toss off these mortal coils.

You can calculate your own here.

Recently we've had a bit of snow.  It was perfect snow balling snow.  The kind that you can really get a good throw with.

What happens, of course, is that after a while your hands get really cold and it's tough to keep up the fight.  That's where this comes in:

It's just brilliant!  It makes perfect snowballs.  Super easy to whip up a dozen or so to keep you or your allies fully stocked.   

And the best thing is, it's less than $10.  Heck, get two!  I only had one, and let's just say that I had a serious advantage...

I had this forwarded to me today. 

Check this cake out.  Shaped like a real person - I wonder just how much something like this would cost?  Just imagine getting a cake like that in the image of anyone you want...the mind boggles.

You can see more here - http://www.winbeckler.com/sculptures3.asp