Did you know that those nice Pyra/Blogger folks also own blooger.com? It’s amazing what you can learn from referral logs. Barnes & Noble owns a bunch of misspelled domain names too, which was a smart move. Of course they were probably most thrilled to get bn.com.

I wasn’t planning to see High Fidelity on opening day. Really, I wasn’t. I’ve got piles of things to do. But Randy was unintentionally a bad influence and I ended up at the matinee. So, in the spirit of the film (which was Most Excellent), here are my top five John Cusack movies in reverse chronological order, with a few autobiographical references. I realized today that the reason I love his definitive films so much is that he’s basically my age and his characters always hit my psyche at just the right time.

• High Fidelity – I don’t want to spoil the film for those who haven’t seen it, but if a guy like Rob can make the realization he does towards the end of the movie, there may be hope after all.
• Grosse Pointe Blank – 10 year high school reunion. Released the same year as mine. ’nuff said.
• Say Anything – “The world is full of guys. Be a man. Don’t be a guy.” If only more guys had a friend like Corey. There’d be more men and fewer guys.
• Better Off Dead – just plain fun. And I like baseball.
• The Sure Thing – OK, I have to admit that I haven’t seen this yet. But it launched his career. I will rent it soon.

And, from the official web site’s Top Five lists, I discovered that Rob’s second favorite book of all time is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Cool.

I’m hoping to attend this Stanford Symposium: Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity by 2100? It was arranged by the one and only Douglas Hofstadter.

In response to my link to the car advertising scheme, someone sent me this link to a (rather sarcastic) report on cow advertising. That’s putting ads on cows, not running ads for cows. Yes, I think it’s a joke. But you never know when things like this may come true.

(Housekeeping note, sorry!) If I haven’t responded to your email in a timely manner, it’s because my schedule (and, well, life) has been chock-full the past two weeks. I try to answer all log-related email. But the pile tends to accumulate. So, I apologize for the delay. And that doesn’t mean you should stop writing. Logging as a one-way street is particularly unfulfilling. OK, enough. Back to your regularly scheduled log.

Fresh Air interview with John Cusack. High Fidelity opens today! The most amusing part of the interview was his reaction when he realized he would have to listen to himself in The Sure Thing when Terry played a clip. I guess that’s like, um, reading your code from college (or before even!). Kinda painful or humorous depending on your state of mind. At least he didn’t have to watch a clip. And although I left post-it notes reminding myself, I forgot that he was scheduled to be on Letterman last night.

It freaked me out a bit that just a couple days after I discussed how I would customize my keyboard (when I pointed out the iOpener pizza button), this AOL-customized keyboard popped into my radar. The price is nice ($7.95 s/h plus your email address) and you can ignore the AOL keys of course. You can customize 18 category keys from a list of partners. AOL is going to do a uber-AOL version where all those keys bind to AOL functions. Why don’t long-distance companies and pizza delivery places give away free phones with pre-programmed buttons for their services? Or maybe they do and I’ve just never seen it. Maybe the gain is not worth the cost of a phone.

Back in college, many moons before the iMac, I decided that it would be cool to collect see-through electronics. So I obtained a clear phone and a clear Logitech mouse. I chortled to myself when the prim & proper girlfriend of a certain MIT guy (I thought he should be dating a geek girl instead — like me, for instance) told me that my phone was the ugliest thing she had ever seen (she just didn’t get why it was cool). I secretly coveted the clear-cased Newtons that, at the time, only internal developers were able to get. I would look at translucent devices at the store and wonder if I really should go completely overboard and buy what was available: clear answering machine, cordless phone, trackball, joystick. But I never added much to my collection, and when see-through things recently became (oh no!) trendy, that killed off any remaining desire I had of pursuing it seriously. However, the one thing I always wondered about was whether I would be able to find a see-through television. So when BrainLog linked to this television the other day, I had a huge urge to buy it. Now that the iMac has made see-through computers a Big Yawn, a translucent TV is really the ultimate.

A couple of Feed links today. First up, an article on PBS’ Antiques Roadshow. I used to watch this pretty often. It’s an entertaining and educational (well, it is PBS after all) program where people take their heirlooms, garage sale finds, and Aunt Millie’s hand knitted tea cozy in to be appraised by experts. There’s always the amusing segments with a person who brings in a “genuine Stradivarius” only to find that the bow is worth more than the violin, or the painting found in the attic which turns out to be worthless but the frame is an antique of some worth. Often there’s a truly touching moment when someone finds out their mother’s porcelain doll is worth thousands because it has some kind of hairdo that collectors drool over. I’ve also seen the, I assume original, British version which often has some really neat finds (British folks tend to have older antiques hiding out in the barn than us New Worlders).

Next, a strange article on how cell phones function as dating services in Asian countries. More airwave bandwidth in Asia and Europe has made the use of wireless data services more viable than in the United States where we can barely get enough airspace to talk to each other. So cell phone carriers in Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan can subscribe to services which match them up with other cell phone users in the same vicinity. Some services show you a video feed of the other person talking about what they are looking for in a mate. An interesting use of wireless technology.