It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a car with an “overdrive” transmission setting, but I never did understand what it meant. Now, years later, the Car Talk guys have cleared up the mystery. It’s pretty simple: use overdrive and get four possible gears instead of three. And don’t yell at your spouse.

Designing Interactions, a book and DVD by IDEO co-founder Bill Moggridge, has a companion website with excerpts of video interviews from the DVD. My favorites of course are Jeff Hawkins who hired me out of college to work at GRiD and Brenda Laurel who talks about the features of the website we created at Purple Moon.

Interesting Nova coming up next week: Family That Walks on All Fours is about a family in rural Turkey in which five of the siblings walk using their hands and feet.

AMC Theatres has discontinued their Reel Moms program, a Tuesday morning movie showing for parents of infants. I’ve read mixed reviews of this program from various baby blogs, but one real SF mom was disappointed enough to post a plea to Craigslist.

Mercury passes in front of the sun today. You’ll need a telescope with a solar filter or other appropriate equipment to view the transit but you may just want to stick with the “near real-time” images from Hawaii. Here’s a global visibility map. Or check out the Exploratorium site which also has a webcast and viewing instructions.

It survived five kamikaze attacks in WWII but the USS Intrepid couldn’t get free of the Hudson River mud it’s been sitting in for 24 years on Manhattan’s West Side. The move downriver to a dry dock for an overhaul was planned to coincide with an “unusually high tide” on Monday but six tugboats, led by the Christine McAllister, only made 15 feet of headway. 600 tons of water had been removed from Intrepid’s ballast tanks and 15,000 cubic yards of mud had been dredged to help clear the way (at a cost of $1.2 million). Former NYC Mayors Edward Koch and David Dinkins cast off the mooring lines. It appears Intrepid is comfortable right where she is at the moment. The renovation of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum will have to wait. (NY Times, NY Times, AP)

Geeky cute little things: Woodpixel, 6 tones on a 2cm wood cube and a 10×10 cube tray allow you to create your favorite bit o’ pixel art. And show off your geek gamer nostalgia with silver Pac-Man jewelry.

It was the 23rd year for Seattle Goodwill’s “glitter sale” and customers weren’t disappointed. Some arrived in the wee hours of the morning to wait in line for a first crack at the luxury gowns and sparkly jewelry that Goodwill sets aside all year for the occasion. In 2005 the sale raised over $50,000 for Goodwill’s job-training and education programs. This year the sale was extended to two days and had two rooms: the vintage boutique and the glitter room. An animal lover picked up four mink furs ($39 each) saying “I figure the critters are already dead, so it’s OK.”

Almost ten years after the company’s founding, E Ink’s electronic paper technology has made its way into a number of consumer products including a watch, cell phone, and (most appropriately) the Sony Reader. E Ink’s technology came out of MIT’s Media Lab and is expected to be used in the next generation of MIT’s $100 laptop. Gyricon LLC, Xerox PARC’s venture into the electronic paper space, closed down in 2005 after delivering its SmartPaper innovations into the electronic signage market. Xerox retains ownership of the intellectual property.

I always assumed the Dum Dum lollipops “Mystery Flavor” was an existing flavor chosen at random to receive the mystery flavor wrapper, but it’s actually the result of the switchover to a new flavor batch, thus combining the old flavor with the new.