A Celebration of Women Writers came to me via a mailing list I’m on (which also noted that its creator, Mary Mark specializes in AI). The site has complete books (some even with scans of illustrations) including classics such as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Men. I found The Enchanted April, which was made into a gorgeous film and Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life. I’m sure there are plenty of treasures unknown to me hidden in these links.

Time to stock up on video tapes. Nickelodeon (more accurately, Nick-at-Nite) is going to show a bunch of Square Pegs episodes on March 9th. Square Pegs, with a theme song by the Waitresses, was my favorite eighties show. OK, it doesn’t beat Moonlighting, so we’ll call it my favorite early 80’s show. It concentrated on the “out” crowd who tried to figure out the “in” crowd. Sarah Jessica Parker looks suitably geeky (hard to believe), Amy Linker wore some padding to fit into her character’s “I’m too fat” role, “most popular” Tracy Nelson looks nothing like the nun she later played in Father Dowling, and Merritt Butrick is just too cool as the “new wave, not punk” guy whose vision is going bad because he wears sunglasses all the time. Butrick was Captain Kirk’s son in the Star Trek movies, and guest starred in a Next Generation episode a year or so before he died of AIDS in 1989. RIP Johnny Slash, my pre-teen hero.

The most vivid image for me from the Seattle area earthquake coverage today was video of an art glass studio in the aftermath. Beautiful, colorful pieces of glass were scattered, shattered across the floor. Some pieces were still on the shelves, but the floor was completely covered with destroyed works of art. (I found the URL of the store when I saw the newsfeed: Avalon Glassworks.)

Radio Shack is planning to open stores inside Blockbuster locations. Their “highly trained sales associates will manage the stores within Blockbuster”. I’ve been really spoiled by Silicon Valley. Granted, I still think of going to “the shack” when I need sundry things, like a stereo connector or an endless loop tape cassette. But usually some engineer friend will have a box full of whatever I need (or a box with whatever I need hidden in the mess of wires and old modem cards), and they will certainly know more about the electronics than the poor guy at the store. Come to think of it, this area must be a terrible place to work as a Radio Shack associate. In a backwards ‘burb, you can be king of the electronics world, but here, a lot of your customers are not going to say anything to you except “no, you can not have my address for your database.” Anyway, it will be interesting to see if they put kiosks in the local Blockbusters. They’ll be selling consumer electronics, though, not soldering equipment and wire cutters.

MuppetWorld seems a little silly, but I guess the Muppets are supposed to be silly. (via Yahoo’s Daily Picks, Flash probably req’d)

Buffy last night was excellent. On par with the “Hush” episode. (nb. I’ve got to be vague here since I don’t want to spoil it for anyone.) Since it was a serious, emotional subject, it was more unrelentingly intense than “Hush”, but the camera angles and scene placements were quite effective. The acting also showed that the cast has range beyond their usual witty quips and fight scenes.

Besides giving us something new in TV entertainment, the deluge of reality shows was also intended to take us through a possible upcoming writer’s and actor’s strike. I’m wondering if, in our fast-paced world where memes come and go in days, the reality TV fad will tank out before the strikes arrive. Maybe they should’ve timed the reality hype to peak much later than it did (it has peaked, I hope, hasn’t it?).

For the bride & groom who have everything except time to cook and do dishes, the Chinese Takeout Holder. “Crafted of eyecatching aluminum alloy, the holder keeps soggy cartons from giving way and tidily holds chopsticks in a triangular side pocket.” It isn’t dishwasher safe, though. (Uh, thank you, but no. We don’t have everything and we do sometimes have time to cook and do dishes. No time to actually empty the dishwasher, but you can’t do everything.) (In case theknot link gives out, here’s a local jpg of it)

This half keyboard for PDAs is intriguing because it capitalizes on a cognitive trait. Your brain corresponds your left hand fingers to your right hand fingers symmetrically. Your brain can easily map the Qwerty layout “L” from the right ring finger to the left ring finger, so when you put this keyboard into shift mode, you can do a sort of mirror adjustment in your reactions. It does take some training, but compared to learning a completely new layout (or even hand writing), it wins by a mile. (via Memepool)

The SJ Mercury News published a not very revelatory article on how the CueCat has not been catching on. It points out the obvious (well, they were to me anyway) faults of the wired device: “users are obliged to be physically sitting at their computer at the time they do the scanning”. They mention the Cross pen scanner I wrote about a while back, but it’s still a $90 item. They’ve got to create a wireless giveaway to get this concept out of the ICU. I don’t think their idea of hiring the Simpsons characters to promote the CueCat will do much except deplete their marketing coffers even further.