Dry Clean Only

New Years Eve of 2005/2006 I was in Chicago with friends and found myself in need of a black knit cap. I wanted something that would be warm, but a little dressier than my heavy blue LL Bean watch cap. My friends were very noble, humoring me as we walked up and down Michigan Avenue on a brisk winter evening. I finally found a cap in a clearance bin and was satisfied that the price was about what I would expect to pay for some sort of man-made acrylic cap--serviceable in that the only real requirements were "black" and "cheap". I was pleased, too, that even though it was so inexpensive it actually had a pretty nice texture--very soft and pretty darn warm to be so thin. So today, over two years later I happened to look inside and found a tiny tag I'd never noticed before. It says: 50% cashmere, 30% extra fine wool, 20% silk, made in Philippines, DRY CLEAN ONLY. That amuses and satisfies me far more than it probably should. Thanks, life, for finally throwing me a bone.

Star Trek (The original series) on Joost.

Just ran across an item that says Joost now has episodes of the original Star Trek series. I wonder if I can watch them all in one weekend? Well, I probably wouldn't, but once I get started there's no telling when I might be able to stop. I watched these every chance I got from the time I discovered it around 1974 until I'm sure I'd seen every episode several times. Haven't seen a complete episode in ages, but I've caught parts here and there. Always easy to pick up the story mid-show. Now if I can watch on demand my life may be complete. (No, not really. It's JUST a TV show, but it sure engaged me at age 10.)

It' not right that I should like this so much . . .

Inspired by my trying to explain Drum Corps International to someone who's never heard of it or seen it, I went to the all-knowing Internet. A virtual treasure trove of video and audio. For some reason, maybe because rehearsing is the part I really miss most, this one was just stunning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z8h8Gh5OrU#

Blogged with Flock

TR Cracks open the ipod Touch

Tech Republic takes apart an ipod and posts pictures on their site. Pretty interesting to see how it's really just held together with glue and duct tape.

http://tinyurl.com/3babhp

Wow for Wowio.

Whenever there's a new ebook service or reader I usually like to check it out. In most cases I'm not very impressed and quickly lose interest. Sometimes, I'll actually keep going back and trying new things, but never be much more impressed. That has been the case, for example, with the Microsoft Reader. There are a few products, though, that I've been sufficiently impressed with that I could get into a long term habit of using them. One is the New York Times reader. Not the website, but an app you dowload and install on your pc and use to load the content of the paper. On a laptop or tablet pc it's pretty darn good. If they start making for my iPaq I think I'll be hooked for good.

Since they don't make it for the iPaq, the alternative is AvantGo. This is a sync and go program that gets you access to content from a number of good sources, the Guardian, the NY Times, and The Sporting News, to name a few. Today I took this handy little thing with me to the evil empire coffee shop and was able to read several articles from today's paper while I waited for my coffee to cool enough to drink it.

And finally, and the inspiration for this post (which is really, you know, just a test of a new posting technology) is Wowio. You can get free, and I do mean FREE, books from Wowio. They're formatted as pdf files, so you can read them on any device that will run Acrobat Reader. Note, they don't reflow, so you have to reduce text size to the point of barely readable on the ipaq. The selection is not as good a I'd wish for, but they have some really good content. And they do seem to be adding new things over time. So, this is worth checking out. Wowio.