The nytimes.com regularly has great travel advice for cost conscious travellers. The latest article is on one of my favourite cities: Charleston, South Carolina.

The article is worth visiting, and so is the city. See Visiting Charleston, S.C., on a Budget – NYTimes.com

(Great photo by Stephen Morton for The New York Times)

I like creative uses of tumblr. 52 Books is one of those fine examples. What’s it about? Well, books, but a whole lot more. In fact, it’s like a good bookstore: you want to go there, linger, and soak it up.

And this man is responsible.

If you want to understand WHAT he was thinking at the time, read Metropolis Feature: The Man Behind the Cubicle

Like email, it is easy to criticize the cubicle. What is important to consider is the context.

Geek And Poke is a great comic blog on IT. This is just one great example of the humour. And of course, there is xkcd. And it goes without saying there is Dilbert. If you work in IT or have to deal with IT — and who doesn’t — it pays to check them out.

When I read it at andrewsullivan.com, I was skeptical too. But it makes sense. If you are like me, and you’d rather eat a sandwich over installing plumbing, you now have some rationalizations to do so! (Though I’d recommend you do both).

Even if it doesn’t amount to much, like chicken soup, it can’t hurt. And hey, PB&Js (and other veggie sandwiches) are delicious. What’s not to like? See Your PB&J Impact

A very nice remake of the song and the video here:

My only comment: where’s the Count!?

Those grand old men of the Muppet Show get the internet. See here for proof.

There’s lots more good clips of them on YouTube, also.

Scientifica American does a rundown on what it would take for a “real” person to be Batman. Even though Batman hasn’t the superpowers of most superheroes, it’s still a big stretch. Read this to see why:

Dark Knight Shift: Why Batman Could Exist–But Not for Long: Scientific American

In this blog is an excellent analysis on why people buy the wrong house. In short, they underestimate the drawbacks of commuting and overestimate the value of extra space.

I might like this because based on this analysis, I bought the “right” house. Actually, commuting WAS a major factor in choosing my house, but I had other criteria, and our house met them. I am sure others do the same thing. I am sure people who pick the bigger house also have many more criteria that matter than just size. But it is likely they still underestimate the impact of commuting.

See the blog post and decide for yourself by going here: The Frontal Cortex : Buying the Wrong House

Thx to Andrew Sullivan for the link.

I’ve blogged about the Fail Whale before. Even folks who aren’t interested in twitter in the least will find this interesting: The Story of the Fail Whale

Thx to Andy Piper for pointing out the link.

…can be found here with this web app: Apple – Web apps – Countdown to Change

There’s also a flavour for McCain, Clinton, and Ron Paul. Pick up your favourite here:

Campaign Cola 2008 | Election Resources | Voting Vernacular

TERMINATOR SALVATION is a blog dedicated to the making of the new Terminator movie. It is interesting to see a blog for a film outlining some of the process. We have seen “the making of” documentaries before, but these tended to be seen after the film was made. With the blog, we get to be ‘armchair producers’, in a way.

Very interesting.

Tim Gunn is smart: smart about fashion, but smart generally. Time has a great 10 question interview with him here. Anyone who can talk about the semiotics of fashion is worth listening to. Plus, he’s funny and seemingly down to earth. Needless to say, he’s also stylish. See:

You can listen to it here.

It makes me think of John Lennon’s “I’m Only Sleeping”. Enjoy. And sleep well.

It looks like that famous doctored photo of the Iranian missiles has launched some creative responses, as can be seen in this Wired blog post: Attack of the Photoshopped Missiles (Updated)

This is my favourite:

I mean, if Iran wants to really scare people, why not go all out?

Tinyurl is all fine and good, but get the blood flowing — and the braining munching — send them a link via ZombieURL. They’ll be glad you did! Or not! 🙂 See:

ZombieURL – The #1 zombie-infected URL redirection service on the Web.

While a number of sites talked about this apparently photoshopped photo of the missile launch in Iran, the site War and Piece has the best write up on it. Take a look at what is outlined first.

I’ve seen and heard of Photoshop being used for lots of different purposes, but this appears to be a first.

Two great dining events happen yearly in Toronto: Winterlicious and Summerlicious

As you can see from the graphic, it’s on for most of July. You can get more information here or here

And if you are a customer of American Express, you get an additional benefit. See the links for why.

Pamela Bell has a smart idea when it comes to balancing having a well designed interior and having a happy houseful of kids and ultimately a happy house. This article, Renovating When Perfect Is Not the Goal at NYTimes.com has the details, but I like this quote:

“It is Ms. Bell’s conviction that the house belongs not so much to her as to her children, and the choices she makes on a daily basis support that.”

Very smart.

(Photo by Phil Mansfield of the New York Times)

According to the Detroit Free Press, Flint cops crack down on sagging pants | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press

“Dicks (the new Police Chief) who took over the department last month on an interim basis, announced that his officers would start arresting people wearing saggy pants that expose skivvies, boxer shorts or bare bottoms.”

For those of you who live or visit Flint and are concerned about going to jail, the following chart was prepared:

What I want to know is: what about all those old guys who pull their pants up to their chest? What’s going to happen to them?

I guess Flint must be so quiet, crime-wise, that the Chief of Police needs to give the police something to do.

There are thousands — millions? — of web servers now, but the first one was this NeXT machine that Tim Berners-Lee possessed. You can find out more about it and this picture here

For some strange reason I am proud it was on a NeXT machine and not some second rate Wintel box….it must be the IT snob in me. 😉

(Found via boing boing).

If you are booking a flight and you have flexibility as to when you buy your tickets, you MUST go to Farecast.

It “does just what you want when making an airplane ticket
purchase: it predicts if the price is going to go up, down or stay
level and advises when you should buy (now, wait)”

You owe it to yourself to try it. And I would be happy to take 10% of anything you save. Make that 5%! 🙂

(Tip: the always useful Data Mining site)

That’s easy: wherever there are people who love to dance, you’ll find Matt.

To see what I mean — if you haven’t seen this already — check out this video:

There’s more on the story here. It’s a great story. And kudos to Stride gum! If you have a chance, buy some!

While I am a big fan of The Moment, I would recommend at the very least that people check out the posts titled “The High Low”. For fashionable people, it’s all about:

“Good style mixes high-ticket items with brilliant affordable gets. In this column, T’s fashion team rummage for the cheap and the chic.”

And if you are not so fashionable, well, you have to wear something, so show the world how smart you are by wearing what the good folks at T are recommending. (And if you are really smart, you will get your feedreader to go through the feed and extract JUST these recommendations. 🙂 )

I mean even the fashion adverse would be comfortable in this:

while fashionistas — does anyone say that anymore? — might covet this:

For more on The High Low, go here

Calorielab has the numbers, but better still, they have a state by state breakdown of where people are lean (Colorado) and not (Mississippi), as you can see here:

See here for more details: Fattest States 2008: The CalorieLab United States of Obesity Rankings

For the film posters and web site of Hellboy II: The Golden Army there is a warning posted: this film contains depictions of tobacco consumption.

Now, I appreciate why this is done generally. But it strikes me as funny when associated with this film. I can’t imagine parents saying: no, Johnny, you can’t go to see Hellboy II because there are people smoking in it! I mean, if you can’t smoke a cigarette in Hell, where CAN you smoke? 🙂

P.S. Gripe: movie sites are all flash, so I can’t include an image here of Hellboy. I think movie sites should put badges or other links for bloggers to use. Hey, it’s free advertising!

Over at Kevin Kelly’s blog is a great review/peek by Merlin Mann of the new Peter Walsh’s book, It’s All Too Much

While you might think the book is ostensibly about clutter and too much stuff, it is really about much more than that. It is about how materialism can get out of control and ruin our lives. It’s a form of obesity, and capable of ruining our lives as much a being greatly overweight can.

Read the review: you will get much just from that. Then buy the book, read it, use it, and then give it to someone else.

As for me, I have been doing this for some months now. I don’t miss the stuff I tossed or sold, and my life is better off. How many cheese slicers does a man need, anyhow? 🙂

I was curious about a comment Ana Marie Cox made on twitter today: “I am no longer enjoying this election”. This was followed by: “The only way this election could be more disappointing is if either of the candidates win. Uh. Hm.”

Since Cox writes for Time.com’s Swampland blog, I checked out what she wrote recently, and it turned out it was this . While her feelings come through to some degree in the Swampland piece, a more detailed picture comes out when cross referenced with twitter. Her Swampland piece is critical and sarcastic towards Obama’s comments on abortion, but her feelings are more obvious in her “tweets”.

As people use social computing (blogs,twitter, etc.) for communications, others will cross reference the information — like I did here — to build profiles of people. I don’t think it will necessarily surprise people, but what may surprise people is that others are doing it.

The nytimes.com has a great profile on Dara Torres: Dara Torres – Profile – Olympic Swimming – NYTimes.com

While the article seems to imply that she is not too extraordinary, I think she is incredible. While older athletes may continue to maintain their fitness, what the article doesn’t appear to touch on is that athletes often lose interest in the demands of training for so much. Not Torres: she seems driven.

Great photo by Robert Maxwell, too. Even if you don’t read the article, just looking at this woman’s body tells you she is unique. Incidentally, you would never get to see her this way in a Speedo LZR.

I don’t know why airlines send out emails like: low cost flights from one city to another, but then when you try and find them, you can’t! Porter Airlines is just one of many airlines that do this. All it does is encourage me to go to Expedia or Travelocity. And once I do that, I am now looking at other airlines as well. So for airlines who think this a good idea, think again.

…when it takes a law to get Nelson Mandela removed from it, I would say it is poor. See here: Mandela off U.S. terrorism watch lists – CNN.com for more information.

WALL-E is another in a sequence of great films from Pixar. What is great about Pixar films, besides the obvious, is the way they include great detail in each film. For WALL-E, there are a number of things, obvious and otherwise, that can be found in the film, as noted in this article from slashfilm.com: WALL-E Easter Eggs

One thing this article doesn’t point out is the references to “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Kubrick. I spotted at least two: the references to HAL and the part with the apes. There’s likely more.

For folks like me with kids who will watch these things over and over again :), all these details are appreciated.

This was my favourite: George Bernard Shaw’s room. But there are so many, with many similarities. See
the guardian for more, but be prepared to spend lots of time looking around.

(Thanks to andrewsullivan.com for the tip)

I’ve seen Jill Bolte Taylor’s talk and Sir Ken Robinson’s talk and they are both great. The other eight are likely to be as good. So go see, Top 10 TED Talks courtesy of Boing Boing

P.S. I like watching my on the subway using my Apple Touch. If you are going to load alot of these videos up, though, you will want a bigger one than mine (the low end 8 GB).

You know you are loved as a company when the sign of your inability to stay up gets a FAN CLUB. Yes, this image

which all twitter users are TOO familiar with due to twitters frequent downs now have a fan club. See:
The Fail Whale Fan Club

(thanks to Andy Piper for pointing this out…on twitter, of course!)

There’s been a number of sites created already that allow you to create widgets for facebooks, MySpace, blogs, etc. Of the few sites I have seen, most of the widgets that I created were rather simplistic. However, over at
iWidgets, they seem to have a more sophisticated approach. I just started playing with it, but it looks quite good.

If you want to create a widget, it’s worth your while to check it out.