Another fun Flash toy
A USA Today Hot Site, this Flash toy lets you play with fridge magnets at the same time as a bunch of other people. When I visited, someone had spelled out "where are you?" and the rest of us were attempting to spell our cities. It's neat and ghosty and fun. It reminds me of the friendly fridge painting I made a while back. I wanted a fridge that would spell out helpful messages like "You need OJ" or "Please make ice." Looking at it again, I realize I should've given my fridge more letters to work with.

Texty drawings

While looking for environmental websites for work, I found a non-environmental one that's fun to play with. It's called typedrawing, and it lets you create a sketch out of a word or sentence.

Shopping trip thought
If Fry's were a boy, I would want to date him. He would be smart and geeky, and he'd have lots of fun sci-fi stuff in his apartment. (The Burbank store, where I had this idea, is decorated like a science fiction movie. Lots of giant spiders and robots and such.) Fry's-guy would own obscure Japanese videogames and a retro-looking toaster, and just for fun he'd use his mad computing skills to fix my laptop so my wireless card would start working again.

No more blogspot!

Even though I bought the domain name ages ago, I didn't get inspired to change my settings until today.

I also went through and deleted a bunch of old posts that I thought were stupid. (I left a lot of stuff other people might consider stupid, but whatevs! It's my site so I can delete and keep what I want.)

Next up: adding one of those flickr sidebar thingies I've been seeing around.

Yeah, blogging, that's what you should be worried about...
Here's an MSNBC article about parents who freak out when they find out their kid has a blog or is a member of MySpace. Um, in order to use these sites, I'm guessing the kid is spending a bunch of time in front of a computer, safe at home.

Since I write for teens and young girls, I like to read the blogs they write. I've never seen one entry that seemed dangerous, and I've never seen anyone post contact information beyond an email address or IM name. My impression is that young people who are busy composing a hilarious rant about a bad day, posting photos of themselves and their friends, or making silly videos to put online, are not going to feel the need to turn to drugs or violence to make their lives interesting. I wish someone could shake some sense into these parents, so they'd support their children's creative projects instead of shutting them down.

Streaming Seal Cam

A year or so ago, I got rather obsessed with this streaming web cam of a baby panda bear at the San Diego Zoo. But then he got older and lost some of his unbearable (hehe) cuteness, and I stopped watching.



Lately, if I want to see something nature-y and I'm too busy to go outside, I check out the streaming elephant seal cam. You can see a bunch of seals on the sand, listen to their squawky noises and sometimes spot them swimming around in the background. Cuteness-wise, they're no panda baby, but I think the crashing waves make up for the lack of bear.

Fun with PS2
Tonight I was playing Katamari Damacy with my friend (the dizzying two-player way), and we noticed there were some unlocked characters. We decided to try one more game using them. I can't remember what one she was using, but mine was a gray one called Nickel.

A few minutes later, she rolled me up into her ball. I kept moving the controller, but I couldn't get loose. I started yelling at my little guy, "Wiggle, Nickel! Wiggle, Nickel!" Then all of a sudden I realized what I was saying. "Wiggle Nickel" has to be among the strangest things I've ever yelled at a television, and it made me laugh a lot.

If you are thinking of renting or buying the movie The Incredibles, think again. It is straight-up BORING. The characters have super-powers, sure, but they only use them for about the last fifteen minutes of the movie. For real entertainment, play Katamari Damacy instead. And be Nickel.