Nashville Confidential: Scientists discover proof of life on Mars.

I drove Sutter and Shellen to Lake Tahoe for our Google ski trip. That's me on the right. No, I don't usually drive with my eyes closed. On the trip: I snowboarded. Wiped out. Drank whiskey (neat). Slept soundly. Then drove back. Shellen took some pictures with his phone. it was a good time but hard work. I'm now permanently settled into my bean bag in front of the TV drinking some cheap wine and watching Web of the Spider Monkey on TiVo. I'll move when its time to sleep. Then I'll work all weekend on book stuff. Sound good? Sound "hip 'n cool?" Nice.

Yes, Noah. I made it down safely. Then I decided to take "one more run" and crashed ribs-first. It hurts to breath.

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Doodz. I'm getting up at 5:30 AM tomorrow to go snowboarding in an undisclosed location three hours north of San Francisco. (It's a work thing.) I have no idea how to get there but Shellen claims he's got it covered. I'm bringing a sandwich in case I fall into a ravine.

Cory Doctorow on digital music formats: "When Sony invented the VCR, it did so after the movie companies had already decreed that they would only license their movies for use on the 'Discovision,' a hunk of shit best forgotten on the trashheap of history."

Fugitive Nabbed Because Of Date's Google Search: "Pettus-Brown's prospective date, whose name has not been released, ran his name through the Google Internet search engine and found an FBI warrant for his arrest. The woman called the FBI and told agents she was meeting Pettus-Brown Friday at about 10 p.m. at an Applebee's restaurant on Long Island. Pettus-Brown was arrested when he showed." And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for all those distributed computers!

Parrot's oratory stuns scientists: "'The more we look at the cognitive abilities of animals, the more advanced they appear, and the biggest leap of all has been with parrots.'"

Are You Atom Enabled?: "So I just discovered that a web site I read from time to time, which has never had an RSS feed available (and believe me, that always pissed me off), actually has an Atom feed."

I'm not religious so I can't really say. But is Cummingfirst.com the best URL choice for a United Methodist Church in Cumming, Forsyth County, Georgia? Maybe when its time to renew they should take some time to rethink. I'd say.

Its funny how Dean's "I Have A Scream" speech aka "The Dean Scream" is called political suicide by your basic news services like TV, radio, and magazines but not so much on the Internet. Yes, there was this initial earthquake in the blogosphere when everyone reacted to media sensation, but then there's a whole bunch of thoughtful aftershocks. Today I read blogs and sites where people were realizing that a spontaneous, impassioned battle cry is not really that big of a deal. In fact, its good. That being said, did you know you can by a Dean Scream Classic Thong? Politics is strange.

Livia's latest book: Artful Bride that she co-authored with two other crafty writer chicks is out in March but on Amazon now. Nice!

Check this out: A (Sad) New Chapter in Blog History:

I fill suckaz all over the blogosphere with dread
walk mean streets these geeks fear to tread
but every now and then I hear footsteps behind me
another small timer like yourself getting grimy
tiny.abstract about to catch a clapback
next time you post about me, watch your trackback

This guy wrote and recorded a blog dis record and its really good. Found it at dashes.

Hey Ya, Charlie Brown. This thing is great.

We just released support for Atom at Blogger which means two things. One, all Blogger blogs now have "feeds" which are all the rage these days. Two, the Atom API means smarty-pants developer types can make cool stuff that works with Blogger. So I wrote What is Atom? after checking with various folks to make sure the information was correct. Read up!

Stavros, The Wonderchicken delivers an impassioned The State of Blogging post and it is good. Damn good.

Help Me, Bubby!: "So, are you looking for advice on food, work, a broken heart, or the perfect bat mitzvah present? But no dirty words allowed or you'll only get one matzah ball." Nice, a 'blog of note' is born.

Nice, keep'em coming! Make your own.

Aerogel is not your everyday foam. It is a special material with extreme microporosity composed of tiny bits measured in nanometers and linked together in a dendritic structure. Crazy. It's also:

• 99.8% Air
• 39 times better than fiberglass insulation
• 1,000 times less dense than glass
• Used on the Mars Pathfinder rover

It's like some kind of amazing techno-fog. I need some.

Here’s some stuff: I saw this ice-covered firehouse on the front page of the New York Times a few days ago at Starbucks and it reminded me that I’m not in New England this winter. Winston Churchill’s parrot is still alive at 104 and it seems like some kind of weird excuse to believe in time travel. (Real-time time travel!) Yahoo! Labs is not as cool as Google Labs, Enterprise might get cancelled, and I’m gonna donate some Blogger goodies to the bloggie winners. (Some links found at: Kottke, Dashes, Blogdex, and Slashdot.)

IMDB macabre: died, 2003.

Found via the recent posts scroller: Rent-a-crowd. "Over the years, I've had orders for people from the parties of two presidents, but I'll work for anyone" This guy arranges mobs for a living. The crowdsters receive a couple bucks and a box lunch before they're loaded onto trucks and brought to the demo site where they wave banners and such all in the name of... whoever.

Cool, SearchGrid "delivers Google results as a table. You enter keywords for the rows and keywords for the columns, and the top result for the combination of the two will be displayed in the grid."

From what I gather, this guy works at JPL and has posted a few mars-related audblog entries. He's also working on an indie film of some sort. But what's with the slow talking? I thought people at JPL were all wired up on caffeine, hashing out all kinds of crazy geek stuff. Cool first-person info if you don't have ADD.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop working and the girl who works here just came over to tell me that the Patriots just won. She saw me in a Red Sox cap one time so she just figured I'd be dying to know. Nice. Go Pats!

Jason Sutter crushed my dream. I had this idea for a new kind of key for unlocking restroom doors in public places that would be totally clean and futuristic. I said, "Hey Sutter. You know those nasty keys tied to big spoons at Starbucks, check out this idea..." And he said, "Stone. People remember to put those keys back because they are so nasty. With your idea, people would steal the key." The kid is a usability genius.

The New York Times on The Web has a Top 25 most emailed articles page (sign-in required) that reminds me of Blogdex.

A Blog About Nothing: "Apparently there are several people I know that seem to think I'm interesting enough to have a blog. So this is my attempt at being interesting." Very interesting. I'll have to make sure I stay up to date on this.

Do you like my blog? You can review Bizstone.com at Amazon.com as well as other blogs and sites. And remember, this is for posterity, so... be honest. How do you feel?

Blog Survey Background: "By conducting an online survey with bloggers, I hope to determine the expectations of privacy and accountability that authors have when they blog."

This interactive panoramic image of Mars is the future of discovery: Distributed Exploration. With thousands of individuals panning, zooming, and otherwise virtually trekking over the martian landscape, somebody is bound to discover something.

This Old House - What happened to Steve Thomas?

Jen Garrett's friends used to email her but now that she has a blog, they think they can skip the direct email and just read her blog. She's not having it: "You have to e-mail me. Now. All of you. I'm going to stop blogging until I get what I want."

Oy vay! It's a yarmulkebra. Somebody is making with the boobies in those kippahs. "No longer are yarmulkes limited to men or heads. You wanted to wear one? Now you can wear two."

I'm trying to work in a Starbucks in the Richmond area of San Francisco right now because Livy had something to do near here and I can't work at home (no furniture, loud neighbor). But it's one distraction after another. Right now, the guy in front of me is hooked up to some kind of noisy breathing machine and before this guy a little kid was saying "hi" to me repeatedly. I think his mom had him set on "loop." Don't be surprised if this stuff makes it into my book somehow.

Genius Labs would like to see web feeds for TiVo. During it's daily call-in, my TiVo could grab the newest posts from my favorite news and blog sites. I could scroll down to "Web Feeds" to read new posts, listen to new audioblog entries, or check out recent mophotos. Maybe my TiVo could recommend more feeds as well as programs that related to the news entries and so forth. Then, I could forward the coolest stuff to my email or my blog.

Ecto is a downloadable blogging app that I am using right now. Cool.

You are too fat to have a Whopper: "Police believe teenage pranksters are hacking into the wireless frequency of a US Burger King drive-through speaker to tell potential customers they are too fat for fast food."

NYT - My So-Called Blog: "They sported tank tops, identical hairbands and identical shiny hair. I walked over to them and asked if they have LiveJournals. 'No,' one said. 'We have Xangas.'"

Blogging community Xanga.com introduces search to generate revenue. Marc says: "It turns out that providing real-time search of almost 55 million blog posts is really hard." The search, currently in beta, includes tabs to specify searches across "Xanga," "Web," and "Users." Web Search results are powered by Inktomi while sponsored results are paid listings provided by Overture Services, Inc .

Here's an idea: A clear lid to my powerbook and some system settings that allow me to adjust the opacity of my desktop so I can see through the lid to watch TV or talk with co-workers face to face.

This online Etch A Sketch is so cool.

Command+p, command+p, command+p.

Ingredients -- What's in the stuff we buy?

Wired News: Blogs Coming of Age in Spain: "This is the year that blogs become a household word in Spain."

These are the names I have given to the most common types of bad haircuts I seem to get. I don’t know what it is about barbers and my hair, other guys walk out of the shop with a regular cut but I get:

1. The Hair Yarmulka
2. The Tennis Ball
3. The Biz Mullett

Right now, I am experiencing a grown-in version of #3 and it is having an effect on my mind. I need to finish this book by the end of January but I just keep wanting to say, “Goddammit woman!” and “I tell you what.” Must... find... barber... shop.

Social Grid will be a free dating service using Google that can handle hundreds of millions of members cheaply. Anyone who has a web page or online profile that can be indexed by Google can be a member. If you don’t have one, they’ll provide you with one. That's some big thinkin'. I like it.

10 Atari Classics in one joystick that you plug into your TV. How cool is that? And it only costs $20 at Amazon. I gotta get me one o' these. Found at Kimbalina.

Daring Fireball: You're Not One of Those Agitators, Are You? I'm with this guy. I like the new iPod mini. I'd like to get one and then hand down my original 5GB iPod to someone else. (via Eric)

I gotta stop audioblogging from the highway on the way home. I sound crazy. Whacked. Loopy. Touched.

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Apple Matters: "Sandy McMurray is a speaker and writer who translates geek speak into plain language. His work has appeared in Time, the Globe & Mail, the Toronto Sun, Report on Business, Profit, and Here's How magazine." Gotta remember to check out this Corante Mac blog every so often.

Daily Star News Editor Steals Web Article and his response to the original author is "Well, if it's on the internet it's up for grabs. You can't copyright anything on the internet." Wow.

Wow. I just realized that if I ctrl+click the text field in Blogger, I can activate spell checking as I type. I guess it's built in to the Mac OS. Nice!

Fontifier is a easy (5 steps) way to turn your own handwriting into a computer font.

Is Petster going to be a clone of Friendster except with cats and dogs and bunnies instead of people? I bet a lot of animal lovers would be really into uploading pics of their animal companions and who their "friends" are (don't people with dogs let them play together and so forth?). The site could be monetized with AdSense for pet products. Also, this would be a good place for animal shelters to post adoptable animals. Friensterizing.

I'm watching This Old House Classics and wondering how it is that this schlubby guy owns this mansion in Manchester-by-The-Sea, MA. His name flashes up on the screen and a quick Google search reveals that he is David McCue of the McCue Corporation and he's rich because of "protective and decorative bumper and shopping cart management systems." Note to self: you should have invented shopping cart bumpers and you would be rich by now.

Is the homelss blogger quitting? "Well, it was quite something, creating this blog, and generating all the attention. I never expected it, but it was fun - I enjoyed it." (Via Blogger Blog)

Friensterizing will be the thing to do in 2004. Friendsterize your TiVo, friendsterize your Netflix, friendsterize your iPod, friendsterize your friends. Wait, they're already your friends. Good God man, it's already happening. Genius.

The Modern Gentleman: A Guide to Essential Manners, Savvy & Vice: "A gentleman is defined by how he carries himself in fairways and stormy climes. A student of the classics and a pilot of the new, he recommends sizzling reads, pays his gambling debts, mans the grill, and curbs his dog. Reserved, flamboyant, or likely somewhere in between, a gentleman's charisma is cultivated, not canned. He fosters an infectious comfort in others as they quietly marvel at his manner and his hats, from the erudite bowler to the plucky fedora."

Doc, Nooo! Eric Stoltz was originally cast as Marty McFly in Back to the Future, but he didn’t act enough like a teenager so at the last minute Michael J. Fox was swapped in. Phew. I don’t want to live in the whacked out dimension where Stoltz is McFly.

Are You A Blogaholic?: "You are a dedicated weblogger. You post frequently because you enjoy weblogging a lot, yet you still manage to have a social life. You're the best kind of weblogger. Way to go!" Nice, the quiz thinks I have a social life.

My first book is a Most Talked About Book of 2003 over at All Consuming. Cool! I will be done with my second book at the end of January and then I can take some time to do something besides drive home from work and work more. I'm looking forward to doing "stuff" in 2004.

What The Net Did Next: "To begin with, the Net will stop being a part of the telephone network. Instead the telephone network will become a part of the net."

The BIG Blog Show: "The official rules are still with the lawyers. Unofficially, the rules will allow 9 bloggers access to a public blog on this website using Blogger Pro."