Guardian Unlimited: Westminster Abbey counters Da Vinci Code

Information sheet corrects factual errors in the “theologically unsound” novel. What, nothing about the terrible writing? (“Like mixing oil and Lego.”)

Google Blogoscoped: Creative Spam

Philipp Lenssen has some ideas for how spam could be personalised; some verge on useful. Although “pointing out spelling errors” is ironic, given the terrible spelling in most spam emails…

MediaGuardian: UK chat shows plod along, says Springer

Oh yeah: US chat shows, with their celebrity cronyism, whooping audiences, and incessant product placement, are so much better…

A Gamers’ Manifesto

“The next generation of games will likely play just like this generation. Only shiny.” (via Slashdot)

Google Search: “The Sith Hits the Fans”

Anthony Kaufman: “The ‘shit’ reference is everywhere, making it the favorite pun of headline writers.”

Mind Hacks: Brain freeze and ‘ice cream headaches’

Possibly referred pain, says the BMJ. I tend more to get the throat freeze several of the BMJ responses discuss… (via BoingBoing)

Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker: Factory Tours

Fine chocolate; based in Berkeley; free factory tours. What’s not to like? (via Cooking with Amy)

The Sith Sense: Darth Vader Reads Your Mind

He got my “banana” right. I’m guessing they licensed the 20Q engine. (via Metafilter)

plasticbag.org: On how journalists write about webloggers

Tom Coates dissects an astonishingly snarky Sunday Times article on blogging.

Nature: Life is short in online news

“How long did it take you to find this story?” (via plasticbag.org) I wonder if using an aggregator, like Bloglines, reduces your chances of missing items?

CBS News: Feds Eye Viagra-Blindness Reports

Real life strays into Onion territory. What’s next — hairy palms?

Accordion Guy: My Sister’s Second Choice for the New Baby’s Name

How does he find these things? That’s not a baby, it’s a pedigree dog. (And here’s another “oh, no” name, via Metafilter.)

little. yellow. different.: geekiest gay ever

The Giant Book of Computer Games: “an awful lot of labor to find a fucking wumpus.” I remember this book, although Hartnell’s a pretender alongside Ahl’s 1978 classic.

Wired: Close Encounters of the Worst Kind

“How Steven Spielberg reinvented War of the Worlds in 72 days”… by adding a cute little kid, apparently. Oh dear.

Wired News: Backlash Brews Over Blue LEDs

Ah, poor little rich geeks. Fluff like this is why I don’t take Wired seriously any more.

Ball Park Franks: Free Frank Friday

Memorial Day sends America grill-crazy. Combines well with Safeway’s “buy one, get two free” offer… Oops: no it doesn’t. Different variety of frank. Excess of choice strikes again.

Burningbird: Commonplace

Shelley’s photos of ducks are spectacular.

The Baby Name Wizard: Introducing the Hottest Name in America

“Try typing Kaydence into Yahoo or Google image search — it’s like a national baby convention.”

Abusing Amazon images

Pointless, but interesting, reverse-engineering of Amazon's image URLs.

This Is Broken: Road markings

It would seem that I’m not alone in finding this odd. “Which is better?” The British way, of course.

Jell-O: Official State Snack of Utah

“The mood at the capitol was lighthearted as [Bill] Cosby talked about the wiggly treat…”

New York Times Link Generator

Creates “weblog-safe” links to NYT articles, avoiding their obnoxious register/login kerfuffle.

Whatever: Revenge of the Sith

“As a filmmaker, George Lucas has made the medium what it is today. As a director, he’s not a patch on Michael Bay.”

Staines Mr Men

Hand-painted pedestrian signs in Staines. I obviously didn’t walk around enough when I worked there. (via BoingBoing, but I don’t believe their Siemens legend for a minute…)

BitTorrent goes trackerless

…neatly sidestepping the MPAA’s habit of shutting down tracker sites?

Snopes.com: Eating carrots results in improved vision

False. But the story’s good.

kottke.org: How to order food in a restaurant

Kottke remixes pop-sci. The Blink one is spot-on; on the rest, I’m still waiting for my library holds to come in. I'm not sure how much to trust Freakonomics, though…

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

Oh, but this is good: often funny, but always respectful of the canon. Today’s final entry ties the films’ story arc together neatly and insightfully. Best read from the beginning.

BBC: Queen grants Rolf royal portrait

File under “you couldn’t make it up”. Although she does have a history of controversial — and adventurous — portraiture…

Chronicle: Concord Naval Weapons Station to close

Lots of new development ahead — hope we get some new open space out of it.

Ben Hammersley: XHTML Validator to RSS

Nifty. And despite the title, not just for XHTML: passes through to the W3C Validator, so handles HTML just fine too.

Guinness World Records: Fastest Car Window Opened By Dog

13 seconds, apparently.

Famous for 15 megapixels: No Sh*t Sherlock

“Clearly there’s a very fine line between being a master of forensic analysis and an opinionated old fart.”

Animal Tracks: Mountain Lion

Drawings, photographs, tracking stories.

Animal Track Guide

3-page quick reference: 463Kb PDF.

Python Challenge

Fiendish. Level 7 is an image; off to get PIL.

SFGate.com: America’s passion for burly SUV fizzles

About bloody time too.

BBC NEWS: Labour MPs call on Blair to quit

Wobble wobble. I think it'll be Prescott, not Brown.

My Learn To Cook Book

I remember this book too, as do many posters on Motley Fool. Long out of print, but abebooks has copies from $10 up.

Whatever: Why One Does Not Ask Rhetorical Questions in the Scalzi Household

The punchline is the best bit.

PostSecret

Confessions on postcards: funny, sad, touching, and artistic.

Walnut Creek: Movies Under the Stars

Shrek 2 tonight.

Times Online: A race to the wire as old hand at Morse code beats txt msgrs

gr8 rslt!

Boing Boing: V-TV DAY: WE WON THE BROADCAST FLAG FIGHT!

“Elected lawmakers are not suicidal enough to break their constituents’ televisions.”

JW's Focus How-To: Cabin Filter

Next service, I’m changing this.

RyNck coupons

In for a 45,000 mile service today.

toiletpaperworld.com

Serving the Web, one sheet at a time?

Charmin Mega Roll

Big-ass toilet paper. The demo leaves me none the wiser as to how the Extender works: is it simply narrower?

Universal Feed Parser

Very handy.

furialog: iTunes customisation

Some true, some fantasy, but some good ideas on just how far iTunes scripting could go.

plasticbag: On iTunes and iPods and the data they don't capture...

What if iTunes recorded each time you played a song, not just the last time?

defective yeti: Announcement!

You and me both, pal.

Signal vs Noise: Backpack Launches

If I were more organised, this might be useful.