The modern master of horror tells you, in about ten minutes, everything you need to do to be a successful writer. I like it so much I’ve squirrelled a copy away. I find the comments at the end especially telling, though: the person hosting the page demonstrates, with his words and his meaning, that he has entirely missed at least two of the points of King’s treatise.

Tired of checking your gmail several times a day, especially if you have to go clear out the google cookies so they don’t tie your searching behavior to your mail? The Gmail Notifier will make your life a little easier, then.
So far, it’s Windows (2k/XP) only, but they say Mac and Linux versions are on the way.
Unfortunately, it uses the system "New Mail" sound, so there’s no way to have it unambiguously audibly inform me of my gmail.

A lovely idea, not very well executed: The Victorian sex cry generator.

There was a fairly shifty guy in the library today asking what companies in the US manufactured certain chemicals, and asked that I help him find a company that made, oh just for example, hydrochloric acid. As an upstanding patriotic American, I feel I must arm non-shifty types with the same information. (Don’t you wish other patriotic [or at least patriotism-claimants] felt the same way about information?)

OPD Search
Chem Channels

and just because I like them, I’ll add IMEX– Mister Shifto was not interested after I got him one listing. Bah.

Yes, the shiny gadgets are quite nice, but I especially like the writing on Gizmodo. Extra points for Zombie Thoreau.

I’m not totally sure I understand how to read these lovely burr-like maps, but they sure are entrancing.

Yesterknits is a pretty neat repository of old knitting patterns, but darn it, as a thrifter, I just can’t see paying $5-10 for reproductions of single patterns when I could spend years of my life trying to track down the original booklet! OK, maybe I should just cough up, but not yet.

This actually happened yesterday, but one of the friends to whom I sent the story recommended I share it with the world, so here it is:

So, the receptionist comes into my office (actually, she stood in the window beside the door to my office) and asks “Are you squeamish?” I suggest that’s too broad a question, and she asks me to come with her to look at something, and says something about “fish”. So I follow her, and outside the lunchroom door there’s a fish on the floor. The only fish tank in the office is a couple doors down, but on closer examination there are little droplets on the carpet. The fish is looking very departed, but I’m sure that if I touch it, it’ll twitch, and I’ll jump and/or scream. So she finds me the dustpan and some napkins, and I slide it onto the one using the other, and it doesn’t twitch as violently as I expected, but there is some movement, so I drop it into the fish tank, and it just hangs there, but then it moves a little, and looking closely I can see some gill movement. But still, it’s just hanging there, not moving other than the breathing. But when I close the lid, it flips into action, swimming around briefly for real. I don’t think it really wants to live (it did, after all, push open the lid to escape), but at least I’ve given it the opportunity if it changes its mind.

Rather than having to carry your SecurID around, why not put it on the web? As security god Bruce Schneier says in this week’s Crypto-Gram, "Here’s the strange thing: unless you know who the webpage belongs to, it’s still good security." Coming soon to a site near you?

Ever wonder what you’d look like if you were dead, embalmed, frozen, and then neatly sliced with a bandsaw? No? Well, it’s a good way to visualize anatomy, anyway.