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.

The other examples in the Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness are amusing, but this one should be a puzzle: what did the makers intend to say? Prythee, get out your thesaurus!

I am reading (and quite enjoying) the book Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan. He has useful non-rat related information in his book about Milwaukee (a town that has historically been ahead of the rat-control curve).

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I don’t know if any of these outfits would actually solve the problem of people looking at your chest instead of your face, but it is sort of fun to see the different fashion options.

Cool list of names for alchemical substances, neat!

The Perseids are expected to be extra good this year. Just right for setting up a hammock in the back yard and watching the fireworks.

Here’s the official list of the sorts of people New Zealand wants- do you have what it takes to be a Kiwi?