Everyone knows that my favorite time of the year is Fall and Winter. I just saw this article about a new “Ice Bar” in London. It’s a bar made entirely of ice. It’s an offshoot of a really cool (no pun intended) Ice Hotel in Lapland, Sweden.

I saw the hotel on a Discovery Channel show last year. I’d love to visit it someday! BTW, I just noticed that the show is going to be on again this year on 18 October at 1pm EST.

You’ll be seeing more posts in the coming days that go on about fall and winter things since I’m so happy that the cool weather season is beginning.

I mentioned before that I started using Google Sitemaps to give my site better representation in Google’s search results. I thought I’d give you an update on my experience so far.

First, my site is getting crawled more often. However, I don’t know how often because my webhost apparently is having a problem keeping my site logs working. But based on the reports from Google, the site is getting crawled. I’ve added some new HTML to the site that allow Google to find more of my pages.

However, the results have been kind of odd. Many of my pages have been turned into supplemental reults and now some are going URL only. I’ll keep you posted on whether this problem works itself out as Googlebot crawls my site more!

Take a look at this new keyboard. It’s a prototype called the Optimus. It uses OLED screens on each key to make it infinately customizable. You can make the keyboard display specific keys for any application.

Check it out at Gizmodo.

Here’s a random fact I just read on Emerils.com. Both the macadamia nut and macadam road surface are named after the same guy, John Loudon McAdam. Yesterday he would have been 249 years old.

You probbaly know that one of my interests is cooking (and eating for that matter). There aren’t a lot of good food podcasts out there but this one isn’t bad. KCRW is an NPR station in Santa Monica, CA. As you would expect from an NPR station, it tends to be dry at times, but that’s the beauty of a podcast. You can fast forward through those parts.

Good Food covers a wide range of topics from restaurants, to chefs, buying tips, etc.

Check out their site at http://www.kcrw.com/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?show_code=gf&tmplt_type=Program
(The entire KRCW site is pretty hard to navigate and not all that user friendly. But again, there’s the beauty of podcasts… you never really have to visit the site!)
The feed is at http://kcrw.com/podcast/show/gf

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy also has a second podcast. It’s a commentary on each week’s episode.

Their site is still http://www.bravotv.com/Queer_Eye_for_the_Straight_Guy.
Subscribe to the feed at http://www.bravotv.com/Podcasts/QE/Episodic.xml.

I’m sure you’ve probbaly heard of the show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on Bravo. It’s an entertaining show. Now they have a podcast as well. Each week they release a podcast of the “Hip Tips” that they give at the end of each episode.

Their site is at http://www.bravotv.com/Queer_Eye_for_the_Straight_Guy/
The feed address is http://www.bravotv.com/Podcasts/QE/Hip_Tips.xml.

A lot of news happens in Washington, DC. It only stands to reason that a DC station would bea good place for news. WTOP is a huge station that broadcast on 4 frequencies in DC. Their “liveshots” podcast includes pieces that were broadacast on their station. This includes both news and commentary on topics of national and international interest. Like any radio station, they do also throw in a small amount o flocal items.

Their site is at www.wtop.com.
The feed is http://www.wtop.com/rss/wtop_liveshots.xml.

Maybe it’s because I used to work in the office supply industry, but I thought this article was pretty cool.

BIC Sells 100 Billionth Pen

Personally, I still think the original BIC Stic is one of the best pens ever made. I’ve used $250 pens, and I still prefer my $0.12 Bic Stic Grip. I can buy 2083 of them for the cost of a Mont Blanc.

Never let it be said that I don’t give fair time to those who have differing opinions. In this C|Net article shows that at least one security expert at Microsoft thinks that writing down your passwords is a good thing because people know how to keep written documents secret. It’s an interesting theory, but I still stand by my opinion that you should not write down passwords.

You can read my opinion on the matter in Michael’s Guide to Choosing Passwords.