Odda and Ends #3

A. Ever considered what birds would do if they had arms? Well, someone has.

2. The Peoria (IL) Chiefs minor league baseball team is honoring the Chicago Bulls NBA Championship teams from the 1990's at tonight's Midwest League game against Wisconsin. According to the Chief's website, "There will be video clips of the Bulls titles along with audio highlights and trivia while the team will take the field to "Sirius" by the Alan Parsons Project."  Team officials were looking for some pregame giveaway that would highlight the evening without adding too much expense. Their solution: LeBron James 2011 NBA Championship Replica Rings. "There seem to be a lot of those available now cheap", they said. In addition, the team has petitioned the league to skip the fourth inning. "We aren't sure if the league will allow it," said team President Rocky Vonachen. "But if LeBron doesn't need to show up for the fourth, maybe we won't either." Pretty harsh, but there is nothing quite like Minor League Baseball promotional marketing. 



III.  The Guardian has posted their choice of the best 100 non-fiction books ever written here, It includes

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (my favorite math book of all time)

Walden by Henry David Thoreau and

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (everybody's favorite physics book.

Fill in your summer reading with a good book today. 



Last.

This is the USB Aquarium, available here.  It runs off the USB port on your computer. Read their description. It sums it up very nicely.

If you're like most geeks, your work environment can be a depressing and sterile place. Designed to crush your soul to squeeze the last few ergs of energy out of each and every wageslave, grey walls, grey carpeting, and anemic flickering fluorescent lighting all combine into something truly evil. Unfortunately, you've got bills to pay, so you punch in every morning and punch out every night feeling a little more dead with each passing day.
You'd love to have some kind of decoration - some bright point of color and light in your otherwise dreary existence, but the cube-police won't allow it, citing some bogus OSHA regulation or something. Something to do with not being allowed to plug personal items into the power outlet. If only there was some unregulated power source - electricity that even they couldn't complain about.
What if we told you that you could have a pencil cup with a nice bright LED light to illuminate your workplace powered entirely by USB? "Boring," you'd probably say, and we would agree. What if we threw in a nice clock and calendar and temperature sensor? "Better," you say, "but still not amazing." Okay, how about if we play soothing sounds of nature designed to calm your frazzled nerves. "For reals?" We're not done yet.
You get all that PLUS we throw in a real working fishtank so you can keep a couple aquatic friends with you while you work. "Whut?" you say, head cocked at a quizzical angle. No, we're absolutely serious. We've found a low-voltage USB fishtank that runs ENTIRELY off of your computers built-in USB power. Plug it in, fill it with water, and drop (gently) a betta or a couple of white-cloud minnows inside, and watch as they swim and dart about, happily frolicking on your desk! (Granted with beta fish there's less frolicking and more floating in catatonia, but you get the idea.)

A must have for your office or den. I'm ordering one now for the computer room before Ann has a chance to see this blog post and stop me. Do they make any sharks that small? Here fishy fishy.