Q.I. Productions – a wombat, the sink, and how it got there

[W]hat sort of message does Candy Land send to our kids? (And I’m not just talking about all the implicit advertisements for cane sugar products.) It says you are powerless, that your destiny is entirely determined by the luck of the draw, that the only chance you have of winning the game lies in following [...]

The Pompeii Syndrome
by David Rice

This was, I was hoping, my steal of the trip. We were heading home, lugging carry on and two small children through Shannon’s lovely concourse, and we stumbled upon Hughes & Hughes massive sale going on. When I say we stumbled upon it I mean that we’d gotten forewarning of it [...]

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan
[From A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan on Vimeo]

A nice little video someone made showing off just what happens when you lend money via Kiva.org…

My Skills Graph
Take that, Sean. : )

Continuing my hockey/playoff beard analogy from Twitter earlier today, here’re the stats for the week thus far (while I play at being “single dad” with L off in Germany and France from Sunday to Sunday):

Penalty minutes: 0, 0 (impressive that both sides have stayed out of the penalty box, though there’s been a few tears [...]

Turns out I am a baby, I guess:

Had to take that “I’m not a baby, for the love of Pete, please let me switch between apps” option off because I was switching between apps far too much. While I don’t think I’m quite doing NaNoWriMo, I managed to get in a good session of NaChildrensBookWriMo [...]

The Gathering: A Novel
by Anne Enright

The front copy of the novel compares this novel to James Joyce’s Dubliners. High praise… and sort of stock compliments for Irish writers post-dating ole Jamesy. But, as I read through the first half of the book, I kept finding myself agreeing: “Yep,” I would say (inside my head, obviously, [...]

Priest: A Novel
by Ken Bruen

I was expecting, though I can’t recall why, now, to be blown away by Ken Bruen’s tough guy character Jack Taylor.
Well, I wasn’t blown away, which I guess counts as a disappointment. It was a fair enough book, a quick enough read, but it was missing… something.Or possibly it wasn’t missing [...]

Brian (with whom I’ve worked in the past, on paying-job-related activities and he also did the icon for Writer.app (which is why it doesn’t suck like the rest of the Q.I. Software icons…)) has started up a new site called Skip a Lunch…

Skip a Lunch is an idea I had after reading an article in [...]

A very funny little short about an octopus. Two of them. Octopi.

[From oktapodi on Vimeo]