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• A history of the character Donkey Kong. I like how Nintendo has characters that last through many generations of video games.
• Speaking of Nintendo, the NES of 1980s fame had some cool pirate stuff made for it--lots of interesting screenshots. And here's an in-depth look at Kart Fighter...an interesting prelude to my favorite Smash Brothers, with all the main characters pounding the heck out of each other.

• Actually, (veering offtopic, and at the risk of stirring up the gospel poem posters here) I recently read a really interesting book review, about people who take a purely literary reading of the traditional Christian gospel. (Which is tough to do, because you have to get rid of all the traditional, deeply implanted but *completely* non-biblical view of heaven and hell and even the omnipotence of God) you have a God of the Jews who has in a sense failed, because of the way he can't get rid of his enemies. So he comes down as man, and declares love thy neighbor,turn the other cheek, I *have* no enemies...anyway, it was interesting.

• Java and Javascript are as different as beer and root beer.

  That beer/root beer thing is useful for word pairs constructed like that.
• Around 1998 or so, I was almost in a car accident when my car spun out after hydroplaning on a nighttime drive down to NYC. I ended up facing the oncoming traffic, which fortunately was a long way off. (I bought a little fuzzy duck head at the next rest-area, figuring I had been somehow blessed and this would be a lucky object, a "safey duck", which now rides in Mo's car.) But anyway, no matter how much life sucks I kind of think but hey...maybe I shouldn't even be here, I could've been kill in my mid-20s, so buck up and appreciate it.

• Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.

• A PDF on Lego engineering. I was never very good at the technical stuff this document covers.

• "Engineering does not require science. Science helps a lot but people built perfectly good brick walls long before they knew why cement works."

  I don't know if that's true or not, or rather how well the idea scales to other situations.
• The radio has started having advertisements for those Toy Hess Trucks. I've always seen these things, but really, never understood the appeal. Helping maintain the energy infrastructure of our nation seems pretty low on the list of "fun".
• Empty train station at night in Portugal, talking about Veronika (who decided I shouldn't come visit her as well that trip) with Baptista, who was tragically in love with his french teacher. I spoke no Portuguese and he spoke very rough English but with the booze and the moonlight it was terrific. --1996 Memory