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Just because I love showering my readers with the oddball minutiae of my life, two mediocre photos of two things I find interesting. On the left is a "putt returner" that we have in the office: a dustpan-ish device shaped to guide a golfball into the kickback mechanism in the center, allowing the not-so-busy executive to practice his putting without stooping over. But two days ago I transformed this device into the ANNOYATRON 5000 by the simple expedient of placing it directly against a wall. A golfball placed in the pan would repeatedly ricochet with a series of satisfying thunks until finally the ball would get diverted (sometimes by pushing the pan back away from the wall with the force of the rebound.)

The idea of making a machine recursive so that it could play itself pleases me. It was also fun to see how many consecutive ricochets I could get.

On the right is a MAC Sports "Anti-Gravity Chair". (It's a little more stable than it looks there, I didn't set it up properly for the photo.) I saw it, or something just like it, in a Brookstone but when I went back to consider purchasing one it was gone. It reappeared at the local CVS, however, and while for a time I balked at paying $60 for a piece of outdoor furniture when I didn't really have a chunk of outdoors to want to put it in, today I splurged and then reclined in it while reading a Superman graphics novel on the concrete landing in front of my apartment building.

It might be the most comfortable piece of furniture I own right now, right up there with other people's Adirondack Chairs that I've so admired in the past. I suspect it might be my best bet for sleeping in if/when my back goes funny again.

This is isn't the first time I've considered using outdoor furniture indoors... one unrealized dream in my old house was to use a corner of its massive "Great Room" to harbor one of those Brookstone hammocks.

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Link on the Moment
Thanks Miller for introducing me to Stuff On My Cat. It's a website with tons of user-submitted photos of cats. With stuff on them.

Those appear to be some very patient and tolerant cats.

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Feature of the Moment
1up.com on the origins of some common game mechanics... I always dig historical views like this. Reminds me that I want to gather some people and 2 extra GBAs for some Zelda: Four Swords one of these days...