Why spend any time outside today when you can keep your skin pasty white by remaining hunched over your computer indoors for hours at a time? Here, let me help:

• “Around 1452 the first operational printing press was created, followed in 1799 by lithographic printing. Now, these inventions are reflected in the world’s first bacterial printing press.” (New Scientist, via Slashdot).
• Fashion reporter Stephanie Rosenbloom addresses “the plight of the Google-ee.” Oh, the hearbreak! (NY Times).
• “80 Years of The New Yorker to Be Offered in Disc Form” for $100 (NY Times). Of interest to local readers: “In early 2004, two staff members drove two copies of each issue of the magazine to Kansas City in a rented truck to have them digitally scanned.”
• “A filmmaker who has been collecting digital artifacts for 25 years is amassing the world’s largest collection of podcasts” (Wired).
• Liz finds Dance Dance Revolution to be an excellent way to get fit.
• I have no idea what’s going on in cartoonist Carol Lay’s latest arc (click “next” starting with this one), but it’s kind of compelling.
• Professional indie rock f’ups, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, will go on tour this summer, hitting London a few days after I arrive, conveniently enough. You can legally download a ton of their music for free from their website and relive the band’s multi-year implosion by renting the documentary DiG!.
• Sharon Howard kicks the ass of all previous History Carnivals. (Cliopatria)
• Map your Flickr photos (FlickrBlog).
• Download “This American Life” installments instead of streaming them.

Our HP Laserjet 1000 is incompatible with our Powerbooks, though it works with our creaky old Gateway that may not be long for this world. It’s a great and reliable little printer. Does anyone in Kansas City want to buy it?

What recommendations do you, dear reader, have for a new printer that works with Apple computers? Something with Bluetooth capability, perhaps? Or does that add too much to the cost?

Update: What about the HP PSC 1610 All-in-One? Only $129 and it prints, copies, and scans, though it has no built-in wireless. Is buying an “all-in-one” asking for trouble?

Ethan and Vika considering fish,
originally uploaded by Jill.

I am in love with Flickr, now. I only have a free account, but even the free account allows you to do so much. For example, here’s a photo that Jill just posted of Ethan and Vika. I logged into my account, checked to see what recent photos have been taken by people I’ve chosen as contacts, and from within the Flickr interface I can post to my blog, which is what I’m doing now. There’s also a plugin for iPhoto that allows you to export easily to Flickr.

Now this I find very interesting.

[T]hese museum guides are an outgrowth of a recent podcasting trend called “sound seeing,” in which people record narrations of their travels – walking on the beach, wandering through the French Quarter – and upload them onto the Internet for others to enjoy.

There are many things to remember fondly about the ’80s and bring back in an ironic or semi-ironic fashion. Polo shirts with the collars flipped up are not among them. Just. Stop it. If not for yourself, for the children.