This weekend was apparently a book buying weekend. These kinds of
splurges arent exactly helping me save money, but alas.

Picked up a book
by Tom Friedman. Very cool. I
kept seeing stuff he did in various contexts and thinking “remember that name and look it
up” but I kept forgetting. His style kind of reminds me of what Andy Goldsworthy would
do if he grew up in a American suburb instead of rural Scotland.

Also picked up the new Henry Petroski book Small Things Considered. It’s an overview of various
informal design processes, with common everyday examples. It’s similar to The
Evolution of Useful Things, but driven by discusion of the design process
with common everyday examples used as examples, instead of vice versa. Pretty
interesting read so far.

Another used purchase was a book called “Weather Modification”. That is in
fact, about modifiying the weather. Lots of discussion around the office
a few weeks ago about potential ways to stop or modifiy hurricanes and
other storms (impending hurricanes tend to do that…). And if nothing
else, it’s add a bit of credibility to my stock answer for whenever someone
asks about something work related I can’t talk about, aka “were building
a weather machine…”.

Headed over to badger‘s place sunday to play for a while. Much
noise was made in an attempt to scare away the crowd that had decided to
picnic in badger’s backyard (no kidding). Of course, it wasn’t till we started
the soft pretty ambient stuff till they left.