Penmachine

• Photo sharing site Flickr has these new Gallery things.
• Homemade stratosphere camera rig goes sub-orbital to 93,000 feet (18 miles). Total cost? $150.
• Suw Charman's life is "infested with yetis."
• AIS is the way that commercial ships and boats report their near-coastal positions for navigation. The Live Ships Map uses AIS data to show almost-real-time positions for vessels all around the world. Zoom in and be amazed.
• Strong Bad Email #204 had be laughing uncontrollably. Make sure to click around on the end screen for the easter eggs.
• Julia Child boils up some primordial soup. Really.
• Funky bracelets made from old camera lens housings. Nerdy, yet cool.
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 8: most of the cool features, about 85% cheaper than regular Photoshop.
• Vancouver's awesome and inexpensive Argo Cafe finally gets coverage in the New York Times.
• When people ask me to spell a word out loud, I notice that I scrunch up my face while I visualize the letters behind my eyelids.
• Via Jeff Jarvis: in the future, if politicians have nothing embarrassing on the Net, we'll all wonder what it is they're hiding and why they've spent so much effort expunging it.

Labels: cartoon, evolution, flickr, food, linksofinterest, marine, photography, politics, restaurant, science, software, vancouver, web

For my degree in Marine Biology (UBC 1990), I specialized in marine invertebrates, and wrote one pretty good paper on giant squid. Most of my studies actually involved echinoderms and cnidarians, but today I'll indulge in my soft spot for squids, octopuses, cuttlefish, and others honoured on International Cephalopod Awareness Day.

Oh, and it's also Canadian Thanksgiving: we're having a big family party tonight. No cephalopods will be served. We're just doing the usual turkey thing.

However, let's be thankful for the cephalopods. Like us, they are big-brained, smart, agile, and dextrous. In so many other ways, though, they are so unlike us that if they didn't exist, we might not be able to imagine them.

UPDATE: PZ Myers posts lots of links about the day at his blog.

Labels: family, food, holiday, invertebrates, marine, science