Pure genius in design.

Yesterday Wendy made nian gao for dessert to follow a night of hotpot.  As we bit into the chewy-soft goodness, we noticed there were a disproportionate amount of edge pieces.  Turns out it's because she used this ingenious device our old roomie Teresa gave her, otherwise known as an edge brownie pan.  It's designed especially for people who are always fighting for edge pieces which tend to be chewy and crisp, rather than ooey, gooey and somewhat shapeless.  I just looked it up online and found one on amazon.  It's just brilliant.  Thanks to Wendy for the recco, and Teresa for finding it in the first place =)

Google announces www.lively.com

I don't know quite what to make of it, but it seems to me one of the most far-fetched ideas to come out of Google Labs (Street View being another, but that turned out to be pretty freaking awesome, and useful too).  I never really understood why people took other 3-D web ventures like Second Life so seriously (even after I tried it--but that's another blog post).  I wonder if Niniane, the engineer who dreamed this up as a 20% project, knows something the rest of us don't.

Anyway, fat chance getting to play around with it, as it crashed my Acer, and I couldn't figure out how to customize my avatar, and I couldn't figure out how to even control where I was looking or where I was walking in the "Goth Island" room I somehow found myself in.  If I ever get it working again, it might be fun to use it to practice my home decorating skillz in building a room.

As another user put it: "It seems to be a bad copy of Second Life. Somehow all the rooms are crowded, and porn has made its way in there already."

Posterous is on AdWords!

Only running right now on branded keywords, but expect keyword expansions soon.  Hurrah!

UPDATE: If you are curious and want to see the ad in action, please don't arbitrarily search on the keyword 'posterous' unless you are going to click on the ad.  All those impressions are killing the quality score, yo.

Two amazing products you need to try NOW.

This is what I do instead of elbowing my way through throngs of high schoolers trying to watch Wall-E on opening night (which, mind you, I am dying to see).

Amazon MP3 Downloads

I'm amazed that this doesn't get more press/hype.  For those of us who have a shred of moral fiber (just a shred) in us and prefer to buy music legitimately, I don't know why anyone uses iTunes when they can get DRM-free mp3s from Amazon.  Plus, every Friday they put out 5 CDs for $5.  Last week I bought 'Raising Sand,' a collaboration between Alison Krauss and Robert Plant.

And, the Wii Fit

I just went over to some friends' house to play it after they have been raving about it for weeks.  It is so cool.  You stand on this balance pad that can (very precisely) detect where your center of balance is and it guides you through four types of exercises: Aerobics, Yoga, Strengthening, and Balance.  Lots of fun games and things that really--no, seriously--give you a workout.  It can calculate your BMI and set a target BMI for you to reach within a set number of weeks.  Also I learned that I'm quite unbalanced--my right side is much weaker than my left.  I'm considering getting a Wii just so I can play Wii Fit.