Everyone dreams of changing the world...

Where do CEOs go for professional development? Vistage. Or you could just read what's offered by 800 CEO Read.com. You can get stock icons for your web or software applications from IconDock. Help your gamer keep clean with Digital Soaps. Are you mad like me that you don't already have a flying car? Revisit future dreams of the past with this collection of space age illustrations. On the other hand, you could have an Antonov AN-225, the world's heaviest jet. What can you do with rare-earth magnets? Apparently, quite a bit: introducing the NeoCube. The folks at Fort Worthology present this slideshow of The Avenue of Light, a new public art work being installed on Lancaster. If you're a mystery buff, take a look at this list of bizarre disappearances. While we're on lists, here's the top 11 weirdest burgers.

What could be better than a new barbeque restaurant in town? Who wouldn't enjoy trying a new take on brisket, ribs, and sausage, especially one with a award-laden track record? Well, that was the promise when Cowboys Barbeque & Rib Co. opened in the former Railhead location in Colleyville. However, a recent Saturday night dinner resulted in the least pleasant dining experience in memory. First, the layout of the restaurant is awful. Over half the tables are in the bar and those in the main dining area are hapharzardly arranged. In fact, some tables were so close together that it would impossible to have people sitting back to back. There was absolutely zero atmosphere in this place. On the topic of the wait staff, to call our waitress' service perfunctory would have been an exaggeration of grand scale. On the other hand, we did get to hear another waiter repeat his stale, faux-friendly banter at each of his tables - because you can easily hear every conversation at every other table. Regarding the food itself, if your idea of good brisket is a little meat infused with copious gelatinous globules of fat then this place is for you. Even the chicken in the fajitas didn't taste like chicken. And when they hand you your plate and caution you because it's hot, don't worry - the plate and food were barely lukewarm. If they're not out of business in 3 months, the city should just close them as a public service.

Need more bacon? Try bacon stuffed waffles and more. More Mac than you can handle: Macworld, Mac|Life, MacTech. E.gg Timer might be useful. IntegrityWare will be incorporating VBSpline's NURBs library into their products (not to be confused with T-Splines). If you know what a penumbral lunar eclipse is, you'll like these pictures. Engrish is funny in a guilty kinda way. But their English is still better than my Japanese. Do not click here.

...yet no one thinks of changing themselves. -- Leo Tolstoy

Freedom is nothing else...

Here's another blog about startups and related topics: A Smart Bear. This flickr set is about letter monsters, a fun alphabet designed to help a child learn his ABCs. Web site for the upcoming book, Foundations of Applied Mathematics. CSPD, the Center for Student Professional Development, is where to go to hire students from Rice. You can download the models used in the book Level of Detail for 3D Graphics. You can buy furniture at Weir's. ProgRock Records is where to go to get your favorite progressive rock.

The movie The Fifth Element makes me smile every time I watch it. The story is fresh (I love the Mondoshawans), the acting is good (Gary Oldman is great), there's a lot of humor (You want some more?), the pace is vigorous, but what ties it all together for me is the soundtrack which is so wonderfully integrated into the film it is absolutely seamless.

Drink your beer from a glass and a bottle with Hopside Down. A little too late for Valentine's Day, but you can still enjoy making a word heart. Zen Habits is a blog about setting and achieving goals. And yet another blog about personal productivity, this one by David Seah. When in Syracuse, have yourself a burger and a beer at Zebb's. Or just have the beer by checking out Syracuse Beer Week. Sycode just released some software that lets you convert a polygonal mesh to a solid model. Everything you ever wanted to know about Pac-Man is in his dossier.

...but a chance to be better.

Love looks not with the eye, but with the mind...

Donald Norman, Geoffrey Moore, and others will be speaking at the Business of Software 2009 in San Francisco on 09-11 November. David Allen, author of Getting Things Done and Making it all Work, is the personal productivity guru. His GTD philosophy is incredibly useful and popular, as evidenced by these web sites (and many more like them): GTDtimes, GTD, and this list of the top 10 GTD sites. Official web site of the Florida-based band Shinedown. KNTU 88.1 FM is the Jazz radio station of the University of North Texas. Online home of artist Etherbrian. Peter Cohan's Great Demo! blog. Traveling abroad on business? Consider these business culture guides from Executive Planet. There's a fan club for everything: the Pancake Appreciation Society. If you're an entrepreneur, check our Darmesh Shah's blog, On Startups. All you knitters might be interested in the Museum of Odd Socks.

Yet another way to decorate your web site: Ninjafy. Git yer groove on with these mashup sites: Mashup Industries, Ziggy Stardust remixed, and Mysplice III. Can't decide if this is for knitters or bacon fan boys: knitting bacon. What is it with odd collections and museums this week? Visit the Banana Museum. The School of Visual Arts in NYC offers this reading list for interaction design. (I've read 4 of the 21 books. So little time.) Get your art history online from smarthistory. CD-adapco has created an online resource center for vehicle simulation (registration required). This is why I'm fat. Is Wolfram's MathWorld really the web's most extensive math resource? You too can crochet this nintendo comforter. If you're not satisfied with the fast food in this country, you can try fast food of the world. Or maybe this is why I'm fat: bacaroni with cheese.

...and therefore is winged cupid painted blind.

The future is not a destination to be found...

If you need any electrical work done, give TLC Electrical a call. The burgers at Freddy's Frozen Custard are better than the ones at Steak n Shake. I was in the last class at my high school that had to learn how to use a slide rule, but not these nuclear slide rules. Put a Swift Wind Turbine on your roof. HydroSed2D is an open-source, two-dimensional numerical model for hydrodynamics and sediment transport on unstructured mesh. The folks at Juice Analytics are experts in the analysis and presentation of business information and share their ideas on their blog. Here's an old but still relevant blog post from Joel on Software about how to demo software.

Can't read or write Cyrillic? Fake it. When you have to know for sure, use this guide to How To Spot a Canadian. Convert text to music. D-Pad Hero is Guitar Hero for the NES. The Scat Jazz Lounge is the place for live jazz in Fort Worth. Add unicorns and rainbows to any web site with Cornify. Find the #1 song on any date using flashback charts. (On my birthday it was Johnny Angel by Shelley Fabares. Coincidence? I think not.) Ever wonder what the 20 worst foods are? Wouldn't reading all 100 of these productivity blogs be counter-productive? The Business of Software conference will be held 09-11 November 2009 in San Francisco.

...but rather a path to be created.

No sky, no earth...

Who's ready for lunch? Here's a list of the top 10 sandwiches. Like beer? Read BeerAdvocate. This C-3PO flash drive is the perfect gift for your Star Wars geek. When the situation calls for it, yodel. The Open Design Alliance released a new version of DWGDirect. Visualization Library is open-source C++ middleware based on OpenGL. SalesEngineering.com has a blog. Free-CFD is an open-source CFD software initiative. The official web site of jazz legend John Coltrane. Document your C++ code using Doxygen. What day is it?

Metacomp announced the release of CFD++ version 8.1.1. Now this is something special: BBQ sausage. All the news that's fit to eat: Bacon Today. I've always wondered how they draw the yellow line on the football field and this video partially answers that question. Need tips on dining in Fort Worth? Look no further than FW Foodie. The 10th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics (USNCCM) will be held in Columbus, Ohio on 16-19 July. The MeshTrends VII symposium will be held in conjuction with USNCCM10. Paul Davis is a dentist. LXR is a software tool for indexing and presenting source code repositories.

...but still snowflakes fall.

We hate most in others...

Pragmatic Marketer magazine (a very good magazine if you're into that kind of thing) will no longer be available in print but only online. You never know when you'll need to tie a pocket square. And I'm certain this Planet of the Apes font will come in handy someday. Hopefully this display of cool logos will inspire the graphic designer in you. Here are some free background pattern generators for your web site from CSS Tea. Six Revisions shares with us these really useful web tools. You can use iSEEK to find CAD models from all over the internets. Watch the hours slip away while you spend time on YouTube's Monty Python Channel. When in Texas, be sure to Visit San Antonio.

Need missiles? Call MBDA. What's new in PolyWorks, 3D scanning software from InnovMetric? Nikon's Small World is a contest for photomicrography, otherwise known as taking pictures of small things. If stellated rhombic dodecahedrons get you all frothy, you'll love the Yoshimoto Cube. This list of bizarre programming languages wouldn't be as funny if it wasn't so close to the truth. When in College Station, listen to KANM. The gallery of animation legend Chuck Jones (Bugs Bunny, The Dot and The Line, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and on and on) now has a blog. Tell time with bacon. The top 100 blogs for software developers (I've been reading the top site, Joel on Software, for years now). Distene, makers of MeshGems, has redesigned their web site.

...that which we fear in ourselves.

Nothing either good or bad...

Discover magazine offers their list of the top 100 stories of 2008. Read about how Dell and HP support HPC. Watch the video "Radiation" by Eddie Jobson's new band, UKZ. See what's up at the University of Wyoming's CFD Lab. Om Nom Nom Nom. I won't be having a chelada any time soon. Or a chocolate beer for that matter. Integrity Ware introduced EXLib, a multi-threaded tesselation engine. ESI Group announced the acquisition of CFD consulting firm Mindware. Proof that butter can be stored unrefrigerated.

In a move that strains credibility, PETA has decided to rebrand fish as "sea kittens" in a pathetic attempt to evoke sympathy. Of course, PETA sees this rebranding as "obvious." There's even a "save the sea kittens" web site. Please, someone tell me this is a vast joke, that Ashton Kutcher has punk'd all of us. I would be thrilled to learn that this is simply an exploitation of my gullibility. This is so blindingly stupid that I am forced to respond in kind. PETA = People for the Eating of Tasty Animals. If god didn't want us to eat animals, why'd he make them so damn tasty?

Back to our regular inanity. Katy is an artist who cooks. Z89, the beat of Syracuse. ("Good morning, Syracuse! John Roberts and Scott Stevens with you. J-P-Z time - bing bong - 5 minutes past the big hour of 1 a.m.") You can cross stitch this Zelda map. Know your cheese. Here's a big map of the Star Wars universe. Find out who's hosting a site. Get rid of your ouchies with Debacterol. SolidWorks World will be held 08-11 Feb 2009 in Orlando. This list has all the formats supported by Acrobat 3D. Comic book styling of Mario and Luigi. Bacon vodka is more proof of the perfectitude of bacon. The Big Picture presents the earth. SparkMaker is an Excel plug-in for creating Tufte's sparklines. How to visualize large tree structures. 3DxLabs is a look inside developments at 3Dconnexion.

...but thinking makes it so.