reviewjournal.com -- News: Property sales out of this world: "Back in 1980, Hope was an unemployed ventriloquist facing a divorce and bankruptcy. He had not worked for a year.
That Nov. 22, he was driving his brother's car in Concord, Calif., bemoaning his status in life and thinking that he could be wealthy if he owned a lot of land.
'I looked out of the windshield and saw the moon and said, 'There is a lot of property.' '
In a flash, he remembered something he learned 12 years earlier while taking a political science class at an Oregon college.
His professor discussed the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, signed by all members of the United Nations. Hope remembered that all governments agreed no nation would have sovereignty or control over any of the celestial bodies. "

I'm particularly unsurprised that this man attended an Oregon college. Anyway, he's filthy rich so there you go.

The Regex Coach 0.5.4 - VersionTracker: "The Regex Coach is a graphical application for Linux and Windows which can be used to experiment with (Perl-compatible) regular expressions interactively. It has the following features:
It shows whether a regular expression matches a particular target string.
It can also show which parts of the target string correspond to captured register groups or to arbitrary parts of the regular expression.
It can 'walk' through the target string one match at a time.
It can simulate Perl's split and s/// (substitution) operators.
It tries to describe the regular expression in plain English.
It can show a graphical representation of the regular expression's parse tree.
It can single-step through the matching process as performed by the regex engine.
Everything happens in 'real time', i.e. as soon as you make a change somewhere in the application all other parts are instantly updated. "

Overcoming Writers Block: "Ooof, the nastiest till last eh? All that work and it's still not right. OK, well, for me, some physical exercise to give my brain a break and take my mind off it, followed by, yep you guessed it, a large shot of caffeine and 2 hours at least away from any distraction. (My wife knows the look ;) )
My other trick for this sort of stuff is deep relaxation - I use self hypnosis techniques. It is increadible how your brain can 'take off' after 20 minutes of proper relaxation. Incidentally, it's well documented why as well. The brain needs about 20 minutes of 'rest' every 1.5 to 2 hours (See 'The 20 Minute Break by Ernest Rossi') "

Hypnosis for Writers: "End procrastination
The hypnotic approach to ending procrastination is similar to that for conquering Writer's Block: a combination of rooting out the cause and positive post-hypnotic suggestions. Just as the knowledgeable hypnotherapist talks about 'discomfort' rather than 'pain', you would feed yourself images and words about 'doing it now', 'writing immediately', 'enjoying the process of writing'. You would not give yourself suggestions which include the actual word 'procrastination.' The point is to avoid negative reinforcement.
A useful aid to bucking procrastination is the Psychovisual Therapy video 'Positivity', which puts you into a light hypnotic trance and subliminally offers your subconscious mind encouraging messages about letting go of negativity and taking positive action."

WEEBLOG: Blog teach-in Part I: The Teaching Technical Writing Students: "I decided to begin the class by talking about the Teaching for Technical Writing student experience, since it's the class I was actually in, and I'm extremely interested in the dynamics of the class. "

Jon Krakauer

Ripping DVDs on Mac OS X