Soldier Ant 

Built on the Google Maps API, here's a handy little map of cell phone towers in Columbus. (Your city is probably available too.)

I spent the better part of the day today at Mom and Dad's, in Zanesville, and it was the perfect relaxing Sunday that I needed after a (somewhat hectic) week of business travel. Restful, quiet, cool. LeeAnn dropped me and the dogs off with them, then continued on to a bridal shower further down the road. (Deep into the heart of the cell-phone reception void that's also known as 'Southeast Ohio.')

Lemme tell you, you've never truly relaxed until you've napped at my parent's house. On the ride home with LeeAnn, I figured out why -- because my mother is such a polite person, she will never, ever try to wake you up! Now, don't get me wrong -- my wife is generous with my napping allowance, god bless her. I'll lay down 'just for 20 minutes' and she'll let me go the full hour.

But juxtapose this with a nap at my parents.. There I'll lay down with nary a mention of my intended wake-time. And my parents will just let me sleep. FOREVER. Seriously -- it's entirely up to me to decide when I wake. (Okay, me and the 70-some lbs of 2 dogs piled onto me on the couch.) There's just something about a completely unbounded napping opportunity that I haven't really been able to enjoy since I was, oh.. 17 years old or so. Since when I lived with my parents.

Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has a nice online exhibition, Picturing Business in America:

You’ve probably seen them. Maybe you’ve wondered about them. First invented in 1979, The Wall Street Journal’s distinctive portrait heads, known as “hedcuts” or “dot-drawings” have attained the status of an American icon, readily identifiable with one of the country’s best-known business publications.

... if I ever worked out, that is. gMap Workout Tracker overlays GPS routes onto a Google map, with nice timeline visualization, to boot.

Buffy's Nicholas Brendon will be on Fox's Kitchen Confidential this fall, and here's a cute, if pointless, red-carpet interview with him and Seth 'Oz' Green. (Scroll down and click on the video link.) The same page has mention of David Boreanaz's crime-drama Bones which, for some odd reason, I am looking forward to. (I know, I know -- like teevee really needs another hour-long forensics procedural crime-drama.)

And where am I getting all this Buffy-ana of late, you may ask? Why from Whedonesque, the 'Joss Whedon weblog', which one should not mistake for being Joss Whedon's weblog, cause it ain't. About him, not by him. Got it?

Since Bradley was kind enough to gift me one of his free Flickr Pro accounts, I feel compelled to cull through his photos from time to time, and add tags. (I've been surreptitiously tagging all my friends' photos lately.. a 'blue' here or a 'dogs' there. I hope y'all don't mind.) So I spent a couple of minutes today picking back through all of Braddle's "spot the critter" photos. (One of my favorite recurring features of his photostream.)

water sprint, originally uploaded by noahstone.

Man it's been a hot summer.

So I think I'm taking the day off on Friday, and taking LeeAnn to the Ohio State Fair, just to take a 3- or 4-minute beatdown from Matt "Zyos" Leto, World Halo Champ. (Whom I have blogged about before.) I can't wait to see LeeAngry square off. You win something if you can get 3 kills off of him (to his... what.. 25 or 50.) I'll report back on Friday.

So what the hll? Why are "wb 2.0" companies suddnly dropping the 'e's from thir nams? Latst spotting in th wild.. Talkr. Flickr, I love ya, but I'm putting this one squarly on your doorstp.

Here's a nice several-page feature on the design process for the new XBox 360 user interface. (Actually, the process bits are pretty non-fascinating, but there are teensy screenshots! Whee!)