In which I take a deep breath and celebrate my successful navigation of two straight days of dawn to dusk meetings... in between which I saw Star Trek and made the Kessel Run :)  And I am now happily back home amongst my family (all asleep except for Reggie, my cat) and happily blogging before sleep...

Want to know what's up?  Well, "UP" is the new Disney / Pixar movie, it is opening the Cannes film festival (the first animated film to have that honor), and according to the pre-reviews I've read, it is great.  This would make Pixar 10 for 10, which is an unbelievable record for a studio.  Wow.  I must say, I can't wait to see it. 

For those keeping score at home: Toy Story, Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monster's Inc, Finding Nemo, Incredibles*, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall-E (from memory, except I couldn't remember Nemo...)

*my favorite, although TS2 made me cry

Oh, great: Earmark transparency takes a step backward.  As Glenn Reynolds notes, worst. congress. ever. 

Ten things you don't know about Hubble.  And now you do!  Plus, pretty pictures... 

Meanwhile, it's make or break time for NASA...  "The results of misbegotten space policy choices over the past decades are finally coming to a head in the new administration. The cans have been kicked down the road as far as possible with regard to when to retire the space shuttle, and the future of NASA’s human space flight program in general and the International Space Station (ISS) in particular. Indeed, we’re reaching a point of no return."  Do we really think using government money for these projects makes sense? 

NASA does do some pretty cool stuff, however, check out these videos of the Shuttle Atlantis launch, in HD... cool does not equate to economically sensible, of course... but cool is good :)  really the videos are amazing, how did they get those camera close-ups of the shuttle when it was seven miles above the Earth?

Cool: Google Chrome extensions draw near.  As soon as there is an Adblock for Chrome, it becomes my daily browser.  Until then, Firefox remains king. 

So Denis Menchov won stage 5 of the Giro, good for him, and good for Rabobank, their first Giro stage win after all these years, and Lance lost three minutes, putting him out of contention.  Levi is still right there however, dangerously, as are Michael Rogers, Ivan Basso, and Carlos Sastre.  Let the sorting continue! 

Tough times indeed: Sony reports $1B loss.  It was across the board, too, not just one or two of their businesses. 

I have discovered that I prefer m.facebook.com (mobile edition) to facebook.com (normal).  It is more like the old Facebook, you can see more/all "transactions", it doesn't seem to employ weird heuristics to decide what to show and what to hide.  Amid all the discussion and controversy it is now apparent that Facebook aren't going back, the new Facebook is what it is, even though some of us don't like it.  This is the price I pay for being an atypical user :) 

Kindle publishing now available to *all* blogs!  Wow, I'll have to do that, so that you can read my blog on your Kindle... stay tuned...