Jeffrey Zeldman finds a rare pleasure in the much-maligned drop shadow. You go Jeff! Drop shadows are cool. Don’t let anyone tell you differently!

Zim is at training for a month, and I miss the little bugger even more than I thought I would. I got word today that John, the breeder at Shafer Lake Kennels, posted one of Zim’s pictures on his site. The page is here. Scroll down a bit, it’s the one with Jessica in the leaves. And here’s one of the fam, just to hold me over.

Leica, just a month or two ago, were holding the line that a digital rangefinder accepting their legendary “M” lenses was impossible. Then, last week they announced that they were actively working on a “Digital M”, due in two years. Then Epson and Cosina blew everyone away when this showed up under glass at PMA… It took almost 2 whole days before everyone believed that this new digital rangefinder from Cosina/Epson wasn’t just a cruel photoshop joke.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia , in some dictionaries, means an irrational, morbid fear of Friday the 13th. There seem to be several theories as to its origins (the fear, not the word). Most seem to be based on the combination of the number 13 being seen as a “bad” number, and Fridays being the day with the most religious undertones. One prevalent theory suggests it started with the decimation of the Knights Templar on Friday October 13, 1307.

In 1959, after watching her daughter, Barbara playing with paper dolls, Ruth Handler invented the Barbie doll. 351,000 were sold the first year and more than one billion more have been sold since. Oh, and the name of Ruth’s son? Yep, it was Ken. In 1961, Barbie met Ken and they’ve been together ever since. Until now that is. Apparently they’ve split up. What hope do any of us have after this?

I do not have, want, need or understand the desire for any type of Social Network Web Site I don’t even have enough time for my few real friends. Maybe I’m just put off by the fact that I haven’t gotten my Orkut invitation yet.

I usually ignore those all-too-cute forwards that I regularly get , but the following hit so close to home that I thought I’d share. Apologies in advance if you’ve seen it already…. I decide to wash my car. As I start toward to the garage, I notice that there is mail on the hall table. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail

Prediction: The Segway, as mobile as it is, will never go anywhere. I’ve always been a closet doubter, but also secretly hopeful that it would catch on. No signs of that happening yet. According to a Disney turns away visitors on Segways Feb. 9, 2004" href=“http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/02/09/disney.nosegways.ap/index.html">CNN.com article, Disney is turning them away, even when ridden by paraplegics. Maybe disabled folks should ride one of Kamen’s other wheelchairs instead.

When the hell is Kevin going to do a comic bo…. uh, I mean Graphic Novel? I’m sure it’ll be phat!

So far, What To Rent has nailed it with recent recommendations of which movie to rent. There’s also Movielens , which I haven’t tried. Anyone remember Firefly?

From somewhere deep within Slashdot comes this lovely Geek poem… Roses are #FF0000 Violets are #0000FF chown -R you ~/base Translation: “Roses are red violets are blue All my base are belong to you”

Molly Holzschlag writes Integrated Web Design: CSS Beyond the Retrofit at InformIT.com An even greater concern is that many designers and developers have inaccurately but understandably blamed CSS and Web browsers for challenges with CSS. The problem at this point may really have more to do with the fact that important concepts in CSS are not explained to us in clear terms. As a result, what might appear to be a browser bug or a fault of CSS might simply be the result of the way CSS integrates with our HTML or XHTML documents, or how the concepts within CSS are resolving conflicts.