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Winning, but before a true prize even existed

This year, 2024, marks the 42nd year (should be 43 years in a row since the tournament was canceled in 2020 due to COVID) that I have picked at least one NCAA men’s basketball bracket. I have copies of many of them, including the one from 1981, when I picked my Louisville Cardinals to win the championship. That was the year they lost their first game on a halfcourt shot. Some people might be deterred after that jarring experience, but not me! Then again, I was only 5 when it happened.

Figs are fun

figs are fun

It is really remarkable that after writing online stories for 25 years, I have a topic today that I’ve both never written about and something I know more about than almost anything else.

That thing is figs.

How did we get to this point? My uncle had a fig tree in his backyard, and we lived at his house 16 years ago. Coincidentally, my father-in-law also had fig trees, so when we bought a new house 14 years ago, we accepted a gift of a fig cutting and planted it in an auspicious backyard location.

Book review: "The Genesis Machine" by Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel

Great book that runs the gamut of synthetic biology

The term "natural" used to be substantially easier to apply to basic items like fruit and animals. It is both exhilarating and frightening to consider "improving" genetic material, but humans have a knack for putting their marks on everything imaginable.

Super Recognisers unite!

During high school and college, I worked at Kentucky Kingdom amusement park in Louisville, Ky. Besides battling racuous crowds and the blazing heat, one thing that was interesting to me was trying to keep track of the different people I was seeing throughout the day. As a games attendant (a.k.a. carnival barker), I would attempt to personally say things to people that I saw multiple times, whether at different games or at different parts of the park. This was mostly just a sales tactic, and I think the customers likely thought I was training to have my own magic show.

Knitting

I did this. It is fun.

From the Archive

Princesses

Ava and Lily at a fall festival

By Ava

Once upon a time, there was a princess whose name was Ava. And then there was a horse. And then the horse had a prince on it. And then the prince told the princess how to do art. And then she already made art. And then she showed the prince her art project.

THE END

Visit regional libraries for taste of 'The Developers'

I currently have a stack of books at home that I should be reading. Unfortunately, there's only so much time in the day, so it's difficult to rationalize buying even more books. Still, I manage to do so, with the hopes of eventually reading them, maybe if it snows 7 feet and I cannot leave for a month.

For people who want to read the book but cannot get to a bookstore, a viable option is checking it out from your local library. "The Developers" is available for checkout at the following libraries:

Unnamed musician mad at MySpace

The recent buzz on the news wire is that there's a clause in the MySpace agreement that allows the social networking site a royalty-free, worldwide licence to publicly display posted content.

My reaction, along with the most obvious reaction to this, is simply "Duh."

Don't let Web navigation cause too many detours

I'm sure you've seen it: A Web site that has an amazing design, with bright

colors, animation and various neat effects. But after the awe goes away (10

seconds later) you begin to wonder: Where am I supposed to click?

A large portion

of Web designers have this problem. They think the more creative they

are, the better the Web site becomes. While uniqueness is key

to making a site design stand out, it is important to remember the end user.

That's you! Forgetting that Internet pages should be geared toward the

Don't cry Mr. Roboto!

One thing I've become accustomed to while working with computers is that they rarely show emotion. I almost said they never show emotion, but my computer got mad and wouldn't let me type that. Overall, however, computers are nice in that they don't attempt to influence you by giving you puppy-dog eyes. The computer usually lets you do what you want to do, or it closes the program and shuts down. But rarely does it laugh, at least in a way that you can see it.

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