LL Bean’s flagship store in Maine is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year. An NPR producer visited them in the middle of the night and found that a lot of the people wandering among the outdoor goods in the wee hours aren’t actually shopping.

Listen to the NPR report from the 3rd shift, the ‘Lobster Shift’ at the store.

I was bumbling around the bookstore the other day looking for a good book on handguns and home defense (a different story) when I stumbled across a totally geeky book, which led to another and yet another great geeky paperback for the wannabe hero or aspiring villain.

Fellow do-gooders, I’m telling you it was a treasure trove of coolness and decided to blog about them all, starting with the one that began my little odyssey; written by non other than Dr. Metropolis himself, it’s:

How to Be a Superhero

“How to Be a Superhero: Your Complete Guide to Finding a Secret Headquarters, Hiring a Sidekick, Thwarting the Forces of Evil, and Much More!”

What we have here is the Performance Gaming Mouse System. You heard me, it’s a ‘System’, a gaming system with performance handling and custom tuning capabilities for that finicky gamer. Get the details and overview on the MS hardware site here.

Welcome to a revolution in gaming mouse performance, handling, and custom tuning. Microsoft SideWinder Mouse introduces one-of-a-kind features like veritcal side buttons, an LCD display, and a unique shape designed for quick and super-precise action.

On Gaming System features we have:

• The first LCD on a gaming mouse
• Cable anchor and accessories storage box. Adjust the length of the cable
• Quick launch button

On Performance Handling features there are:

• Vertical metal side buttons
• Wide Metal Scroll Wheel
• Engineered for Speed, Shape designed for quick, balance, precision gaming action.

On Custom Tuning:

• On-the-Fly DPI Switching
• Adjustable Mouse Weights, select your preference for mouse weight.
• Changeable Mouse Feet, choice of three different materials for glide preference.
• Macro Recording, record in-game macros using a dedicated macro record button.
• Quick Turn, check your perimeter with the click of a button.
• 5 Programmable Main Buttons

You can pre-order on Amazon for US$79.99

I’m a pushover for retro. Retro games, music, clothes, slang….and blogs. Blogs?

That’s right kitty kat, take a stroll down memory lane with the original MacOS and recall the days when computing was a daily exercise in learning something new and refreshing and gnarly dude.

Relive those totally tubular times. (clicky)

MSNBC celebrates the latest robotic vacuum from iRobot, the big news is ‘they’re getting smarter’. My question is “Is it smarter than Rosie?”.

The Roomba 560 is now available, this little fellow has a lineage going back 5 years now and at US$349.99 this bugger better do a helluva job.

Among the latest enhancements in the new version of the Roomba are:

• Won’t get stuck (riiiight)
• Improved navigation and floor coverage
• Improved edge and corner cleaning
• Improved brushes and filters
• Improved anti-tangle technology (e.g., on rug tassles or electrical cords)
• Improved Virtual Wall blocks off-limit areas
• Automatically returns to its Home Base to dock and recharge

You can watch a video of the model 560 in action.

If it wasn’t so durned expensive, I’d love to have one of these, but $350??

Technorati Tags: Roomba, iRobot, Rosie