So, no e-reader for me. However, if I were not an English Lit major, where most of our books for class are novels, an e-reader would have been a more serious consideration for me. I would definitely choose a gadget if the alternative was lugging around heavy text books.

I cannot end this post without mentioning that Nintendo has stated that e-reader features may be in the 3DS, now that would be something else to consider since I already want a DS.

If you read this site through an RSS reader you’ve probably noticed that I’ve merged the feed from my Flickr account with the site feed. Now up to five of my recent photo uploads will show along with my regular posts. What do you think of this? Good, bad, neutral?

I wish it would show recent uploads as one single post instead of five individual posts. A mosaic of thumbnails of recent uploads would be cool. I know I could do that myself and make a new post with it, which in a way would be better because then I would have the added benefit of the post showing on the actual site, but this is automated and therefore easier.

Thoughts?

It has Christmas goodies from Sufjan and others including an e-card, games, ornaments to color, videos, and 8-bit (Nintendoesque) Sufjan Christmas ring tones.

I don’t remember where I came across this site, and sure there are other similar sites out there, but there’s something special about FaceYourManga.com. First of all, I can’t decide if the title even makes sense, “FakeYourManga.com | Shake Yourself!” Um, okay! The rest of the site follows suit. It appears that they’ve used good ol’ babelfish for their translation into English instead of a professional. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s an appealing quirk that I find quite amusing.

FaceYourManga lets you create your own manga style avatar which you can then purchase for what I think comes out to be less than $3US. Right now the only size I see is 15cm x 15cm that you print yourself, but it makes it sound like there will be other sizes available. You can also view avatars created by others on the site and there is a voting system that currently seems to serve absolutely no function. I gave myself 5 stars 3 times on the same avatar, there were no fireworks. Maybe once the “Community” and “MyFace” portions of the site are running voting will have some significance. It’s still fun for now though.

It’s also amusing that a cat is the only mask, the males should at least get a dog mask. I mean, come on. It’s very Holly Golightly though, don’t you think:

And why do only males get the thumbs up? I don’t know, but they sure seem to like using it, just check the gallery.

If you make one, show it to me! Either upload it online somewhere and post the link in the comments or you can email it to me (AvantReeseATgmailDOTcom) and I’ll upload it for you.

Anyone living in Florida, or even someone that visits it often has to be somewhat interested in sharks. I mean, how could you not be given the stats?
I’m a little disappointed this chart doesn’t have 2007. While 2007 was supposedly a low year for shark attacks, Florida had 32, highest in the world, followed by Hawai’i, which had seven. That’s a big difference.

While I don’t play many online games, Discovery keeps advertising their “critically acclaimed” Shark Runners game so I had to play it to see what all the hype was about. The goal is to track down sharks and collect data on them, but the cool thing is is that it is using real sharks and their real movements, taking advantage of GPS tracking. But then when I got to the part of the site where I realize that the game is going on all the time and it’s going to email me alerts giving a certain amount of time for me to log back in a do something, I decided this was something I didn’t want to get into. If you want to try it out, let us know what you think in the comments.

I did try some other games, though some of them aren’t really games, like voting for the coolest shark? I guess voting is a game for some people…I actually prefer other games on discovery.com that are not part of Shark Week, like Life or Death: Lost at Sea. Basically you’re given sets of three items to choose from and you have to choose the right items that will keep you alive, it’s tricky.

While Discovery does have great pictures on the site, like this one:

if you want something high enough resolution for a wallpaper or if you want a shark screensaver, NationalGeographic is your best bet.

The best parts of the website are the interactive features, like the dive, and the pictures. But really, I think the site could have been better. I especially don’t like that they don’t have an option to embed their videos (though the videos are great), and the commercials before them are extremely loud compared to the actual video.

As for the shows though, what I’ve seen so far is awesome. I love MythBusters anyway and the Shark Week Special that aired last night was not to be missed (if you didn’t see it, it airs again Wednesday). See a clip of the robotic shark they created here.

I’m also looking forward to Dirty Jobs tomorrow night. Mike thinks they should have monkey week.

For more Shark Week, see the official Discovery.com site.