The eerie echo of a vacated apartment. And the cheery echo of a new home.

Very excited today about Pulsate and so created this musical experience, or "track," with it. Lots more potential here.

"Stoch'd" by the author.

Neat discovery: If you leave the top off a bottle of balsamic vinegar, you will soon have looots of fruit flies!

I like this.

It's been a California kind of weekend here in Boston: chilling in yards, walking to the milk shop in sandals.

I'm having a grand time doing one of my favorite things: packing books into boxes. Only tiny bits of space can be wasted, and each book must sit flat against its neighbors! Whether laying down or standing N–S or E–W, none can have uneven stresses! So engrossing and satisfying.

Also, I want to visit these restaurants on Skye.

Slum tours bring indifference to slums everywhere. The New York Times, with a good opinion piece from a Nairobian.

Is it a good game? It has realistic eye-blinks and moments of ecstatic mundanity, as when you use the controller to put a frozen pizza in a microwave for your TV-watching son (who is soon to be kidnapped) and then dump it onto a plate.

Some fine writing by Nicholson Baker in this week's New Yorker (Aug 9, 2010) on video games.