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Oh, we wish. Can you imagine what swimming in this rooftop pool at night would be like? The artist Gabriel Orozco who designed and built this amazing house with the help of the architect Tatiana Bilbao wanted it to be "a building that you can place in nature, from which you could observe nature because it is built so that you can watch the stars." Well, who are we to argue with that? - Stijn

"Funny how the Israeli government always seems to come up with these silly ideas while the Western world is busy with holidays. Attacking Lebanon during summer, bombing Gaza during Christmas, and now this." - Stijn

As the "Aughts" come to a close, National Public Radio, the US listener-supported radio which covers news and culture, selected "The Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings." The long (and perhaps incomplete) list covers a full spectrum of genres, including hip-hop, pop, classical, jazz, world, folk, hard rock, and some country. - Stijn

Beautiful terrariums keep popping up online and out in the world and we've been lusting after them, wanting to make one but for some reason found the whole idea of building a terrarium a little daunting. It seemed like you needed all sorts of fancy stuff and...magic? But last week we finally took the plunge and started small, creating a sweet little terrarium out of a jar we found at the salvation army. - Stijn

It's almost the end of May, and the end of Cleaning Month. So, until next year when we clean again...! No, no, just kidding. We hope you clean your house at least once before May 2010 (preferably even a few more times than that). Now that you've invested time and energy into deep cleaning your house, set a schedule for keeping it clean. Regular maintenance will cut down on the "ugh" factor. After all, one-hour cleaning increments are much easier to deal with than five-hour cleaning marathons. - Stijn

One big pot, some potting soil, and a few herb plants are all you need. You should also have a sunny spot; the herbs will need plenty of direct sunshine. - Stijn

Over 400 plants are planted here in 80 square feet and it's watered on a timer by a drip irrigation system. - Stijn

Plants have found a home on walls for centuries, but are sometimes incongruous with architecture, often breaking down the structural integrity of a building’s facade. Patrick Blanc’s Vertical Garden System, known as Le Mur Vegetal in French, allows both plants and buildings to live in harmony with one another. The botanist cum vertical landscape designer is probably best know for his gorgeous living wall on the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris (shown above). But Blanc’s Vertical Garden System can be implemented anywhere: indoors or out and in any climatic environment. - Stijn

These images are all from Domespace homes — circular homes designed to rotate 330 degrees as it follows the path of the sun. It takes passive energy from the sun when it needs warmth, and it turns away from the sun when it needs to cool down. Red cedar shingles don't need any special wood treatment, and raw cork inserted between the beams provides insulation. The company is based in France, but Domespaces are starting to pop up all over. - Stijn

Funny. - Stijn

"That's a margin of 110 million years. Kinda vague, don't you agree?" - Stijn

Beautiful. - Stijn

Good laugh. The view from the other side is kinda NSFW. http://i.imgur.com/p95vY.jpg - Stijn

A free, and solid camera app with standard—but essential—photo effects, like Polaroid, Fisheye and ToyCam. - Stijn

Google Voice simply changes the way you use your phone, and the app's seamless integration is a killer feature for Android as a whole. Get in line for an invite, if you haven't already. - Stijn

runstar™ is the only running application you'll ever need; bringing you a social and game-like running experience that will change the way you exercise. Download the runstar™ FREE edition now and try out Free run, Power up, see your progress and share the results with your friends. For more info see below. - Stijn

It's BYO ROMs, but this $3 NES emulator single-handedly solves Android's gaming problem by letting you play any NES game you can get your hands on. Bonus: The smug sense of satisfaction that this would never fly in the App Store. - Stijn

An Android task manager to kill useless background processes is mandatory, at least if you want your phone running at top speed. Oh, and Astro happens to be a pretty damn good file manager, too. - Stijn

Google's splash into visual search is impressively eagle-eyed, able to scan not just barcodes, books, movies and music like other apps, but landmarks artwork and business cards, too. - Stijn

If you wanna make your own ringtone, Ringdroid is how, either using an MP3 you already have, or by making a whole new one. - Stijn

Quite simply, the king of augmented reality apps, able to layer pretty much whatever kind of data you want on top of your boring, HUD-less reality. - Stijn

What's that song playing in the background? Hold your phone up, and Shazam will tell you. It's magic that never gets old. - Stijn

Our favorite free multi-protocol IM app from the iPhone, but on Android: If it's a message protocol with more than one sad, lonely user, you're covered. Talk, video, chat and interact with Skype®, MSN Messenger®, Google Talk™, ICQ, SIP, Facebook, Yahoo!™ and AIM® - Stijn

Don't have Android 2.0, Moto Blur or HTC's Sense UI, but want all of your contacts' different social network profiles integrated seamlessly in your address book? Asurion's AddressBook is the ticket for less fortunate individuals like yourself. It integrates everything you'd expect like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, but aims to deliver richer info than most of the other integrated address books like it, with better and more customizable filters. More than that, it's extensible, with features like local search, and the ability for other developers to tap into it. It's free. - Stijn

Perfect your pictures with the Photoshop.com Mobile App on your Android phone. Simply drag your finger to crop, adjust color, apply effects—you name it. - Stijn

"I'm sitting here at home, alone, and there is this guy shaking a matchbox behind me. It's creeping me out to the point of me looking over my shoulder. This stuff is good!" - Stijn

see Randy's book about his "Last Lecture" at www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Randy_Book.html "Time Management" lecture, given by Randy Pausch (hosted by Gabriel Robins www.cs.virginia.edu/robins ) at the University of Virginia in November 2007. Randy Pausch (www.randypausch.com) is a virtual reality pioneer, human-computer interaction researcher, co-founder of CMU's Entertainment Technology Center (www.etc.cmu.edu), and creator of the Alice (www.alice.org) software project. The Powerpoint slides for this lecture can be found at www.cs.virginia.edu/robins/TM_slides.html and high-resolution downloadable versions of this and other lectures by Randy can be found at www.cs.virginia.edu/robins/Randy - Stijn

More golden tips in the comments section. - Stijn

Republican chess, Marxist chess, desegregated chess, atheist chess. - Stijn

Tech support anger management. - Stijn