Clay Newton

"After a 15-minute drive into the infinite horizon of the desert road from Ouarzazate to Agadir in southern Morocco you come across a very unlikely looking petrol station. From a distance, through the dust and heat haze, it looks like any piece of unremarkable roadside architecture, but the closer you get, the more peculiar it looks. Its sign, "Gas Haven – last stop 200 miles – cold beer" is pure 1950s American, all rhomboid panels and Jetsons circles on stalks. It's not so much weathered as beaten-up and ... not quite right. In this North African country where almost everything looks artfully distressed, this petrol station has been art directed to look distressed, and it's dressed up for a landscape thousands of miles away." - RAPatton

"Low production costs (including free use of government-owned land and buildings) , a user-friendly attitude and committed work ethic from the locals has made Morocco more attractive than ever for foreign film companies. As James Cutting, a British expatriate who works in Morocco as a producer and location manager told me, "Finance aside, it's the diversity of the locations that brings people here. There are areas north of Fez, with tin-roofed Caribbean-style shacks and palm trees, which can easily double as Jamaica. Right now I'm looking for somewhere that can double as Canada and I'm sure I'll find it." " - RAPatton

Morocco is on my list of top ten places to see before I die. :) - Karoli

Love the High Falls shot! - jlt (janet)

Aaron Brazell @technosailor took these great pics for us at the SMC Rochester NY meetup. - Susan Beebe

"Why Clay Aiken's people decided to do this nobody yet knows. Although it has been said that all publicity is good publicity and, including the headline of this post about Clay Aiken going straight, this blog has already written Clay Aiken's name, Clay Aiken, at least eight times. Lesbian for 2008 Lindsay Lohan, the clock's ticking on your reconversion to non-fake ones. I hear Clay Aiken is still available. But you better act fast if you want to be a Claymate." - Ontario Emperor

"You’d think that Sunday was Manchester United-Liverpool, not Manchester United-Chelsea, as Rafa Benitez today unleashed a rant for the ages in response to Sir Fergie’s psychological jab at Liverpool." - Ontario Emperor

"I have observed, for a very long time, that there are Lutherans who wish, very much, to act, talk, walk, and otherwise appear to all to be not too much different from the surrounding Reformed/Evangelical/Non-Denominational church bodies that are all over America." - Ontario Emperor

You did great, Mark! - Mandy

hide - Derrick

Ah, so that's why the Tin-Tin All American #1 Supermarket always smell kind of funny...fish eyes. Yuck. - Pete D

this is definitely the weirdest thing I've looked at on the internet in a very long time. clearly the guy who got money to eat paste in elementary school ;) (though he is doing a good service in this very important exploration!) - V for वज्र (vajra)

Svetlana and Armaan are way too nice to me. Appreciate the comments! - Louis Gray

- "Low powered mobile processors from ARM are designed with multiple cores, up to 4...." - riversky on MacRumors - vijay

Their push service will also be necessary. No use running multiple apps without event input. - todd

Yeah, what is up with that Push setup? It was supposed to go live in Sep last year. Still no word on it. Are they piling things up for WWDC? Makes no sense to me; unless they have a separate event planned between now and WWDC. - vijay

Marina Orlona @HotForWords wants you on Twitter. She is an etymologist. She tells you where words came from. - Robert Scoble via mail2ff

Tell her to meet me on FriendFeed. - Steven Perez

Over 170,000 YouTube subscribers think she's hot http://www.youtube.com/user/ho... - Garin Kilpatrick

Eccentric, NOT weird. I am Jack's cyberstalker :o) - jlt (janet)

lol. - Michael J. Cohen (mjc)

"Transylvania: a real place? Some people assume Transylvania is an invention of Bram Stoker, ripened by bloodthirsty Hollywood directors. However the "land beyond the forest" – as the Latin name translates – is genuine enough. This region, three times the size of Wales, is located right in the heart of one of the EU's newest members. While the Romans called it Trans-Sylvania, the name is Ardeal in Romanian, Erdely in Hungarian and Siebenburgen in German. The latter translates as "seven fortress towns", and hints at the significance of Saxons shipped in during the 12th century from Flanders and the Moselle Valley to defend the sparsely populated region from repeated invasions. Those seven towns (Bistrita, Brasov, Cluj-Napoca, Medias, Sebes, Sibiu and Sighisoara) are great survivors. They emerged relatively unscathed following the brutal years of Ceausescu's communist tyranny from 1965 to 1989 and have since been restored to their former imposing elegance. Any of the seven makes a good base for exploring Tra - RAPatton

"Transylvania still pushes the Dracula link, as the tourism bosses seek to get their teeth into the European market. Bran Castle, close to the city of Brasov, is always advertised as "Dracula's Castle", though Vlad the Impaler, the man behind the myth, stayed here only for a few nights. Bran Castle museum (00 40 268 238333; brancastlemuseum.com) opens 9am-4pm daily except Monday in winter, and 9am-6pm daily (Mondays from noon) in summer; admission 12 lei (£3). The castle is ringed with stalls offering Dracula mugs, T-shirts and tea cloths. There are plenty of other creepy castles where you might imagine the old count flapping his cape and laughing in sinister fashion. The Saxon fortress town of Sighisoara is an essential stop on any tour of Transylvania, Dracula-hunting or otherwise. Sighisoara has a Dracula café, Casa Dracula (00 40 265 771596; Str Cositorarilor 5) within the citadel walls. This has a much-photographed plaque referring to the father of Vlad the Impaler, which reads enticingly "Vlad Dracul" - RAPatton

"Just a few short weeks ago there was nothing for me that constituted sheer self-indulgence more than lolling in a hot bath with a bottle of red wine, a good book and the telephone switched off. Now that simple pleasure has been usurped by the less attainable luxury of birdwatching from a private infinity pool overlooking the Indian Ocean. I should never have gone to the Seychelles. These 115 islands are geographically located about 1,000 miles east of the coast of Kenya, but spiritually are somewhere close to heaven. They hadn't even been on my wish list. I'd always imagined a clichéd tropical island paradise – all sand and coconut palms where real life is shelved for a week or two and replaced by lots of lying down and drinking things with pineapple juice in. Yet it was clear as we approached Frégate island from the air that my preconception of the archipelago being a collection of featureless sand bars was wrong." - RAPatton

"In the mid 1960s there were barely more than 10 magpie robins left in the world. Found only in the Seychelles, the bird was heading fast for the extinction list, the result of habitat destruction and introduced predators such as cats and rats. Now, owing to the work on Frégate, there are more than 100 magpie robins here and populations have been established on three other islands. It's not just the birds that are thriving. The tenebrionid beetle, a tiny armoured bug with spikes on its back which give it the appearance of a medieval club, is found only on Frégate and it, too, is benefiting from lack of predators and the protection of trees. Then there's the unmissable Seychelles giant millipede, a slow-moving beast about the size of a frankfurter and upholstered in black, shiny segmented armour, that likes to visit the villas and has caused some guests to pack their bags and flee, despite it being harmless and vital to the ecology of the island." - RAPatton

"If there were turtles on the beaches, what other prizes would we find if we ventured underwater? The Seychelles have never been touted as one of the great diving destinations and our first dive seemed to explain why. Not far off the eastern shore of the island we jumped into the warm, clear water and descended down to the sea bed. It was covered in a thick layer of coral rubble – bleached, broken and dead. The archipelago is an area that bears the brunt of the El Niño effect, which raises sea temperatures and kills coral; and the 2004 tsunami took its toll, too. We decided to try a site further out to sea, which Steve, the recently appointed dive guide at Frégate, hadn't dived in before. The contrast couldnot have been greater. Beneath the surface, huge ridges, slabs and monoliths of continental granite stood out of the sand. We spotted a rarely seen guitar fish – a big one – lying motionless below us." - RAPatton

I promise I'll behave. I promise I'll behave. I promise I'll behave. I promise I'll behave. I promise I'll behave. I promise I'll behave. I promise I'll behave. I promise I'll behave. I promise I'll behave. - Steven Perez

Best three hours of a Friday night I've spent in a long time :D - Amanda H.

The show was great. I will say, its better live. So much fun is had and so much more is understood. - mathew, keynote not lame

CUTE! - Leather Donut

Erin poops in her hair? ;P I don't think it works that way. - Anika Malone

Your hair must have been the envy of the other girls in school! This sprial perm was the goal but few achieved it ; ) Great picture by the way. - Adriana

Did it seem dangerous? I think I might be a little freaked out being in the middle of a riot. - Paul Buchheit

Thomas you are brave to have ventured out into the riots. I was going to UCLA law school during 1992 riots. I piled up all my friends in my car that were walking / biking home. I insisted that they let me drive them directly to their homes. When we were at Wilshire and Veteran Blvd (VA Bldg). Rioters were cursing us and pushing my car!!! we all freaked out... I hit the gas and blasted right thru the intersection, despite the red light! we all made it safe. I drove home via PCH and NOT the 405 Frwy!! - Susan Beebe

I find it unfortunate that this tragic episode has such a racial spin to it. Seems more of a matter of General Public Safety to me. - Rob Michael