A few months ago I said I’d blog about the highlights I had gleaned from my friends’ blogs. Well, here they finally are:

• Twitter is the latest social software craze from the valley, whose appeal I barely understand. Anyway, if you want to know what the buzz is about, Thomas Han, an avid user, has a great tutorial, a review of Twitter clients for the Mac, and some tips and tricks.
• Jason Hong found a video of a nifty game for tablet PCs called Crayon Physics Deluxe.
• Jason also found a web site that “measures” the reading level of a blog. According to the site, my blog’s reading level is high school. But there is no explanation what they are measuring, and Jonathan Bailey in his blog Plagiarism Today has pointed out a sleazy ad technique they use.
• Meanwhile, Juicy Studio has a more rigorous discussion on how reading levels are measured. According to them, my Gunning Fog Index is 9.18. What does that mean? Find out.
• Danyel Fisher ran into a rant about pie charts by Coda Hale, although other viewpoints were discussed in the comments.
• Nicodemus clued me in on three spinoffs for Mystery Science Theater 3000: Riff Trax, The Film Crew, and Cinematic Titanic. Isn’t the net wonderful?
• I had no idea where “Don’t tase me bro!” came from, but I was enlightened by Dulbecco (1, 2). Now, a certain comic strip make more sense.
• Dulbecco also blogged about the delightfully wacked song “Still Alive” in the game Portal. After I heard it, I wasn’t surprised to find out that Jonathan Coulton wrote the song. He is interviewed about the song in the gaming web site Primotech.

Get a load of this: earlier this month, the Royal Canadian Mint introduced a gold coin with a face value of C$1 million. It’s 99.999% pure gold and weighs 100 kilograms, or 45 pounds 220 pounds.

You may have heard of Engrish.com, which showcases the bizarre ways English is often used to “look cool” in Japan and China. Well, two can play that game: Tian Tang was inspired by Engrish to set up Hanzi Smatter, which is dedicated to the bizarre ways Chinese characters are used to look cool in Western culture (especially tattoos, heh heh).

Here are the latest in web fun, courtesy of Clemens and Jason:

• The amazing powers of thermite, especially when it meets a car
• Lighting a barbecue grill… with liquid oxygen (a classic)
• What if the Transformers landed on Earth during the Industrial Revolution?
• The real life Simpsons introduction, commissioned by Sky TV in the UK

Here are a few safety warnings in the manual of my new cell phone, the LG VX6100:

• “Do not use your phone in high explosive areas as the phone may generate sparks.” (I personally never want to be in a high explosive area.)
• “Never place your phone in a microwave oven as it will cause the battery to explode.”
• “An emergency call can be made only within a service area. For an emergency call, make sure that you are within a service area and that the phone is turned on.” (As opposed to normal calls?)

How would you like your lakeshore backyard destroyed by a floating island crashing into it?

Here’s one of the more amusing letters I’ve gotten recently:

Dear Mr Jimmy Lin, Our records show that you haven’t yet registered for the benefits of AARP membership, even thought you are fully eligible….

I know I’ve been a grad student for a long time, but still…

“I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry,” school Principal Diana Russell said.

I’ll be darned: USB flash drives that really look like sushi.

Now this is my type of visitor attraction: Signpost Forest in the Yukon Territory. (Thanks to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, April 5, 2005.)