Fly away

Not the best picture, but apparently a very good kite. The Prism EO6.

For the elite

Social networking sites you probably won't join: Diamond Lounge, "the most exclusive online members club in the world" and, home to Ivana Trump, Tiger Woods and Naomi Campbell, A Small World. "If you have no friends who are members yet, please be patient". I'll stick with Facebook.

Hmmm

From Simon Hoggart in the Guardian, the top ten things you don't want to hear when under a local anaesthetic:




10: Butterfingers!
9: Oh, yuck, all over my new shoes!
8: Did we get this patient's religion?
7: A thoughtful "Hmmm".
6: I say we make the incision here, and so does my imaginary friend.
5: The machine that monitors your heartbeat by going "beep - beep" suddenly rises to the same warning noise as a train door closing.
4: Now, which eye was it again?
3: The leeches, please, nurse.
2: Get the students in to look at this.

1: Wow, that was quite a stag party last night!

Mugged

Mugs in the style of the Pantone colour chart.

Bob's your uncle

Links you weren't expecting. He's a fan of him.

Very achey

Pantomime horse climbs Snowdon.

Read

Ten top reads picked by The Independent:

The Carhullan Army - Sarah Hall

The Matchmaker of Perigord - Julia Stuart

Life Class - Pat Barker

The Perfect Summer - Julie Nicholson

South of the River - Blake Morrison

The Apple - Michel Faber

The Naming of the Dead - Ian Rankin

Fair Play - Tove Jansson

The Sea Lady - Margaret Drabble

Michael Tolliver Lives - Armistead Maupin

Give

All about charities - Intelligent Giving.

Stick fuel

The Japanese throw away an average of 200 pairs of chopsticks per person per year. Now there's a plan to start recycling them.

Chair

For no particular reason, I've taken a shine to this two-seater from Ikea.

Fix it

A simple website that brings you and your council together, in a caring way. Any problems you want them to sort? http://www.fixmystreet.com/.

Pink for a girl

Do girls really prefer pink? Yep, it's in their genes.

Learning to draw

Serialised in the Guardian, the Kingfisher Draw 50 series teaches you how to draw. Here are some handy animals to give you a picture (so to speak), or you can see inside the full books from this Amazon page. The Guardian themselves are selling all six books in the series here.

Location base

Now, you won't want to go here and do this, but it might be nice to know it's there. Create-A-Scape is an education technology website, helping teachers and students create mediascapes.

What's a mediascape? The site says: "A mediascape is composed of sounds, images and video placed outside in your local area. To see the images and video, and hear the sounds you need a handheld computer (PDA) and a pair of headphones. An optional GPS unit can automatically trigger the images, video and sounds in the right places."

At sea

They're thinking of letting Gordon Ramsay onto the Mary Rose. To cook.
I do hope he doesn't get cross and break it. Not that he's got a reputation for cross-getting, of course.

Looking for the place to stand

Top-rated photoblog.

The verdict

Michael Aspel on today's newsreaders: "There is a danger about having a deliberately sexy image. Some presenters act as if they are going to a cocktail party with someone special after the bulletin"

Shower anywhere

Too late, I guess, for this summer, but I love the idea of this mini-portable shower for the garden.

Look what's 25

It's the CD's silver anniversary.

Fat cats

Is your pet overweight? Well, what luck you should have hit on this link today. Pets Get Slim's what you need.

The great north

"The Myth of the North", an exhibition at the Lowry in Manchester, has inspired The Big Northern Vote, with voting in eight categories. Here's the debate it's kicked off in the Bolton News.

A pig for you

This pig, with built-in speakers, dances to the music. Why would you not want one?

d'oh

Now, I'm not a big film lover, but The Simpsons Movie really is good, and so is the website.

Franz Kafka must be smiling

North Denver News has sadly now withdrawn the story of Thomas Martel, the man who had cosmetic surgery to make his fat thumbs more pointy, so that he could use his iPhone more easily. That's because it wasn't true. Ah, satire. Shame.

Scan it

For the student in your life, Info Scan. Copying out of books is a thing of the past. Just run the pen across it, and a few short steps later, the words end up in your PC.

Handy

Not sure how this passed me by for so long, but I saw it mentioned somewhere recently as one of YouTube's finest. Rumsfeld's hands.

Bigger than the lime barrel

Wispa's coming back.

Spot seeker

What's that little gadget? It's a Wi-Fi hotspot detector. It's to save all the faffing around with your laptop, when you're not sure whether you're in a free Wi-Fi zone or not. No point starting the thing up if you're not going to get online. This device tells you whether there's any point before you get comfortable.

Word up

Excellent music magazine The Word now has a podcast.

Green uni

The greenest universities, according to People & Planet.

Power to the little lamp

Build a designer light to pop on top of a battery.

User generated content

The Never Ending Story. You have to pay attention to get the hang of it (check the How It Works section) but it's gaining popularity and worth a look. Famous people start the stories, you carry them on.

Phil from Bloxwich

A quick mention for the passing of the great Phil Drabble.

Head for the dry

This watch tells you when there's a storm coming.

Hour hands of 3 metres

As the chimes of Big Ben are silenced for four weeks for repairs, here are some useless facts from Parliament's mother's icon.

They drank the lot

Cognac from the trenches.

Under the sun

Solar-powered iPod charger.

Dude

The fake blog Steve Jobs. At the risk of spoiling the joke by explaining it, Steve Jobs is Mr Apple. The blog is satire. Hence the word "fake". And it's funny.

Gimme a Bud

The car built out of Budweiser cans.

Mystery thing

Bet you can't guess what it does. Find out here.

Lord Lucan not found

With yet another duff sighting of Lord Lucan, this time in New Zealand, it turns out that he's got an official website.

Bigger and bigger

If these figures are sustained, Apple will be the biggest music retailer within two years.

And we're back

Worth more than the card

It's £20, which is beyond "extravagance", but for the Tube user in your life who has everything, the Oyster Card holder from the Tate.

Rock star hero

David Coverdale from Whitesnake tells the story of his encounters with bears at Lake Tahoe - here.

Not on Derby Day

Here, as well as discovering from the National Archives that Churchill disuaded the Duke of Windsor from attending the Coronation, we learn that the date for the Queen's big day was scheduled to avoid the Derby.

Missing you

I'll be back soon. I promise. But I've got a mountain of ironing to do.