Yesterday I found some great stuff, and then at 4 PM I unplugged the headphones from my computer at work and the world stopped. Well, actually just my networking stopped, but when you're on a network-authenticated account, the world stops. It took a while and a reboot to diagnose, and now my links are just in the history. -_-;; Here are a few.

How to Be An Early-Riser and How to Be An Early Riser II. Though ali_wildgoose forbids me from going polyphasic (and I only suggested it as a joke), I am going to try this. Here's a sound method from a guy who writes well. Thanks to tromboneborges for the blog-link.

The Halo 3 trailer is up at Bungie's website. The hi-res is worth watching if you're into it. There is an entire post on Halo, Bungie, AI, ARGs, and storytelling coming up someday, but for now, I link to them and to The Story Page. Okay, I can't resist. There's a trailer with analysis on it, and even that doesn't point out one thing. What Cortana is saying in that trailer closely follows and is relatively story- and character-consistent with The Cortana Letters ... which were written in 1999. Wow.

Warren Robinett wrote some neat software that I barely remember using on the Apple ][ : Rocky's Boots. It taught about logic gates and basic (circuitboard) level programming. He went on to found The Learning Company, which has done (or bought out) a bunch of the games that have actually been successful as "educational software".

A friend said that Scharffen Berger was bought by Nestle or Hershey and was going to be closed down, but I can't find any evidence of anything like that. I'm glad. Any place that gives a detailed online and offline tour of their factory --and makes chocolate that good-- should stick around.

The list of Graphic Novels for People Who Hate Comics is good, but the comments round it out. I think there are some borderline works, ones that 'look like comics' but are more than what the author is callng 'comics'. The commenters sketch out the cases that I think the blogger shied away from recommending.

ETA: How could I forget Scott Pilgrim, which has been making me so happy! Well, it also prompted a fascinating but dangerous argument with ali about genres and classification, but ONLY BECAUSE IT IS SUPER AWESOME. Well, and because I cannot contain my enthusiasm for the series.