The USA Track and Field website has a cool running route calculator, based on Google Maps. Click the points along your route on the map, and you can see a running total of the distance. There are buttons to complete your route back to start and to mark the route as "out and back". You can save your routes to a database for others to search, too.

Just the thing I need after my bike computer stopped working the other day.

Sparklines are word-sized graphics, especially suited to presenting historical data.

Edward Tufte discusses sparklines in a online draft of his new book, Beautiful Evidence. John Resig wrote jspark, an implementation of sparklines in Javascript. Mariano Belinky did sparklines with Adobe's SVG.

My boss, Dave, just got back from a business trip to Japan. I'm hoping to go sometime this year and will definitely be visiting this place:

Click the impossibly adorable deer for more of his photos.

A view from on top of the (new) Tacoma Narrows Bridge, under construction (posted by "LUCKY" on cascadeclimbers.com). It looks like that every day here... if you're above the clouds.

Thanks to some forward-thinking game developers, the old PC game Star Control 2 is available for free, running on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Some fans have resurrected the classic "save the Earth from alien enslavement" game by adapting the source code, released in 2002 by the game's original authors, for modern computers. Re-titled The Ur-Quan Masters, the game has all the content of the original.

And what a game! It combines space combat, resource management, exploration, diplomacy, and trade, all unified by a compelling sci-fi storyline populated with colorful characters, dangerous worlds, and an ominous, evil enemy. The soundtrack and voices are fabulous. My favorite track so far is the hyperspace-travel theme, which sounds remarkably like "Love Will Tear Us Apart". The new version offers downloadable remixes of the music, too.

Betsy and I spent the weekend hosting our friends Matt and Emily, who left on Sunday to move to Boston. Their cats, Cole and Creek, had been staying with us since after Christmas while Matt and Emily took an epic ski vacation around the American West.

Creek

Cole

We were sad to see them go, but glad we could share their company one more time. I went skiing with Matt and friends on Saturday while Betsy got all girly with Emily 'n pals. Best of luck to Dr. Peters, Ms. Falls, and the cat-kids. We'll be out to visit as soon as we can.

Why doesn't iTunes let me link to a song from the web? Am I missing something? You'd think this is something Apple would make "easy and beautiful".

A bunch of my regular teammates and I have joined an indoor soccer league for the rainy season. I've never played indoor, but it's supposed to be a faster game, with lots of quick footwork and passing. Our first two games, a doubleheader, will be giving us a brutal reminder of our post-holiday fatness this coming Wednesday.

Samuel L. Jackson is in a movie called Snakes on a Plane, to be launched as the great summer blockbuster of 2006. Despite studio opposition to the title, it will actually be put on movie posters and recorded for all time in Mr. Jackson's extensive filmography. If you haven't realized it yet, "Snakes on a Plane" is the best movie title ever. Just ask the Internet about snakes on a plane and you'll understand what I mean: Google, Digg, del.icio.us, Urban Dictionary, a comic blog, blackfilm.com (!), and the always-authoritative Wikipedia. Nobody's even seen the flick yet and New York Times readers give it five stars. Well, one reader.

I will never cease to be amazed at the speed with which catchy pop ideas travel using the Web. Let's hope nobody ever gives the GOP a free AOL CD and a Myspace account, or all hell will break loose.

Microsoft has finally released a patch to protect Windows computers against what's known as the "WMF vulnerability". This flaw is serious. Malicious users can use it to install spyware and viruses on your computer, simply by your viewing an image that contains a hidden program.

You know all those sketchy websites you visit after work? Just by looking at them, they can infect your computer. Please run Windows Update now to fix this flaw and protect your system.