Ordinarily, I wouldn't bother creating an entry devoted to a cool link I found, but I couldn't resist this one.

Wil Wheaton (remember Wesley Crusher?) has his own website and blog. I'm not talking about some fluffy celebrity site where you hire a web consulting company to create you a glitzy-glittery web presence (Stephen King and Michael Marshall Smith both come to mind). No, Wil learned HTML, picked up a bunch of authoring tools, and made himself a page. And he's not taking your shit anymore.

I must say that his site is both entertaining and enlightening. Most interesting to me is the effect of his unusual status as geek icon (or antichrist, depending on your opinion). The site is really just some guy's blog, but because of who he is, Wil is drawn unavoidably into a feedback loop with the media. Whereas I ramble on about the world and don't worry about leaving an impression, sometimes the world talks back to Wil in articles, comic strips, and interviews, not to mention fan mail. I dunno, it must be kind of weird, but he seems cool about it.

And so Wil joins Kevin and Ernie in the "blog" section of my very slowly growing links page. Way to go, Wil.

By the way, I recommend that you check out the T-shirts he's selling, but don't buy the "wfs" shirt -- I got dibs on that one.

Apparenly, itty bitty babies smell really good (most of the time). They have that April fresh, just-out-of-the-wrapper new baby smell.

Cherish those days while they last, because they're over before you know it. Yes, I'm grateful for the beneficial effects of physical maturity -- strength, speed, height, coordination, and so on. But I'm old enough now to know that the primary consequence to one's body of time's endless march is the relentless descent to ever-greater depths of repulsive, creaky, purulent, fetid infirmity.

I'm exaggerating, of course. With my sculpted physique and smooth alabaster skin, I've been spared most of the cruel ravages of time. But I would like to focus for a moment on the more pungent aspects of age.

Nath tells me that whatever I eat ends up coming out of my pores. The main problem is with garlic, although I suspect that garlic is simply the tip of an iceberg of aromatic, spicy foods. Now, I usually can't tell when this is going on, and other people I hang around with have either held their tongues or else held their noses (of course, Nath's in the best position to judge). My doctor has told me that this is a sign of a healthy and efficient metabolism, which is a small comfort when I holler it to Nath as she cowers in the far corner of the room.

My only recourse has always been the simplest one -- cut down on foods like Caesar salad and Szechuan. Quite an unfortunate sacrifice. That's why I was excited when Nath showed me a magazine article about a product called "Body Mint", which was described as a natural internal deodorant in pill form. It turns out that Body Mint is basically just a dose of chlorophyll, the green chemical that allows plants to metabolize sunlight. I went to the local herbal supplement store and picked up a chlorophyll supplement.

It works! At least, it seems to work. I don't think we've had the ultimate test (Mongolian Chicken) yet, but Nath's positive feedback suggests that the chlorophyll certainly helps... um... take the edge off. At least, she used to be able to come home and tell what I had for lunch -- from the other room. Now she has only the stains on my shirt to go on.

In summary, I'm pleased to report that this supplement has had a noticeable, beneficial effect (in contrast to, say, ginkgo biloba). I claim victory in one small skirmish against the effects of age. Next, I'm on the lookout for a supplement that inhibits the growth of ear hair.

On Sunday I bought a new toy, and I'm absolutely in love with it. It's a software package called Reason, created by called Propellorhead Software, a Swedish company.

To create digital music, you need a lot of equipment, a lot of little boxes with buttons and dials on them. Obviously, you've got to have boxes that generate sounds: synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines. You need sequencers to trigger the sound generators in an orderly fashion. You'll want a big mixing board to combine all the sounds, and probably some effect processors to add reverb, chorus, and so on. And of course you've got to have a big equipment rack to hold them all. The result is a very impressive collection of toys that will be your constant friend when your girlfriend leaves you, you go broke, and you sit in your own filth before the blinking lights, penniless, eating dandelions and dust bunnies. At least you'll have something to write songs about.

Or, you can get Reason. Reason is basically a virtual gadget manufacturing facility together with an infinitely tall equipment rack. The "create" menu lets you stamp out as many toys as you need to make your song. Need a synth? Poof -- a synth appears. Need more synths? Poof, poof, poof. Get the idea? The program comes with all the gadgets you need to make some pretty serious music. Judging by the examples I've been able to find, that music tends to be pretty narrow in genre -- techno, electronica, drum&bass, house, styles with pulsing drums and lots of bleepy sounds. Much as I enjoy some of those styles, they're not where I compose. However, I believe that the typecasting is mostly historical and I should be able to coax other types of music out of Reason.

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. I have very limited abilities when it comes to creating music, and almost all of that ability is focused on composition. I've never given much thought to production, mostly because it's something I've never been able to control. Reason gives you tremendous production power, so much so that poor production values really shine through! The prospect of learning a completely new set of skills is both exciting and daunting.

[update: 17 October at 21:33]: Whoops -- I misspelled the name of the company that produces Reason. In case you've been spending the past few days desperately trying to find it, the correct name is Propellerhead Software.

As you probably know, several cases of anthrax have been reported in Florida, all related to one particular office building. You might also have heard that this office building is used by American Media Inc. They publish the National Enquirer, the Sun, and the Globe, three awful supermarket tabloids.

These events put the publishers into a bit of a self-referential bind. Here is a story bizarre enough to merit an article in any of the tabloids, but which unfolded in their own offices. Should they report the story, thereby equating it in legitimacy with the usual miracle diets and bigfoot sightings? Or should they leave such a serious matter to the mainstream press and sacrifice their parody of journalistic integrity? Furthermore, if they should choose to report on the story, which newspaper gets the scoop? I wasn't aware until this week that all three tabloids were owned by one company, and frankly I expect that they try to downplay the fact to boost sales through perceived competition. Can all three papers report on the story without shattering the illusion? Maybe they could turn the shared parent into yet another story: "Faceless Publishing Company, Controlled by JFK, Silently Takes Over Tabloids!"

I just got back from the trip to the dentist that was the inevitable result of last week's checkup. Today's experience was actually quite pleasant, insofar as a dental operation can ever be considered pleasant. I barely felt the needle; also, because the guilty tooth is right in the back of my mouth, the anesthetic didn't spread very much and I don't have to deal with that feeling that half of my mouth is sliding off my face. The volume that needed to be dug out of my tooth was tiny, and so drilling was over very quickly. The speed of the procedure lessened the claustrophobic discomfort of the latex barrier they use. I even managed to get in plugs for Straight Man and Nobody's Fool, two recent Richard Russo novels I read.

I also took the opportunity to ask my friendly dentist some questions. First of all, after a quick count she declared that today's filling makes fourteen for me. That's one for every two teeth, though I believe some teeth have more than one.

The more interesting fact relates to a conversation I had at lunchtime with Doug. I told him that I remember getting fillings as a child without first being frozen. Yet even as I said it, the idea began to seem increasingly improbable and I wondered whether my memory was accurate. The dentist confirmed that yes, children often do receive fillings without anesthetic, particularly in Canada, where presumably we're tougher. Or perhaps it's because we spend most of our time frozen already. At any rate, this fact certainly correlates with my recollection that dental drilling was more, er, intense when I was a kid. It's a technique that tends to involve a lot more of "okay - now hold really still..."