The Clumsy Lovers are a band from Vancouver and have been around for several years - mostly touring like crazy. They are fantastic live! Their shows are full of energy, and you can't help but get up and dance. They are also excellent musicians. Andrea is great on the fiddle, and Jason rocks on the banjo and mandolin! After the Flood is certainly their best studio album so far, and you will enjoy it even if you have never seen them live. Buy this CD now!

In this book as with his earlier works, The Design of Everyday Things and The Invisible Computer, Donald Norman describes a new and insightful perspective on design. In Emotional Design we consider three levels of design - visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Visceral design works on the immediate level of our senses - enjoying the texture of a material or being impressed by the look of a cherry red sportscar. Behavioral design was the focus of his book The Design of Everyday Things - does the thing perform its function well and is it easy to use? Reflective design is about the meaning of the thing - does it express wealth or cool or is it fun to use?

There are many great examples that explore these dimensions. Philippe Starck's juicer, shown on the book's cover, succeeds with all three facets: it is visually striking and novel, works well as a juicer, and becomes an elegant, sophisticated conversation-starter. Or consider a purely reflective case: an espresso machine that isn't very attractive or easy to use but in skilled hands can brew excellent coffee.

Norman spends the last quarter of the book considering some applications of his new approach to design. The examples here are all robots. Unfortunately I had a difficult time relating to these examples and found them too theoretical and more like curiosities.

I first saw the Clumsy Lovers in Seattle some five years ago, and I try to see them every chance I get. They are fantastic live! Their shows are full of energy, and you can't help but get up and dance. Andrea is great on the fiddle, and Jason rocks on the banjo and mandolin! They tour incessantly, so check their tour schedule.

This CD does a good job capturing one of these live shows, and I would recommend it over their best of, Still Clumsy After All These Years. My favorite tracks are the medleys: London Bridge and Stir It Up, South Australia and Let The Sun Shine In.

Death: At Death's Door is a retelling of the Sandman storyline Season of Mists. But this time the story is told from Dream's sister Death's point of view. Jill Thompson did a great job in the Sandman story The Parliament of Rooks applying a manga-influenced style to a short, two-and-a-half page tale, so I was looking forward to this book. She has again done a great job capturing the style of Japanese manga with her art and storytelling. But unfortunately, this Death's story is just too thin for the 200 pages.

Get this book to complete your Sandman collection and for the great art. But this book is not a good introduction to Sandman nor a good stand-alone book.

9 Chickweed Lane has been a favorite comic strip for some time. Brooke McEldowney uses heavy lines and negative spaces to capture a unique atmosphere. These strips about Solange, the family cat, and her feline quirks are some of the best and emphasize McEldowny's graphic skills over dialogue.

Unfortunately, the book's addition of heavily using pink to highlight the otherwise black and white comics detracts greatly from his artwork. A book in the same format as Mutts, Fox Trot, or Calvin & Hobbes would have been much preferred over this special-format book. And I hope that 9 Chickweed eventually gets such a collection.

9 Chickweed Lane has been a favorite comic strip for some time. Brooke McEldowney uses heavy lines and negative spaces to capture a unique atmosphere. These strips about the family cat, Solange, and her feline quirks are some of the best.

Unfortunately, the book's addition of pink to the otherwise black and white comics detracts greatly from his artwork. A book in the same format as Mutts or Calvin & Hobbes would have been much preferred over this "special" book. And I hope that 9 Chickweed eventually gets such a collection.

Frank Cho is a great comic artist. His style juxtaposes the detail and realism of the old adventure comic strips with the simpler lines of the best funnies. His strips contain some raw humor inspired by the physical violence in Warner Bros. cartoons, pop culture references, and too many years in a fraternity. Watch out for the great dinosaurs and cameos by Tarzan and Prince Valium.

Even if you have Eden, his first book published by Image, you will also want to pick up this volume for its fantastic Sunday color strips. These strips must have been re-colored and look great.

This is a nearly perfect book both for learning HTTP and for an HTTP reference. HTTP is a small, simple protocol, and this is reflected in this book's small size. Great sequence diagrams illustrate the basic HTTP transaction which is detailed in less than ten small pages. And you will probably soon find yourself with several post-it bookmarks or dog-eared pages.

The book could use an explanation of HTTP proxies and gateways and a list of common user-agents. But any more and it would be too long.

Here are three films that you can watch again and again, and each time you will see something different, gain a fresh insight, or experience a new sense of wonder. Technically brilliant and wonderfully acted.

After such a long wait for these DVDs, I was very impressed by the care and attention that Miramax put into this collection. The extras aren't leftovers from the production; they add to each film. Kieslowski's cinema lessons show a master at work and his intense obsession with detail.

Hopefully the wait for The Double Life of Veronique on DVD will also be rewarded.

As a fan of Red Dwarf, I was really looking forward to seeing these first two seasons, for I had never seen the first and only caught some of the second long ago. I was not disappointed, but I was somewhat surprised. These are great episodes, but it is clear that the cast is still trying to figure out who these characters are and that the stories lack some polish. A must-have for fans, but new viewers may need some patience to understand our devotion to this show.