Unbelievable. This is truly the end of an era.

The secret of Deep Throat's identity is one that's been kept longer than I've been alive. Now, on the front page of BBC News, there is a black and white picture of a debonair gentleman looking directly into the camera. The caption reads: "Mark Felt says he only told his secret to his family three years ago."

Here's the gist:

"The Washington Post has confirmed a former deputy chief of the FBI was Deep Throat, the source who leaked secrets during the Watergate scandal."
"Mr Felt only admitted his secret to his family in 2002, he told the magazine, when his daughter confronted him after being tipped off by one of his close associates."

And here's the article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4597503.stm

Lunch today started off a bit odd when the entirety of my former programming team walked into the taco shop where I sat, numbered receipt in hand, waiting for my name to be called. We all said hello and smiled at the idea that the one day we didn't plan on meeting for lunch, we had met for lunch.

We grabbed a table outside and ate for about 15 minutes until I heard Kevin ask Jesse: "Do you know that girl?" Apparently, a woman in a pink shirt was waving expectantly at our table from the entrance of the dry cleaning shop behind me. She walked back into the shop as I turned to see her. Our conversation quickly turned back to whatever a half dozen programmers talk about at lunch.

"She thinks knows one of us," Kevin cut himself off mid sentance. This time I turned quickly enough to see the tail end of a little vaudvillian dance routine the woman was performing for us.

"Maybe she thinks she's being followed by the FBI and she's being funny?" postulated one of us as she turned back into the dry cleaner's.

"Dude, you don't dance for the FBI," Kevin answered.

A few more minutes passed and we had just about finished joking about who among us could have forgotten such a spazz, when Jesse called our attention to the girl as she walked back out of the dry cleaner's and up to a group of three 50-something asian men, who -- all three -- turned and stared at us as she spoke. They continued to steal glnces at us as the woman in pink returned, once again, to the dry cleaner.

We were all at a complete loss as to what she could have to say to three older strangers about us. It would have all seemed very funny if not for what happened the next time she emerged from the doorway. This time, she had a neatly handwritten sign in her hands which she held up for us to see:

"Do not ever contact the FBI about..."

Jesse, the only one of us facing the right direction at the right time, didn't quite catch the end of the message before she spun back around and walked into the dry cleaner's for the fifth time.

I, personally, was somewhere between thrilled and spooked. Before I had a chance to figure out which way to go, the woman walked back out of the shop, this time with a friend. They both ignored us and sat down in an SUV. We wondered if she had very suddenly forgotten about us until they pulled away, the woman in the pink shirt waving to us once again from the passenger seat.

What else to do but investigate? Unable to find the three asian men who undoubtedly knew her secret, we waltzed into the dry cleaner's and tried to sound casual as we asked about "the girl with the sign." A woman at a sewing machine told us she thought that girl may have been a bit "coo-coo."

I guess I agree.

Well, I wanted to write a nice big report on the expo, but those are plentiful and I'm feeling kind of lazy. I thought I'd at least show some of the photos I took and discuss a couple of the games I think are worth discussion. Unfortunately, I still don't have a method for getting pictures from the cell phone to the computer, so visual stimulus isn't on the menu.

Know what? Screw it. Check out these two games:

Done.

Another year, another E3 expo goes on without me. I don't even really play video games any more, but the thought that E3 is right next door and I'm not there is eating me from the inside out.

For years I dreamt of attending. As a kid, I subscribed to both Nintendo Power and Electronic Gaming Monthly, but when E3 came around, I'd buy up a copy of every other magazine on the shelf as well, just in case one saw something the others didn't. When I was in the Nintendo World Championships in 1990 (no joke), I thought I might get a chance to attend E3 as a prize or a perk. Instead, I got Nintendo's lame 'PowerWalk,' featuring such generation-defining products as 'River City Ransom' and the U-Force.

Most of you probably know what the Electronics and Entertainment Exposition is, what quite a few people don't consider is that the video gaming industry has more than quadrupled since the expo's inception, and that the expo has grown at twice the rate. Representatives from every facet of entertainment will be there, kissing the hand of the pixel gods. This is a big money industry, and this year in particular is of great importance. This is the year that true multimedia convergence comes to the living room.

This year, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all have nextgen systems to premiere. Nintendo has two. They all incorporate bluetooth, wifi, networking, video, and other hot topics. The Sony Playstation 3 can power dual widescreen HD monitors at 1080p resolution in a huge panoramic 32:9 display. I think I just cried a little.

Anyways... I'm not there, but Anandtech, Gamespot, and even USA Today have made me feel like I am.

UPDATE - I ended up going to E3 this (friday) morning. More to come...

Well, that was unexpected.

Dell's got a new campaign featuring a team of crack Thunderbirds / Team America knock-offs saving america's small businesses from the evil forces of 'Big Iron.'

Oh, and the knock-offs in question are the CEOs of Dell, Microsoft, Red Hat, EMC, Oracle and Intel in characature form.

I've been meaning to assemble this list for some time, but John's list over at joshuaink really got me motivated.

What follows is a few of the web services and applications I've been using lately. If you want a rant about how the internet is new again and the world is fresh and exciting and everything's coming up Milhouse, google it, I don't have the energy. Just know I believe it and that this stuff is the proof.
(Actually, go read Janice's essay for the rant, she gets it right.).

Web Services/Apps

Furl

Social this and social that. Wake me when I care. I was a little worried the social aggreagate sites were going to pass me by! They just seemed like really good, but half-baked ideas and I couldn't get excited about them. Then came Furl. Furl is a fully realized, richly featured social bookmark service. Just ebout every feature I could want (except explicit XFN support) is in here. I'm even using it to manage all the links in my sidebar! Check out my Furl archive. It's free, it's clean, and it buries deli.cio.us, citeulike, and blogmarks. To be fair, I haven't tried out Spurl, Feedmelinks, Gibeo, HLOM, Simpy, Connotea, Linkroll, OpenBM or unalog. Jesus, who has the time? Or the need? Get Furl.

Trillian

It may be old news, but it's still the best solution for multi-platform instant messaging on the PC.

Backpack

From 37signals, makers of Basecamp, comes Backpack -- a sort of project-manager-lite for the rest of us. I just signed up today so the test drive has been theoretical so far, but I'm really digging it and I can see already how much it will help me in the future.

Flickr

I hope by now that anyone reading this page has a Flickr account. If not, you may not be geeky enough to truly appreciate what a intlligent and ultimately world-changing application it is. So take my word for it. And check out my photostream.

Google Maps

Tout la rage, and with good reason. The switch to satellite view still blows my mind every time.

Movable Type + plugins

Recently picked up Movable Type and transferred this here blog into it. I'm experimenting these days with plugins and includes and trying my best to keep up with the enthusiast community. Very cool, extensible stuff.

Gmail

There is no better webmail interface. It's such a shame to receive my Gmail through Thunderbird, that sometimes I don't. I hit up the web interface instead.

Skype

Now to just find some friends or coworker's who'll Skype with me...

Maxthon

Formerly called MyIE2, Maxthon is a web browser with all the bells and whistles, an open plugin structure, and the pioneer of the Super drag and Go feature. And all this before Firefox. Why didn't it catch on? Because it uses the IE rendering engine and is therefore part of the corporate machine. On the other hand, if you happen to be a web developer, you need this. Stop using IE.

Huey

Just a little teeny Windows color picker that I've been using for about five years. I love it, though.

Firefox Extensions

Aardvark

Sorta like the Web Developer extension's Outline Block Level Elements feature on steroids. Start Aardvark and glide your mouse around the page as it highlights and displays detials for each element.

Automarks

Auto-populates the address bar with bookmarks in addition to history as you type. Smart.

Favorites Converter

I've tried all the bookmark sync extensions, they're not there yet. This is as close as it gets. Export and update your bookmarks to a chosen IE Favorites folder either manually or on Firefox shutdown.

Forecast Fox

Customizable weather reports in your status bar and a link to your local weather.

Furl Tools

Just a little dropdown with Furl tools and links. Handy, though.

Inspect Element

Inspect document elements with this DOM inspeector.

JavaScript Debugger

A very solid JavaScript debugger a la the Netscape console.

Iget

Initiate a downlad of any file given the URL.

LiveHTTPHeaders

A must for anyone experimenting with Ajax.

miniT

Drag tabs to rearrange. A small thing, but I can't live with out it.

Resizable Textarea

This is awesome for editing code and markup in a CMS or in a forum. I'm using it now to write this freakin' huge blog post!

Sage

Simply the best built-in RSS aggregator. I keep trying to switch to Bloglines so I can have a web-based interface, but it's hard to let go.

Session Saver

This is sorta like Maxthon's resume session feature, and it's sorta like Firefox's Save All Bookmarks feature, but not really. In truth, this thing could be a hell of a lot more useful, but it's all we have for now.

Super DragAndGo

Cannot live without. This emulate's Maxthon's Super DragAndGo feature which enable the user to: drag a link to open in a new tab, highlight and drag a URL in text to open it, highlight and drag any word in text to run a Google query.

Tab clicking Options

I use this to emulate Maxthon's tab behaviors. Double click a tab to close it, double click the tab bar to open a blank tab.

undoclosetab

Not great, but again... Too bad no one's created an extension to emulate Maxthon's Alt+Z undo close tab function.

Web Developer

Needs no introduction. Chris Pederick is my hero. This is the single most important extension in the suite.