I have been offline for a few days moving. And yes, I was having withdrawals. But as I was catching up on my Feed reading I realized that a couple of my favorites are not blogs or even media sites.

Having always been interested in history and people, these 2 feeds are a perfect fit for a little daily knowledge. Each one typically has only a couple of short items per day, which makes it easy to keep up.

• This Day in History
• Who2.com - Find Famous People Fast! (I subscribe to their Personality of the Day )

TIP: To make it easier to catch up, I “blended” all my Google Reader feeds by selecting “All Items” and placing them in “sort by oldest” order.

Even before release it was the talk of the town. Seems the book series is very popular and as I have been told it is like the Harry Potter series to the older female audience.

I just read an article about Kodak’s Scan Van, which is a mobile scanning center. It allows you to scan up to 200 photos for $24.99, and then ten cents for each additional picture. Their website is scanvan.kodakgallery.com. Other options exist at Wal-Mart and CVS Pharmacy, where they will scan the photos for you.

It’s a time consuming task, especially if you’re doing it yourself, but I’ve got my Canon flatbed scanner, Photoshop for cropping and tweaking, plus Picasa2 for sorting and organizing the images on my external hard drive.

It just seems like the perfect solution to saving, storing and sharing those precious family memories with your loved ones.

This movie has many stars in it such as Michael Caine, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson, and David Bowie.

The story revolves around two magicians Robert Angier; Jackman, and Alfred Borden; Bale, who have a professional rivalry tinged with personal vendettas. The movie was okay, but I felt like I was watching the Terminator and neither would ever die.

The payback and one “up-man-ship” got to the point of ridiculous. I also felt it was predicable.

I thought “The Illusionist” with Edward Norton was much better.

About the only thing good I can say about this particular novel is that I could relate to the location as it is set in my home state of Mississippi on the Natchez Trace Parkway. I have frequented many spots that Anna Pigeon, the female park ranger of the story, drove to, and otherwise spent time at.

This novel could very well be a better read than listen, but unless you are from Mississippi or just have several hours to kill, I would suggest steering clear of this work.

Blood Lure, Number 9 in the Anna Pigeon series
Hunting Season, Number 10 in the Anna Pigeon series
Flashback, Number 11 in the Anna Pigeon series

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Pattie Boyd wrote the book about her marriage and life with George Harrison and Eric Clapton. The book contains many photos of her with various people including family, husbands and friends. The book goes from her childhood to current times with many of her remembered experiences with George and Eric.

The book changed my opinion of both. She does say in the book that it is her thoughts on what happened. I felt she tried not to say anything harsh on anyone she mentions regardless of the relationship she had with them. ( I think I would’ve been much more negative in my opinions. ) She tries to paint a picture of the times and people; which I found interesting, but sometimes long winded. Overall the book is enjoyable and an easy read.

My teenage daughter also who is a Beatles/Clapton musical convert liked it.

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I recently happened upon John Lescroat with one of his later novels and decided to pick up a couple more. I believe now I might start at the beginning of his series with Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky set in San Francisco.

The Motive was a fairly entertaining read. It took awhile for the story to get hopping. The story seemed to drag a little as he was setting up the plot. By the end, however, I couldn’t put it down because I wanted to know “who done it.” Lescroat does an excellent job of giving you the clues to be able to say when it’s over, “Man, I should have been able to figure that out,” while thinking in the back of your mind that you really did.

All in all, this novel was a good read, but not where I would start with the author.

DEAD IRISH, 1st Dismas Hardy novel

THE VIG, 2nd Dismas Hardy novel

HARD EVIDENCE, 3rd Dismas Hardy novel

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I have signed up for this service and it looks very promising. The most attractive feature to me is the ability to let people call me without giving my actual phone number out.

The only problem I have run into so far is that the messages sometimes have a problem playing back from the GrandCentral site in Firefox.

Just click the button, enter your name and phone number and you will receive a call that connects you to me. Currently I have my GrandCentral account set to take messages only, so call away.

His best friend Pete played by Chris Marquette of “Strong Medicine” and “Joan of Arcadia” is one of those friends who involves Nick in his self made disasters. The movie develops as Pete accuses Nick of reporting a crime in order to get himself out of a mess. Annie played by Margarita Levieva, is a bad apple, trying to prove her toughness to the gang. She is involved with an ex-con played by Alex O’Loughlin of “Moonlight”. Annie has Nick beaten and left for dead in retaliation for reporting her, but it’s all a mistake.

Nick then walks around in a limbo trying to connect with those who were closest to him. You end up not knowing who you feel worse for Nick or Annie. My teenagers really like this movie, and I enjoyed it.