The Faked Dr Pepper site has collected (and taste-tested) a comprehensive (as far as I can tell, after all it’s pretty large!) list of Dr Pepper clones. The “Dr.” names range from Dr A+ to Dr. Zing with non-doctor appellations as well, including the popular Mr. Pibb, which the taster found “extremely weak in comparison to Dr Pepper.” (via Yahoo’s Weekly Picks)

Typewriter of the Month is a gallery of those wonderful tap-tap-tapping devices. It isn’t being updated regularly anymore, but the past entries have descriptions that cover both their aesthetic qualities and mechanical features. (via RandomWalks)

It’s Boston Marathon day once again (ie. Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts), so it’s time to dust off my t-shirt essay on “The Halfway Point” of the Boston Marathon.

This weekend I saw a pear that had been grown in a bottle. It was a Poire William Brandy (pear brandy) carafe. The pear gets “bottled” when it is small and grows for a few months before harvest. The brandy smells yummy, but the taste is, as you may expect, alcohol intense. We didn’t chill it, as I have now read is recommended, so maybe the flavor wasn’t as pronounced as it could have been.

When I’m web surfing, I always close pop-up ads immediately. These days I feel a tiny pang of guilt as I think “oh no, this site is going to go out of business because they can’t get anyone to read their ads”. I’ve wondered why pop-up ads and new larger sized, intrusively placed ads are so annoying. I often watch TV commercials. I look at ads in the newspaper. I even click through on “traditional” banner ads sometimes when the topic is interesting. What I’ve realized is that the placement and intrusion of these ad styles counter the act of surfing.

When I have clicked on a link or button, I have read the words that make up the link or know what I expect to be behind the button and my brain is moving ahead with it, anticipating what will be on the page, getting ready to read it. If a pop-up ad comes up, it blocks my train of thought, and I dismiss it immediately. And when I’m reading along on a web page, a large block ad that reconfigures the text and screws up the movement of my eyes is annoying to my reading task and I try to ignore it as much as I can. The way we surf through the web does not create places for effective advertising.

TV shows, however, are designed around commercials. Shows are designed to have “acts” that leave you with a natural stopping point for an interruption. When they splice up movies for network TV they are careful with the commercial pauses. And newspapers never (rarely?) stick ads in the middle of articles. When something is continued on a different page, they can’t throw a pop-up ad at you, thank goodness. Magazines often do stick ad pages within articles, but it’s usually easy to follow along to the continuation. So what advertising will work in a linked, web model? At what points are we interruptible and receptive to a pitch? And don’t the powers that be realize the the more annoying and intrusive the ads are, the less we’re going to want to look at them?

You may have figured out one answer to this. The content itself can change to make the ads work. The writers will love that.

Twenty years ago today, the first space shuttle took off for the first time. Twenty years before that day, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel in space. The space shuttle was scheduled to take off a couple days earlier than it did, so the shared anniversary was a nice coincidence. (Blogger’s being very cranky so I’m not posting anything else today. Stay tuned.)

When religious law IS the law: Passover cops raid restaurants serving bread on holiday. The original Israeli law was intended to apply “only to restaurants and stores displaying bread products in their windows, not to cafes serving them inside”, but the current ultra-Orthodox Ministry is taking it beyond the original intent. (via The Other Side)

Ruth Reichl (former NY Times restaurant critic, now editor-in-chief of Gourmet) has published a followup to her memoir Tender at the Bone. Called Comfort Me with Apples, it takes you through her beginnings as a food critic and onwards. This Newsday article delves more into the book, Reichl’s success at Gourmet (which includes a clothing allowance), and there’s a sidebar on the “new” Gourmet including the mention of grass (the smoking kind) “to sharpen gustatory perceptions”. What’ll happen when Gen-X grows up and takes over publishing from the baby boomers? (article via MediaNews)

Travel agencies in tech areas, according to this ZDNet article, have become “the haunt of 20- and 30-somethings who pocketed cash during the stock market bull run of the late 1990s.” Laid off tech workers are heading around the globe, decompressing, discovering different cultures, weathering out the downturn. Travel agents are thrilled to find that those who were laid off are willing to spend money on what is considered a luxury purchase. But if these workers’ experience was typical, this is the best use of their money. They’re buying back a piece of themselves. Or should I say peace.

Sometimes I don’t notice a trend until it is all over the place. The Nissan XTerra has been winning over drivers for over a year now and just about a month ago I realized it was everywhere. It’s “trending” like the Ford Explorer and Toyota 4-Runner were about 5-8 years ago when SUVs really caught fire in the same age range (and that 21-30 range now has a firm Gen-X label). A lot of the ones I’ve seen don’t have plates yet, so I think there was just a big acquisition surge. Nissan did excellent homework to attract young buyers to the styling, features and price point of this SUV. Gas mileage? Don’t ask. (I’m very happy with my Subaru.)