One of my favorite TV shows, and now a true homage to 1980’s teen culture, Square Pegs, is being released on DVD in May. And I’m pretty sure we have the fame of Sarah Jessica Parker to thank for that, especially since the 3-DVD set hits the stores 10 days before the Sex and the City movie hits the theaters. (thanks PCJM!)

Today’s China shots are all about tech spotting: Sun and Microsoft (at Tsinghua Science Park), Google, and IBM’s China Systems Center.

In seeing how much the Olympics related construction has taken over Beijing’s landscape, it’s hard to believe the actual event is only two weeks long. The buildings will of course function as valuable venues for years to come. With five months to go, construction is proceeding at a brisk pace (I saw welding sparks cascading down from the skeleton of a building late at night). Here are my moving taxi snapshots of: the unique CCTV building with its seemingly unsupported top section still being filled in, the “bird’s nest” which is the main Olympic stadium, an unfinished tower near the stadium with its large screen displaying the familiar Windows desktop, and the completed Olympic Tower which is home to the organizing committee.

A 16×16 grid of LEDs turns the Tenori-On into a light show, but this shiny metal tablet is an intriguing synthesizer-sequencer combo. Each LED is a button, and each button holds a sound. Ten function buttons on the sides provide access to different effects, octaves, tempo, and volume. Experimentation with programming and playback variations using the Tenori-On is meant to be intuitive and fun. And perhaps mesmerizing for anyone watching the lights.

Beijing Photos: Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot (yum), Wangfujing Night Market’s starfish and insect stand (not so yum).

The world’s tallest snowman is a snowwoman, measuring 122 feet and an inch. She has her very own webcam. Oh and a weblog of course. Her eyelashes are made of 16 skis and her arms are 30 foot spruce trees.

A few months old, but new to me: Cat Cafe in Tokyo. “Visitors to (Cat Cafe) Calico pay 800 yen ($7) an hour or 2,000 yen for three hours in a big room where 14 well-brushed and shampooed cats hang out. After a thorough handwash, the visitor can play with the cats, read comics or just relax.”

Beijing photos for today: IKEA and Walmart. I took a picture of a Starbucks too, but it looks just like it does back in the U.S. Except it was slightly more expensive.

As I edit down my Beijing photos I’ll link to a few notable ones over the next week or so. Here’s the first: Totoro bread in a Beijing bakery (wikipedia link for those of you Miyazaki deprived).

I’m back from Beijing with 300 photographs (mainly from the 2 days of sightseeing I managed to get in around work and also the required photos of food), nasty jet leg (compounded by the ramming of Daylight Savings time into March), and a newfound appreciation for Beijing pedestrians (who have street-crossing fortitude beyond that of the expert Manhattan jaywalker). While I was in China, someone torched 3 luxury showcase homes in Snohomish (there’s nothing quite so scary as hearing the words “terrorism, fire, Seattle” on the International CNN channel), Jennifer 8. Lee’s book on Chinese (American) food The Fortune Cookie Chronicles was released, and my husband’s blog was Slashdotted (and is now on BoingBoing too).