This is a place to put up pictures and files that aren't going to be lasting parts of the website right away -- or, possibly, ever.

Here's a pic of the tsunami a friend sent me. I think it's a fake. I think it's a pic of a little wave being show as a big wave, like movies of ants blown up to make them sci-fi monsters. Any opinions?

Neat pic click here I got my foot doc, Dr. Vincent, of Winchester, VA, to shoot today with my camera while he cut out an ominous mass of tissue. I think the delicate, pretty fingers are those of our longtime pal and stunning beauty, Linda Thomas, an OR nurse whom I asked for. Nice clean technique on Dr. Vincent's part, eh?

I wanted to shoot the stuff myself, grabbing a dozen or so wides and tights -- Mary would have been the shooter and I'd have been the director -- but Doc and the others got kind of spooked about the idea of making my op a shoot .. so I slunk back into the Versad and of milk of amnesia and the whatever happy juice and said, one shot .. which I saw .. will have to do.

Here's an mp3 of the first piece I've done for an outfit called Homeland Defense. To hear it, click here.

Here's a piece on a remarkable new bandage that cuts pain and kills germs on any wound. To hear it, click here. Gregg Silver, pls e-mail your opinion. I have a crazy idea for you ..

Here's one on a remarkably good government program to broadcast what appear to be accurate, sensitive and independent news accounts to the Islamic unwashed. Click here.

Piece that is remarkable for the sound quality of the soundbites acquired with the VoIP program "Skype," for which Google. Click here for the radio spot and here for an NYT piece on Skype by James Fallows, of all people.

Neat owl held by a pal who's a bird-bander click here.

Bill Harry and his hawk "the Black Widow" for the many male mates she'd killed. Click here.

Here are some pix of the new central dust collector in the woodworking shop.

This is a "cyclone." It's made by a neat company in Syracuse, New York, Oneida Air Systems, and is widely considered the best woodworking sawdust and wood-chip collector on the market. Ninety percent of the dust and virtually all of the chips are blown into the 30-gallon drum. The rest of the dust down to 0.2 microns gets trapped (99.5% efficiency) in a filter inside the drum on top of the cone. One of the neatest things about this system is the seven automatic blast gates. Below you see one of them being installed. The green thing is a solenoid motor that pulls a blast gate away from the closed position and delivers suction to the machine served by that blast gate. Blast gates are cut-offs that deliver suction or pull dust and chips for only the machine or machines in use. Ordinarily they're all closed until you open one or more manually. But these are opened electrically when you turn on a tool by vibration sensors like the one below. This sensor is attached by sticky tape and velcro to a woodworking machine. When you turn on the tool the sensor opens the blast gate and turns on the Oneida-Air dust collector.

The tremendous suction power of the machine is illustrated by what happens to the drum to the right when you throw a switch manually. Hover your mouse over the picture of the drum -- OR the black square to the right -- to play the clip.

Below is my candidate for the "messy shop of the year" prize.