Given the number of PR people who send me press releases in a given week, I'm assuming that Nick Denton's new paid advertisement blogs will be popular among that crowd - but will anyone else actually read these things? It's interesting that one of the perks is the promotion of the adblog on Gawker sites and other weblogs, but I wonder whether that's promotion in the sense of ads for the sites, or in the sense of posts about them? And does anyone even read Gawker itself anymore, apart from the ones who also read things like People?

I was surprised but pleased when I heard that Alfonso Cuarón would be directing the third Harry Potter movie. The only other thing of his I've seen is Y Tu Mamá También, which was great, but probably about the farthest thing from Harry Potter I could have imagined. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I saw Prisoner of Azkaban this afternoon and was impressed. It's a different sort of thing altogether from the first two, and I think they'll suffer badly by the comparison. POA felt much more authentic; there's a depth that wasn't even approached in the previous movies. I won't say any more, but here's A.O. Scott's review, which I more or less agree with.

In addition to my G4 and a positively ancient Performa that no longer even boots, I've got this first-gen bondi iMac sitting around that I'd like to do something with. It's too old and crusty to run OS X, but I'm not ready to turn it into an aquarium just yet. What I'd really like to do with it is install Linux, just for the sake of having an iMac running Linux. Chris and I have looked around at YDL and Mandrake PPC, but here's the catch: this iMac doesn't have a functioning CD-ROM drive, since it broke years ago and I'm unwilling to put any more money into a computer I don't really use. So, ideally, we'll be doing a net install - but this seems to be easier said than done with Mandrake and perhaps not even possible with YDL. Has anyone successfully installed a PPC Linux on an iMac (or any other Mac) over a network? If so, I'd like to hear about it.

The Plog is Amazon's new gimmick, and I think I hate everything about it - from the name (which sounds like something that might go wrong with one's toilet) to their list of "the best and most popular" weblogs. Amazon recommendations are always iffy at best, and having them pretend to be a weblog doesn't seem to help anything. It's always driven me crazy that if I buy something like a digital camera, Amazon assumes I'll want to buy more digital cameras - rather than, say, camera accessories or batteries. I've never once bought anything shoved at me by the Gold Box, and I doubt Plogs will fare any better in the getting-my-money department.

So I guess when I say "posting will be light," I really mean "posting will be nonexistent," but at least I'm back in New York now. I did indeed spend a lot of time with hammocks and grilled things and dogs, and to top it all off my mom and I hit IKEA bright and early this morning. It was probably the best time I've ever been there - we showed up about ten minutes before they opened, but they let us in anyway. The place was almost completely empty, and we didn't wait in a single line or fight our way through a single crowd. And now I have bags and bags of new apartmenty things to find places for, as well as a new window box full of herbs that I brought back from Massachusetts. Hooray for long weekends!