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Usable Knowledge is a website designed by Harvard's Graduate School of Education to link practice with research by presenting research in more appetizing ways. Being out of school prevents me from being able to access educational journals as easily as I'd like to. Usable Knowledge is a great site to not only be able to read about the latest breakthroughs and findings in education by some pretty smart folks, but it gives me research in a shorter and friendlier way.

Lately I've been checking Roger Ebert's website everytime I watch a new movie. I don't think that he's a particularly brilliant critic, like others do; I just find interesting the way that he can sometimes write like a Pulitzer prize winner and other times like a 7-year-old (or like me) describing a film. He can, at times, offer good insight into films, but I prefer NYTimes and New Yorker reviews (I've also recently discovered for myself David Edelstein from New York magazine).

Zach Condon and his band Beirut don't need to be gimmicky to be good. They're just unbelievably good. Flyingclubcup.com presents the band's 2007 album in a series of take away shows filmed by La Blogotheque. I'll admit that these particular shows can come off as a bit heavy-handed, and if you watch too many in a row, like I did, you may end up throwing up for two days straight (but the best kind of throwing up, music-induced). To be able to see them in quiet motion and to hear the sweet coordinated melodies of their french horns, ukuleles, pianos, accordions playing together is only second best to hearing the lovely, overlaid instrument of Condon's voice.

Any person who loves short films should know about Martin Pickles. Pickles is a sometimes-surrealist, all-the-time eccentric British filmmaker. I fell in love with his work starting with his End of the Century film, which was featured in a Microcinema series. I haven't seen a film of his that hasn't been, in the very least, entertaining and humorous (though at times pretty dark), but most are thought-provoking and sometimes reminiscent of the brilliant Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel's work. On Pickles's website gmfilm.co.uk, you can check out most of his short films.

Houston's a great town with a diverse group of folks, particularly around the Rice/Montrose area. KTRU 91.7 is a pretty interesting radio station that plays what they call "strange and eclectic" music, everything from post-punk to americana to ska to africana and there's even a kids' music segment. It's worth it every once in a while to tune in, but its wide range of music makes it difficult to be a loyal and constant listener. The website itself is gawdy, but it's actually appropriate for the kind of wacky programming that goes on there.

I love to read but don't always have time to do leisurely reading. Zoetrope describes itself as "a quarterly literary publication founded by Francis Ford Coppola in 1997 to explore the intersection of story and art, fiction and film." If you're a fan of modern-day story-telling, this may be the website for you to peruse. I love to stop during busy moments to enjoy a short story or two, and Zoetrope always delivers something interesting. However, the downside of this site is that not all of the stories can be viewed in full on-line. More often than not, you'll find this note at the end of the online version: "To read the rest of this story, and others from the Spring 2009 issue, please purchase a copy from our online store." Unfortunately, issues are hella expensive.

Alternative to typical wedding gifts - I used this website a few years as an alternative to wedding registries at this or that store. It's a way for people to give donations to your favorite charities as a wedding gift, and I found it to be extremely useful and easy to navigate.

3voor12 is a Dutch multimedia company which produces a series called (Behind) Closed Doors (http :// 3voor12. Vpro. Nl/doemee/tags/(behind)%20closed%20doors). This series seems to aspire to be like La Blogotheque's Take-away Shows but falls short in so many ways. The bands play mostly in a couple of claustrophobia-inducing elevators in Amsterdam. The camera stays fixated on the singers, mainly because there's nowhere else for it to focus. The performers, at times, seem to be a bit uncomfortable. Note Will Sheff of Okkervil River rushing the interviewer into another song ("Er, shall I play another?"). As well, quite a few of the performers spend most of the time singing with their eyes closed, I can imagine to avoid the awkwardness of playing in such close proximity to the cameraman and interviewer. The production value is poor, and in turn, the results are pretty mediocre, even if they are some great bands (Grandaddy, Iron & Wine, Low, Bon Iver, Apples in Stereo, etc.). Perhaps it's the Dutch I'm lacking, but it seems that the website is not easy to navigate. However, going through the behind closed doors list can be pretty amusing with labels such as "Liam Finn zat met George Michael op het toilet" (Liam Finn sings about how he met George Michael on a toilet?) "Lou Rhodes (ex-Lamb) doet krantje croissantje in de Paradisolift" (Lou Rhodes sings with a croissant in his mouth on the Paradiso lift?), "Iron & Wine voelt zich $#*!ed" (Sam Beam gets $#*!ed? I don't want to know.)