The summer solstice came and went this past week, but it feels like Dog Days already! My garden has given us some fine tomatoes, which never happened before July before. The kids are bored and annoying because it is too hot to go outside in the afternoon (and they don't want to get up before noon). And there are six weeks to go before school starts! Are you suffering through a heat wave where you are? Maybe, as weird as the temperatures have been, we'll get a late "blackberry winter" cool down in time for Independence Day. Not that it will help the blackberries -they are already ripe! But here's an idea for keeping cool: adjust your thermostat to a comfortable level, mind your posture, and read all the feature articles here at Neatorama you may have missed during the week. Two are about dogs, and two have "hot" or heat" in the titles. I assure you this is all just coincidence.
Jill and Zeon went to the annual surf dog competition and Jill posted a first-hand report called Hanging 20 With the Surfing Dogs of San Diego!
Jill Harness also wrote 4 Modern K9s Worth Knowing About.
The Annals of Improbable Research brought us The Search for a Hot Craps Table, subtitled The Effects of Temperature on the Outcome of Fair Dice.
Lost Attractions came to us from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
And mental_floss magazine contributed Forged in the Heat of Battle: The Origin of the Boy Scouts.
Over at NeatoBambino this week, we read how the mom of a teenager diffused a tense situation with a silly cake, heard a rap about a sippy cup, got some video game decorating tips, and learned of new technology to battle diaper smells. You should be checking out NeatoBambino every day!
Contests! We had contests! Congratulations to ingsoc, BentheMonkey, Headdesk, and Aaron Granger, who all won prizes this week in the Tokyoflash Treasure Hunt.
In this week's What Is It? game, nobody knew going into the game what the correct answer is. Rob at the What Is It? blog investigated all the plausible guesses and found that it is a pipe flaring tool, with some pieces missing. Craig Clayton was the first with the correct answer, and wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! But we also have a t-shirt for Straight_Flush, who thought he had it figured out.
Well, let me tell you the truth. It was hard to find out what this amazing piece of metal is. And after a lot of hard work I found out that it is “pic2592a”.
If you don’t believe me, just hover your mouse pointer on top of it and see for yourself.
Yeah, that wins a t-shirt for the funniest answer! Thanks to everyone who played along. See the answers for all of this week’s mystery items at the What Is It? blog.
The post with the most comments this week (besides the giveaways) was The Eternal Debate of Nobody Buys Music Anymore followed closely by And the Most Peaceful Country in the World Is… with Snake with a Can on Its Head: Would You Help It? coming in third. It's not too late to put your two cents worth in!
Now, if you see something awesome on the internet that we should share with everyone, you can let us know by email at tips@neatorama.com and we'll check it out.
After you catch up on everything that's happened this week, you may want to browse through The Best of Neatorama, where we have all our great feature articles listed -you're sure to find something that tickles your fancy! Check us out on Twitter and Facebook as well!