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The last week or so I’ve been very distracted by personal thing (kids not sleeping, wife not feeling well), work things (started on a new project) and side stuff (lots of code changes to my .TEXT blog and finishing up non-admin tool), so that’s why you haven’t seen many Geek Notes. When I don’t have much time to read RSS feeds, I’m much more likely to post sporadic things that I’m playing with and forget to post my semi-regular little link-letter.

But I found a few spare minuted today while both kids were napping, so here’s a quickie.

• NetDig – This is groovy. As a UNIX guy from way back, I used to use dig to figure out DNS problems. Today, as I was trying to help out IDEP Foundation (an Indonesian non-profit that is helping out with Tsunami relief) figure out some DNS problems, I was wanting dig and found NetDig instead. Written in .NET by William Stacey, it is exactly what I wanted and more. (Also available at that site: NetPing and CmdPing for all your pinging needs.)
• Dave’s Quick Search Taskbar – This looks even faster than the Google Toolbar. But I’m not a big fan of stuff in my Taskbar, so I don’t know if it will stay for long. Worth a look though… [via The Daily Grind 535]
• Layering Principles – Martin Fowler posts the results of an interesting survey where attendees at a workshop were asked to propose principles for good layering. Some interesting results of the voting. I particulary enjoyed seeing that “Separate development teams by layer” got 1 yes vote and 22 no votes.
• Drunk Prank Photos – An amazing group of photos. Almost everyone did this (or had it done to them) at one point during college, right? [via Boing Boing]
• SD Card with USB Interface – “SanDisk has today announced a unique SD card which has a hinged portion, flip this over and the card becomes a USB 2.0 Flash Drive.” Very cool!
• The Open Source Zealot – I found this gem from last summer when I re-discovered the Caustic Tech blog (rss).
• Improving Your Poker Game – Brad Wilson shares his list of recommended books for those interested in winning at poker. Brad claims to be able to make money regularly in small stakes Vegas hold-‘em games, so I’d at least check out his recommendations if you’re thinking of playing soon.