First off, I want to apologize to anyone who has posted on here and not received a prompt reply. I recently signed on to co-author Head First PHP & MySQL, and it has been quite the hectic project. I'm still a bit overwhelmed trying to stay afloat and get the book finished, so I appreciate your patience. I do read everything that is posted, and will do my best to answer your questions and requests as quickly as possible. Thanks.

We live on a planet with over 1.8 million known species of life, and as much as we tout being an "information society," we are woefully behind in documenting those species. Enter the Encyclopedia of Life, an ambitious attempt to document online every known life form on our planet. What it boils down to is a massive mashup of data along the lines of Wikipedia combined with Google Maps combined with a biological equivalent of Ancestry.com. It's still in an embryonic stage, but definitely worth a look.

Mainstream gamers may not fully appreciate the man, but Gary Gygax was an incredible force behind adventure gaming, both traditional and electronic. The co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, Gygax died today at age 69. I haven't touched D&D since I was a kid but it made a permanent mark on many creative endeavors to follow. We'll miss you, Gary.

OK, so this is admittedly a bit of a strange post. But I once had a huge fascination with horror films and the special effects that go into making them. In fact, it's really not such a leap to think of a horror movie with lots of special effects in terms of a technical production like, say, a computer book. Seriously. A lot of the same creative ingenuity has to be tapped to pull off what seems impossible under difficult time and budgetary constraints. Mr. Romero is a master, and in this interview he discusses why he chose to shoot his latest film, "Diary of the Dead," on such a small budget ($2.5M).