While we tend to shy away from overt political opinions here on Armchair Arcade for obvious reasons (i.e., some people can be extremely sensitive about certain topics), I just wanted to say that I really felt good about Senator Obama's big victory last night, both as an American and as someone who has a generally positive outlook on life and the future. My network of choice during this historic Presidential run has been CNN in HD. They've become a bit infamous for their overt use of technology during their coverage, particularly for their "magic map", which is a type of multi-touch device that has all kinds of nifty features to dig deeper into the data. What caught my eye in particular last night though was their use of a pseudo-hologram technology and placing an animated, 3D capitol building on one of the conference tables. I don't have a link to the 3D capitol building, but I did find some instances on YouTube of the other technology that they've been using.

I don't know how many of you are interested in magic tricks, but I think they're cool. Anyway, I just saw link on Digg to this set of 10 magic tricks and how to do them, and it's all in the form of video tutorials. I'd love to learn a few of these for use at parties and to pick things up in a dull class. There are card tricks as well as nifty feats like ripping a phone book in half!