Tidbits.

• While modern communications tools are definitely improving, there is still no substitute for actually sitting down with collaborators at a table with pen and paper, and hashing things out face-to-face.   I just returned from a quick trip to talk with some theorist colleagues, and it was a great way to get a lot accomplished in a relatively short period of time.  Much higher bandwidth than repeated emails.
• If you're ever invited to write a review article, and you have any concerns about the quality of the journal or the publisher, don't ignore your instincts.  My postdoc and I just went through a painful experience along these lines - in the end, everything's going to be fine (with another publisher!), but the original publisher (I'll name names some other time) was amazingly incompetent.  You'd think, for example, that a journal editor would have an email system that actually accepts attachments, particularly if their web-based system is utterly fubar.
• A follow-up to my recent post about IR CCDs....  Anyone out there have experience with the MOSIR-950?  It's actually a Si CCD with a special front end that makes it sensitive from 950nm out to around 1700 nm.
• I'm very tempted to buy this.  (If you have never seen the tv show Lost, you won't get this.)