Unsolicited Advice

I'd like to share some very special recommendations with you all today. Unsolicited and possibly even unhelpful, these recommendations are for products and people that make me smile, or in some cases, provide me with hours of entertainment.
For movie critic: Ty Burr, writer for the Boston Globe. Though my experience of him has been limited to this one genre, he still ranks right up there among my favorite word-slingers. The man is simply a creative genius, and he uses big words. Well.
For Harry Potter Fan Fiction site: the Sugar Quill, bar none. This site is not about I heart Hogwarts and bestill my beating heart and kiss me Harry. It's about learning to write better, and collaboration, and beta-reading. So if you are in the market for some time-killing but sometimes surprisingly worthy contributions to proactive fanhood, this is your place. The best story I've read, though now rendered obsolete by Book 5, is After the End by Arabella and Zsenya.
In the category of something to hang on your wall, I must lift up my really big world map. It's delivered hours of entertainment so far, for me alone but also when I have visitors. Start with "Where ya from?" and "Where've ya been?" and it snowballs from there. My particular map also depicts the flags of each country on a handy-dandy little key along the bottom edge, along with capital city, population and size. I think just owning this map makes me smarter. (Note: no link for this one. Try the mall.)
Kitchen Gadget: this one is a draw. I love to cook, but I am selective about my gadgets. (I don't patronize the Home Shopping Network store, for example.) But I have found two that I can't live without: my water boiler and my rice cooker. Every European home has a water boiler. It is so much quicker and way more convenient than waiting for the stove burner to do its thing. And the rice cooker: perfect rice every time, without using up one of my two precious burners. What more can I say?
Best online German translation tool: I don't like those sites that pretend to do the whole shebang for you. Have you seen the garbage they produce? Yech. But I really like this online German-English dictionary maintained by the University of Munich (my alma mater!).
OK, that's enough for now. If you are in the market for any of these things, I hope my suggestions brought you some inspiration. :-) Over and out.