(Click thumbnails for enlargement) On June 4, I posted photos of some plants in my garden that I couldn't identify.

A lot of people offered their opinion, but there wasn't consensus on what kind of plants they are. A few people asked me to post photos when the plants blossomed. Well, they did blossom, and they flowers are pretty -- some are white and some are purplish / mauve.

Now does anyone know what kind of plant it is?

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets we saw this pretty and entirely pedestrian HP Calculator; the Konami code for Google Reader; a industrial shredder eat an Asteroids cabinet; GPS-maker TomTom's intention to make iPhone software; the mystery of Macbook Air's optical illusion beveled design (and other nice laptop design tricks); a way to project trippy Hello Kitties all over your ceiling; a fancy shisha maintenance kit that looks like a espresso maker; fancy Italian asymmetric sunglasses; a whole bunch of alarm clocks; beautiful Pac-Man-inspired art; and a way to store your shoes that has a better name than execution.

We also glanced at Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard; saw not one but two different all-in-one desktop PCs; discovered a way to cheat at Guitar Hero with a machine; played Star Wars 'Imperial March' on a floppy drive; shuddered at a phone shaped like a giant butterfly; saw that Bob Moog's company has a guitar with infinite sustain; applauded a outdoor router from D-Link used in a Native American wind generation system; saw a vending machine that crushes fine china (yup, it's art!); and found another DIY project we'll never make: a bank of Commodore 64 SIDs made into a big synthesizer.

But the best thing we found all day? (At least in my opinion?) The Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ game for the Nintendo DS.

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Keith says:

I'm a regular Boing Boing reader. Here's something that's kinda strange, maybe you can help. Here's a link to a picture of my tongue. Perhaps other Boing Boing readers can help me out.

I've had these things hanging under my tongue all my life. Only recently have they been bothering me. I've been accidentally biting them and/or getting them caught on my lower teeth. It hurts a lot when this happens. Nobody else I know has these, except for my 5-year-old son; I figure it's genetic. As an adoptee though, I have limited access to my genetic history. My birth mother says that she doesn't have these. Anyone out there have these? Anyone have them removed? I searched Gray's Anatomy online, and of course have googled, but haven't found anything on this. Any tips or information would be appreciated.

Anyway, if you could post this, cool, I'd like to hear what others have to say about it.

“According to the May 1, 2008 CCC [USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation] inventory report there are only 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be only 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,” warned [Larry Matlack, President of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM)].

“Our concern is not that we are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The only thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat, which is about enough wheat to make 1⁄2 of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.

Nifty piece of plastic keeps computer cables from falling behind your desk. I wonder if there's an easy way to make something like this from plastic that most people throw away.

For sheer bang-for-the-buck, these cord management cards are tough to beat. They're cheap polyethylene sheets you either stick or screw to the edge of your desk and then snap the cables coming from your computer and peripherals into the recesses. I was tired of picking my iPod connector off the floor when it would fall off my desktop. With this, the ends of the cables are kept at the ready on your desk, which is especially great for stuff you are regularly plugging and unplugging. You can also use it to neatly route other cables coming from the back of a PC tower, like speaker and ethernet, which really helps cut down cable clutter.

Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey took these cell phone photos of Mennonite missionaries during the BEA book expo at the LA Convention Center.

He says: "I thought it was a strange fish-out-of-water thing to see these pale rural Wisconsinites on Broadway downtown. They handed me a CD of dull anti-evolution speeches, and had them in English and Spanish."

Coop has a terrific blog post about his latest painting, which is based on a smoking devil he created for a cigarette lighter company in 1993. The story of how Coop's illustration spread across the planet reminds me of the story of Robert Crumb's Keep on Truckin' illustration.

He quickly gained a life of his own. Lots of cars, trucks and skateboards, tool boxes, laptops, etc. ended up plastered with a Smoking Devil sticker. I started to meet people with the Smoking Devil tattooed on their body. It was at this point that I started to realize that I had, pretty much by accident, created something powerful. However those lines and forms came together, it had a power all its own. It was becoming something more than a piece of art or merchandise. It had become a symbol of something, a little talisman that people used to signify something about themselves and their lives. Pretty heady stuff for a dumb hillbilly such as myself.

As is often the case when an image reaches this level of recognition, it started to become bigger, something that was beyond my control. Like Frankenstein's Monster, the creation often thwarted the will of its creator. The Smoking Devil started to pop up in places where I never intended it to be. It was knocked off as merchandise, used without permission to adorn bars and businesses. I began to understand how Nagel must have felt the first time he saw one of those hideous paintings in the window of a nail salon. (That's probably what killed him.)

So now, I suppose, terrorists will have to content themselves with activating the kill-switch signals to make every bus on every freeway in America slam to a stop all at once, causing massive fatalities and snarling the nation's traffic in a weeks-long, gory jam.

Nice one, movie-plot-fighters!

Private bus companies have received millions of dollars from the Department of Homeland Security for the security systems. It costs $1,500 to equip each bus, with $50-per-bus monthly maintenance costs.

Gray Line double-decker tourist buses and Coach USA have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds to install 3,000 devices. After receiving a $124,000 federal grant, DeCamp Bus Lines is installing the device on its 80 commuter buses, which travel routes from northern New Jersey to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown.

New Jersey Transit is currently in the process of equipping all of its roughly 3,000 buses with the technology. NJ Transit Chief of Police Joseph Bober said: "This enhanced technology helps us protect our bus drivers and customers. It's another proactive tool to protect our property, employees and customers."