BREAKING SURF
| Dynamics of a Blogosphere Story |
| Against the Blogeoisie |
| More on Blogs, Google, and the Online Press |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Top 10 Things I Hate about Star Trek |
| Surreal eBay Criticism |
| Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" |
| Fast-Food Nutrition Info |
| Flash Arcade Game |
| Breakout |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
Military Communications in Gulf War II
Gulf War II is being touted as the first really wired war. Joshua Davis provides a first-person account of the gear and the troops who run the US military's communications network in this lengthy Wired article. Davis moves from the center of the network, the Joint Operations Center in Qatar, to its outer perimeter, a unit in the field setting up a tactical operations center. Davis notes that the further you get from the center, the more fragile the network seems. Despite his observation and the occasional glitch - and it would be a miracle if there were none in the initial combat deployment - on the whole, the network seems to work as advertised. There are quirks. The military uses Microsoft Chat and has Microsoft Premium support, colonels are occasionally represented with busty babe icons in chat rooms, and the cynical troops brought their own commercial GPS and walkie-talkie gear and used it to good effect. The scope and feat impress us, but we suspect that despite plans to destroy equipment lest it be captured, the potential danger of losing a computer to a competent enemy and having the network hacked is worth worrying about.http://wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/battlefield.html
Einstein Archive Online, and Some Notes about His Brain
The Einstein Archives provides the first online access to Albert Einstein's scientific and non-scientific manuscripts, held by the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The online collection offers scanned images from some 900 documents. In addition, the archive also has a huge Archival Database that lists thousands of documents, many of which are not in the Albert Einstein Archives. Before you rush off to explore this, you should know that much of this material is both handwritten and in German, with no transcription provided. It's mostly just images of handwritten pages, which limits the archive primarily to use by scholars rather than casual netsurfers. (Also, the archive Web site does not work well with all browsers.) Meanwhile, if you're not into reading images of handwritten notes, check out the cool info about Einstein's brain.Einstein: http://www.alberteinstein.info/
Einstein's brain: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/ein.html
Two NSDs ago, we wrote up a Flotsam & Jetsam item on a video clip of a young man pretending to be a Jedi on film. The star has revealed himself. His name is Ghyslain and he is a 15-year-old Quebecois. Waxy.org has the info and is hosting an interview (translated from French) done by Jish (whose site is down). We at NSD may have assumed incorrectly; the star did film himself with a school camcorder, but whether he forgot to remove the tape depends on if you trust Waxy.org's take or the translated interview. Regardless, Waxy.org set up a fund to buy Ghyslain an iPod and solicited enough donations to buy him close to ten. Many visitors have posted messages wondering what it would take to get Ghyslain into the next Star Wars flick. The North American press is all over this poor kid, who has to feel like he got hit by a media truck.
NSD: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.18.html#FJ1
Waxy.org: http://www.waxy.org/archive/2003/05/13/finding_.shtml
Jish: http://www.jish.nu/2003_05_01_archive.php#200287473
A newspaper set up as a collaborative online enterprise, involving over 26,000 citizen journalists, is obviously not your usual Korean morning paper. OhmyNews is a three-year old experiment in guerrilla journalism designed to escape the dusty conservatism of most Korean newspapers. Although OhmyNews has some 40 full-time editors and reporters, most of the content comes from a horde of enthusiastic amateurs. Its novel approach has certainly shaken the status quo. For example, newly elected President Roh chose OhmyNews over the conventional dailies for his first post-election interview. That this kind of publishing phenomenon would emerge in Korea, arguably the most wired nation, seems fitting. OhmyNews presents a streetsmart, opinionated, grass-roots journalism that probably isn't to everyone's taste, but has a life and energy that mainstream publications generally lack. Can a US version be far behind? Wired, itself once a brash upstart, tells the story. Contributors to Calpundit take the idea one step further by pondering the idea of on-demand journalism, debating an online journalist marketplace where writers jostle for story bids.
Ohmynews: http://www.ohmynews.com/
Wired: http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,58856,00.html
Calpundit: http://www.calpundit.com/archives/001246.html
Interview with Ethan Zuckerman, Founder of Geekcorps
If you want to work for Geekcorps, know that high-strung workaholic supergeeks needn't apply. You need IT smarts to tackle Geekcorps projects, but you also need a sense of humor and considerable flexibility, not to mention a tolerance for deliberately low pay. Geekcorps founder Ethan Zuckerman discovered early on what makes a good Geekcorpsman during his first project, in Ghana. Now in over a dozen countries, the nonprofit Geekcorps is proving that a little bit of help can make a huge difference to organizations trying to modernize in developing countries. Geekcorps succeeds because it tries to meet technical needs domestically to avoid expensive dependency on outsourced technology or skills. This Zuckerman interview at O'Reilly reveals a pragmatic, idealistic dotcom millionaire and his success with practical projects. Geekcorps draws funding from many sources, although currently mostly from the US Agency for International Development. Little did Zuckerman know when he visited Ghana as a Fulbright scholar in 1993 that he would return six years later with the dream, since realized - over and over again.Geekcorps: http://www.geekcorps.org/
O'Reilly: http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/news/ethan_0503.html
If you've gone to see "The Matrix: Reloaded" just to see some freaky action, you were certainly not disappointed. But you also had to sit through rather lengthy periods of murky philosophical exposition, otherwise known as the boring bits. Whatever your opinion of the mystical babble, it's a tribute to the filmmakers' attention to detail that the story arc and associated cinematic imagery are well grounded in real historical philosophy. At least, so says Ken Mondschein, who wrote a great exegesis of the often impenetrable plot. His deconstruction makes a good case that the whole Matrix cycle is based on Gnostic philosophy, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the teachings of Origen of Alexandria. Even if you don't believe him - and he makes a persuasive case - his terrific and light-hearted article is eminently worth reading just to get some exposure to those ancient schools of thought. Incidentally, isn't real depth in a Hollywood action blockbuster one of the signs of the Apocalypse?
http://www.corporatemofo.com/stories/051803matrix.htm
In "The Matrix: Reloaded" (look away if you haven't seen it yet), Trinity carries out a real hack. In the movie, she uses a real security tool, Nmap, to scan the Matrix network for a vulnerable SSH server. She then exploits a real vulnerability - valid in 2001, but long since fixed - to reset the root password. Shortly thereafter, she's in the network and the action moves on at a blistering pace. This may be the first time that Hollywood ever got hacker technology right, even if only for a split second. Insecure.org, the home of Nmap, has the screenshots. Only 20 minutes after the developer of Nmap asked for "screenshots", he started receiving them - mixed in among actual copies of the entire pirated movie in a variety of digital formats.
http://www.insecure.org/
Working Hard to Avoid Working Hard
Former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair may be the most popular example, but more than one worker bee has claimed to be working while actually off somewhere else. High-tech paraphrenalia has made it easier for workers to create the illusion of constant work in the office. Whether they configure e-mail programs to send messages late at night or use a PDA to remotely operate their office desktop computers during your long lunch hour, employees are availing themselves of multiple tools to make it seem like they are in the office working hard when they are in fact neither in the office nor working. Read this Wall Street Journal article to see the array of possibilities. We won't tell if you are reading it at the beach, honest.http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB105294526966494700,00.html
Speaking of Jayson Blair, here's an interview the New York Observer conducted with the boy blunder. It pretty much speaks for itself, but we want to highlight one word from the article: pathological. Blair comes off as somewhat less than stable, striking out and spreading blame for his reporting misdeeds across a wide variety of culprits. If this whole Blair story interests you, this is one piece you need to read.
http://www2.observer.com/observer/pages/offtherec.asp
Intuit to Remove Copy Protection
Intuit decided that too many software pirates were using its TurboTax software for free and the company incorporated anti-piracy digital rights management (DRM) in its 2002 edition. Purchasers would only be able to use the software on one computer. As CNN's Tech Investor column points out, the backlash was quantifiable: eight Amazon customers gave TurboTax 2001 four-and-a-half stars; 578 Amazonians gave TurboTax 2002 only one-and-a-half stars. Analysts estimate that the move cost Intuit $100 million. No doubt, that financial hit weighed as much as the outcry in leading Intuit to decide to drop DRM starting next year, with the exception of promotional products distributed for free, which will still require online activation and payment of a fee. Intuit puts the expected spin on its announcement, couching it as a logical outcome of its commitment to customer satisfaction. Funny that that never occurred to them earlier. ExtremeTech has more.CNN: http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/19/technology/techinvestor/hellweg/index.htm
ExtremeTech: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1088341,00.asp
FTC Takes Aim at Open-Relay Mailservers
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is opening another front in the war against spam, one against open-relay servers. This kind of e-mail server has no protection and will permit anyone to send messages through it - and so is often targeted by spammers. The FTC, in conjunction with other government agencies at the federal and state levels, is starting a campaign to have open relay servers shut down. Officials will not force open relays to close, but will contact the people who run them to make them aware of the problem. The campaign is one of the many ideas that emerged from the recent three-day FTC Spam Summit, and might lead to a small reduction in all that spam. The FTC has a new Web site devoted to the campaign at which you can read the letter sent to open-relay operators. CNET wrote up a bit on it.FTC: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/spam/openrelay.htm
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1001868.html
A few months ago, blogs were a little-known form of online diary. Now mainstream, blogs are becoming perhaps a bit too well known. What used to be just some candid commentary from you to a couple thousand close friends has suddenly morphed into a tool capable of destroying friendships, stressing families, and maybe even costing you your job. Many now live, if not in fear, then with a certain anxiety, ever vigilant lest they fall victim to a drive-by blogger. The New York Times reports on one blogger, among others, who notes that journalistic rules should be adhered to when blogging. Ironic, in view of recent revelations at that paper.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/fashion/18BLOG.html?pagewanted=1
Japanese Paper Succeeds with Wireless Service
Is the future of wireless news already happening in Japan? Japan's Asahi Shimbun, a newspaper with a daily circulation of 12 million, is making money on selling the content it provides specifically for cell phones. The paper recognized that cell phone users don't want typical articles - demand is driven by a young crowd that has little interest in traditional news and spends an average of only ten minutes a day reading a newspaper. Asahi Shimbun tailored the wireless service to meet cell-phone users' demand for sports and entertainment news. The profit margin is slim, but it exists, and that alone is an outstanding success. Read this Online Journalism Review article to get a fix on how one media firm created a profitable new market.http://www.ojr.org/japan/media/1049955101.php
The Mobile Meteorology Revolution
High-resolution weather forecasting may seem like a niche market, but each year over $3 trillion in commerce is directly affected by weather. One former weatherman saw the need for localized forecasting, and quit prancing in front of the green screen to found a service that puts the local back into local forecasts. The company, Digital Cyclone, beams precise weather data to cell phones and PDAs. Digital Cyclone is one of several currently riding a wave of pinpoint weather reporting, and this technology Review article explains why they're riding so high.http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/freedman0603.asp
Data-Sharing Leads to Data-Mining
The traces you leave behind on the Web are certainly a privacy concern, but the use of them isn't always a negative. Researchers studied search requests and discovered that people with common interests tend to search for the same things. It seems obvious, but you didn't publish it, did you? The long-term upshot of this is that after teasing out clumps of like-minded people, content providers and others (advertisers, spammers, etc.) can target them. We direct you first to an article at Technology Research News (TRN) on the science of grouping net users, then to the actual paper, "Data-Sharing Relationships in the Web", in PDF format.TRN: http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/050703/Net_scan_finds_like-minded_users_050703.html
Paper: http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0302/0302016.pdf
The Google Server Cluster Architecture
It's been known for years that Google relies on a large cluster of commodity computers to run its search engine. Until now, Google has not widely publicized the exact details of that architecture. In a paper published in IEEE Micro, three Google geeks show exactly how the company assembles about 15,000 inexpensive desktop computers into a reliable, redundant multiprocessor architecture. The paper shows why putting together such an array is more then just a matter of wiring up a bunch of boxes to a network. You have to think about everything from optimal processor allocation to the economics of power density and associated cooling. The paper is a must-read for anybody interested in large-scale computer arrays and how they can be economically harnessed to meet modern data processing needs.http://www.computer.org/micro/mi2003/m2022.pdf
ONLINE CULTURE
Dynamics of a Blogosphere Story
How does a story enter the blogosphere, develop, and finally die out? This Microdoc News study traced widely blogged stories such as the Baghdad blogger and the Microsoft iLoo as they were picked up, spread, and petered out. It traced 45 such stories over three months and found that each story has a definite beginning, develops along a predictable arc, and comes to a predictable end. Microdoc News looked at factors such as the numbers of bloggers and posts that covered each story. It examined how such a story gets started - usually when mainstream media comments on some aspects of the Net. It found that the stories develop and die down in a self-feeding cycle of opinion, vote, reaction, and summation. The analysis even notes the phenomenon of branding, by which keyword-driven stories (e.g. "googlewashing") wind up being more popular and better represented on Google. The study concludes that it is difficult for any single blogger to get a story going - in this case, it really does takes a blogvillage to raise a story. There, we're branded.http://www.microdoc-news.info/blogger/2003/05/20.html#a636
Tech writer Bill Thompson doesn't like the blogeoisie, which he defines as a small circle of influential - i.e. widely linked to - bloggers who have a disproportionate voice in online debate, particularly over the shape and future of the Net. He singles out Howard Rheingold, Tim O'Reilly, Clay Shirky, Doc Searls, Dave Winer, and Ben Hammersley as the guilty parties. Thompson also objects to much of the substance of blog writing, citing blog coverage of various events which, unlike coverage by professional media, is "lacking substance, structure or meaning." Having made his argument, Thompson suggests that as A-list bloggers gain real political power - he cites their influence over radio-spectrum deregulation as evidence of such power - they need an outside source of criticism. His suggestion that journalists should be the source of this criticism is sure to evoke peals of laughter from the blog community, which delights in poking the smelly carcass of established media with the sharp stick of cynicism.
http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000006DDA4.htm
More on Blogs, Google, and the Online Press
The Register has covered how blogs have begun to swamp Google's search results (see our coverage in NSD 9.19), but Register writer Andrew Orlowski was mistaken in writing that Google was going to separate blogs in their own specific search engine, the Guardian reports. We stated that "bloggers may be hurt to read that they are considered useless as sources of information," and we were right. Doc Searls claims that the swamping phenomenon, called Googlewashing, only happens because the press archives old material behind registration or pay gateways that search engines can't reach - what he calls printwashing. Dave Winer adds, "If you want to be in Google you gotta be on the Web." We agree, to a point - but Googlewashing can obscure more than just the press. As an aside, we are fully aware of the irony in quoting Winer and Searls after the last item above and in having our own archives hidden behind registration.NSD 9.19: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.19.html#BS14
Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,959151,00.html
Searls: http://doc.weblogs.com/2003/05/18
Winer: http://davenet.userland.com/2003/05/18/ifYouWantToBeInGoogleYouGottaBeOnTheWeb
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For more selections, check out: Netsurfer Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/ Netsurfer Library: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
Iraq's Most Wanted Playing Cards (Authorized Edition)
The Bug: A Novel
The War of the Flowers
A Short History of Nearly EverythingSURFING SITES
We aren't bird fanatics, but many folks are, and you can easily imagine the usefulness of the Online Sibley Guide to Birds to birdwatchers who want to properly identify sightings for their life lists. Anyone can use the site to become wiser in the ways of the wing. The main feature of this interactive field guide is Bird ID, a powerful tool with which you can specify a bird group, color, size, or all of these, in addition to region and state, to narrow your choices as you try to figure out what kind of bird you saw out in the field, or woods, or wherever. Or what birds you're likely to find there. Bird ID can also be a tool for teachers. We were a bit disappointed to find that the Compare Birds and About Birds pages are previews only - they promote online services and companion books but aren't full-blown utilities like Bird ID. Still, it seems logical to ask the staff of nature centers when they will set up public computers for onsite access to this great birding site. It's that good.http://www.sibleyguidetobirds.com/
Penn and Teller and Showtime: Bullshit!
If you've ever caught Penn and Teller's act, you know they're great entertainers. Their talents make them especially good at shooting down crackpots, and in fact they have a late-night Showtime program dedicated to doing just that. The title? "Penn and Teller: Bullshit!" What else? You can access some of the content on the Web - although while you don't have to be a Showtime subscriber to get a taste of the show, you do have to be in the US. Showtime blocks non-US netsurfers from its site, which features a few partial clips from the shows. The clips give you a good feel for what the show is about: Penn and Teller explain how psychics who communicate with the dead actually just do cold reads and pick up on their victim's response, for example. Alternative medicine, alien abduction, creationism - they tackle them all, and bring them down. Speaking of tackling bogusness, our complaint to Showtime about its geographically restricted Web access has been in their pipes for two weeks and has so far generated four automated, completely irrelevant responses. That's bullshit. Here's a workaround: use a proxy. There's a bunch listed at KUBar."Penn and Teller: Bullshit!": http://www.sho.com/ptbs/index.cfm
KUBar: http://www.kub.kz/kubar.htm
Time-Lapse and Sped-Up Videography
A collaborative effort involving the Science Museum of Minnesota and Red Hill Studios, Playing with Time is a real science project devoted to examining change over time. If you're good, you can even get in on the act - just submit a proposal and, if it passes muster, Red Hill will loan you a Casio digital camera. Sweet! The nine-page gallery is liberally stuffed with a range of QuickTime movies that depict time-shifted events, from the regrowth of a forest over 20 years to the slow-motion image of an exploding firecracker. The "Water Balloon Bounce" clip is particularly entertaining and, as with most of the clips, is accompanied by an informative text box that explains the why of what you're seeing and how the clip was produced. Better yet, the toolkit portion of the site shows exactly how to make your own time-lapse clips.http://www.playingwithtime.org/
In Pursuit of the SAT's Absolute Zero
Colin Fahey had a mission. He would be the first man to reach absolute zero on the SAT I: Reasoning Test - or at least the first one to do it intentionally. Much like our beloved Fahrenheit and Celsius, in College Board parlance zero is not zero. A score of 400 is zero, or, at least, the closest anyone can get to zero, which is what Fahey was determined to achieve. He filled out his application like a survivalist (one figure caption reads, "I like sports that involve weapons and fighting.") and documents every step of the way. We won't ruin it for you. To find out how Fahey did, check out his site.http://www.colinfahey.com/2003apr5_sat/2003apr5_sat.htm
Has your boss accused you of being compulsive? Does your spouse claim you're neurotic? Do your friends think you're nuts? Well, if you're brave enough to take this test you may just find out the truth. It's cheaper than any analyst but it doesn't claim to be totally accurate. The test looks for ten recognized personality disorders - you know, top hits like paranoid, antisocial, and obsessive-compulsive. The test's 70 simply worded questions relate to your ability to deal with the world around you and to interact happily with other people. It would be a relatively easy matter to understand and cheat the direction of the questioning, but why bother? The results are presented as probabilities of your having any of the ten disorders and a high score may mean that you need to have a quiet chat on a couch somewhere.
http://www.4degreez.com/misc/personality_disorder_test.mv
Musicians have drawn from sources obscure and commonplace when naming their bands. Movies were the inspiration behind such outfits as Duran Duran (the villain in the kitsch-classic "Barbarella") and Black Sabbath (a Boris Karloff horror flick) while the members of the Velvet Underground named themselves after a book published in the '60s about S&M culture. Guess which band's members took a name from their high-school gym teacher, who hated long-haired students? (Clue: the teacher's name was Leonard Skinner). This Band Names site is a danged fine waste of time, though fans of Japanese grindcore and death-metal may be disappointed to learn that no light is shed here on the naming of Osaka-based Sicking Mother Fucking Kodoku.
http://www.8ung.at/nina_m/bandnames.htm
For Christmas 1990, the curator of this bizarre online collection received a tastelessly wrapped holiday gift basket containing, among other things, a can of Plumrose Danish Ham. Two years later, she found herself in a grocery store looking through the list of ingredients on a four-for-$1 can of Armour Star Potted Meat Food Product, one of which was "partially defatted cooked pork fatty tissue". Actually eating the stuff was practically unthinkable to our curator, who instead took a can home to keep the ham company. The Potted Meat Museum began in earnest when a friend donated a can of Rose Pork Brains in Milk Gravy. Since then, the collection has amassed over 150 canned meats, from the more familiar spams and hams to the more exotic rattlesnake and alligator through the genuinely stomach-churning. The museum has even earned the curator a bit part in a John Waters movie. Our favorite meat? A tough choice, but canned armadillo takes some beating.
http://www.pottedmeatmuseum.com/
Coathangers are objects of ancient origin, possibly introduced to Egypt by Alexander the Great, which deserve a museum of their own. This Web site obliges, and documents a valuable collection with tongue firmly in cheek. The basis of the collection was begun in 1928 by Edith Mosse and was originally housed in a garden shed. It is now open to the public on an appointment-only basis in Windhamster, England. The museum's four online rooms document the origins of hangers from 2000 BCE, development from 1800 to 1950, and technological innovation to 2001. A fourth room, Coathanger Resources Pages, is currently in need of a redesign. One exhibit that most will recognize is the ws-250 wire coathanger that is used by dry-cleaners world-wide and which in 1994 accounted for 5.5% of Belgium's GDP. The site estimates that if all ws-250s in circulation were unwound and laid end to end, dry-cleaners would go out of business within four days.
http://homepage.mac.com/marchesbaugh/moch/intro.html
One thing the Net does well is allow geeks with plenty of time on their hands the opportunity to showcase their obsessions for the world. Perhaps it does this a little too well. Nevertheless, every so often you chance upon a Web site that rules so much, you have to pinch yourself to check that you haven't died and gone to Sto'vo'qor. The Starship Dimensions site lets SF fans gain a sense of the scale among various starships from numerous sources, and even to compare them with familiar objects such as the Empire State Building or a Boeing 747. While Starship Dimensions doesn't answer such crucial questions as whether a Borg cube could totally ream a "Babylon 5" Warlock-class battlecruiser, you can at least compare them for size, zooming from the 1-meter-per-pixel page to the 2,000-meters-per-pixel page where you can see the "Independence Day" Mothership dwarfing the "Star Wars" Death Star.
http://www.merzo.net/
If you listen to radio stations devoted to music of the '80s and '90s, or you grew up in the '80s, you'll probably enjoy the 80's Movies Rewind (sic) - a lot. This isn't nostalgia so much as cultural history and fine art. "Airplane", for example. "Revenge of the Nerds". "Crocodile Dundee". Who could forget? This fine site has plot synopses and behind-the-scenes trivia for at least a couple hundred movies. We didn't count them. It was too much fun looking back on "Working Girl" and "Top Gun". The site includes actors' credits in the '80s, useful if, say, you're into Sigourney Weaver in "Aliens" and you want to follow her hits through "Ghostbusters". You can browse by genre, but the scrollable list of titles has instant appeal. "The Terminator". "Raiders of the Lost Ark". "E.T." Get the picture? There are also a Top 150 list and a message board with considerable activity. Unwind here.
http://www.fast-rewind.com/
The Art and Techniques of Sound Design
At every Oscar ceremony, it seems, presenters of the award for sound effects remind us that sound effects are crucial. Sound effects get their just due at FilmSound.org, which covers the art of film sound design so well, in so many ways, space constraints make us want to scream. This is simply a superb resource for students of film and music. You can browse endless articles, interviews, and glossaries. Of course, you'll also find links. The whole wonderful collection is maintained by site creator Sven Carlsson, whose background as a media instructor is abundantly evident. There's even a page of links to articles about sound design for video games. You don't have to be in the biz to enjoy this buzz. The only thing that seems to be missing is an archive of sound files to listen to. At least no one can accuse Carlsson of infringing copyright.http://www.filmsound.org/
If you don't know about the hidden gems inside many of your favorite DVDs, this site is a perfect introduction to the world of DVD Easter eggs. Here you'll find over 1,000 eggs waiting to hatch, so to speak. The DVDs are sorted alphabetically by movie, and you're sure to discover titles in your home collection. It's a great opportunity to dust off and review the DVDs you've long since shelved away. This site includes other pages of note, such as a Contest page with giveaways of, you guessed it, DVDs to registered visitors. Fanatics who own ever-expanding collections should visit the DVD Talk page and chat with other digital movie buffs or check out the Reviews page for user reviews. Grab the popcorn and remote, and get ready for an Easter Egg hunt like you've never experienced.
http://www.dvdeastereggs.com/easter_eggs.php
Comic-Book Onomatopoeia Reference Works
Let's say you're an aspiring comic-book artist. You've got this great scene where the head bad guy's tie gets caught in the paper shredder, but you're not quite sure how you should represent that combination strangling/mangling sound in your panel. Enter Kevin Taylor's reference works, Ka-Boom: a Dictionary of Comicbook Words on Historical Principles, and its equally useful Bzzurkk!: the Thesaurus of Champions. For instance, did you know "sklorpskx" was a cutting sound? Or that, according to Batman #502, printed in 1993, "schwok" is the sound made by a kick to the head? (Presumably, followed quickly by an "ow!" or "eeyargh!") The site is definitely worthy of a "zowie!"http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/200/300/ktaylor/kaboom/
Welcome to the zany, loony, and sometimes outrageous world of cartoons. At this site, you'll find "the Internet's largest searchable database of cartoons, episode guides and crew lists." The database is organized by studio, but if you don't know that info, you can always use the search engine. Look up a particular cartoon character, and you'll find a list of cartoons the character has starred in. You'll also learn of many secondary characters you may not have heard of before. In addition to the database of cartoon information, you can check out the cartoon news page for the latest in the world of big-budget animation.
http://www.bcdb.com/bcdb/page.cgi
If you're interested in learning the physics and timing of juggling without the glute workout required to bend over and pick up dropped items, Justin has created a Flash juggling simulation. It works three, four, or five ball patterns and simulates gravity magnificently. The only issue is that when you goof, you can't compensate by relocating your hands - only by changing your timing. This reviewer's advice, which qualifies in the "Web reviews that sound dirty but are not" category: there is no substitute for feeling the balls in your hand.
http://www.smallsquare.co.uk/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Top 10 Things I Hate about Star Trek
Happy Fun Pundit provides the list, and frankly, it's a darned good one. Once the rest of the blogosphere had to get involved, things just spiralled deliciously out of control.http://www.happyfunpundit.com/hfp/archives/000514.html#000514
"I ordered a car picture, but you sent me a live tunafish! Great! I can eat it!" We were tempted to rank this the oddest aBay transaction comment had we not read over 200 more of Andy46477's one-liners, like "Dragons and Cops flew out of my ass just as he predicted. Great seller." We hesitate to speculate. Is it art? Does it matter?
http://tinyurl.com/akww
If you're a fan of Tom Lehrer, check out Mike Stanfill's Flash animation of "The Elements". If you're not, check it out and see what you've been missing.
http://www.quigmans.com/elements.swf
How many calories are in a Big Mac or a Taco Supreme? These are little known facts that most fast food chains don't readily offer up. Based on the book "Fast Food Facts" by the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, this site serves fast fast-food nutrition facts.
http://www.olen.com/food/
Delve into the insect world as you become a tiny crusader for bugs of all kinds. Your mission: rescue the good bugs that are held hostage by the evil bugs. Use the arrow buttons on your keyboard to navigate and the space bar to shoot. The game plays like a cross between Joust and Defender but certainly has style.
http://www.abc.net.au/gameon/kelman/kelmangame.htm
The best arcade game ever, made even better.
http://playboy.com/playmates/games/breakout.html