More Signal, Less Noise
Monday, February 28, 2005
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NETSURFER DIGEST
More Signal, Less Noise |
Volume 11, Issue 08 Monday, February 28, 2005
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NETSURFER LINKS
 BREAKING SURF
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BREAKING SURF The originator of gonzo journalism is dead in an apparently health-related suicide. Thompson was a groundbreaking journalist, and stretched the meaning of "journalism" to its utmost. Sent on assignment to cover a narcotics-officer convention and a sporting event in Las Vegas, he turned in a brilliant piece of surrealist literature which became the bestseller "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". His fame took off from there. Most recently, he was a columnist on various online sites and worked as a commentator for ESPN. The Great Thompson Hunt (TGTH) has links to the coverage of his death and appreciations of his considerable literary and journalistic influence. CNN's story is typical. Wikipedia has a good biography. True to form, Thompson's funeral wish was to have his ashes fired out of a cannon.TGTH: http://www.gonzo.org/ CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/02/21/thompson.obit/index.html Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson A pair of former workers are suing the Gorilla Foundation, the organization that keeps the famous signing gorilla, Koko, in chow and kittens. The workers allege that Gorilla Foundation president Penny Patterson pressured them to bare their breasts to Koko, claiming that showing the goods would help the gorilla bond with the handlers. The women declined to flash, and say that they were fired at least partly for not doing so. The Gorilla Foundation has been doing good, if sometimes controversial, science work with language comprehension in primates for many years in the hills not far from our own Netsurfer HQ. They have a short, dignified press release in response to the lawsuit, which is covered in the San Francisco Chronicle. Since the story involves gorillas and girls, we just have to link to that venerable art institution, the Guerrilla Girls. We also could not possibly pass up the opportunity to point you at the astonishing Gorilla Cover Gallery, over 500 (wow!) comics, magazines, and book covers that feature pulpy gorilla illustrations. As for the headline, we stole that from Bugs Bunny. Chronicle: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/18/BAGM9BDI191.DTL Gorilla Foundation: http://www.koko.org/news/Press_Releases/pr_050221_pendinglit.html Guerrilla Girls: http://www.guerrillagirls.com/ Gorilla Cover Gallery: http://members.shaw.ca/vcofell1/myweb4/index.htm Gorilla My Dreams: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040397/ Order Pizza in the World of EverQuest You can virtually order pizza in EverQuest II, and have the genuine article show up at your real-world door in the guise of Pizza Hut. (Complete this sentance: "Pizza Hut pizza is to real pizza as ________ is to ______.) All you have to do is type "/pizza" while playing EverQuest II. Your Web browser will open and take you to Pizza Hut's online ordering page. The picture of the menacing dark elf - is it? - ominously holding a pepperoni pie in the ad on the EverQuest II page is priceless.EverQuest II: http://everquest2.station.sony.com/pizza/ Pizza Hut: http://www.pizzahut.com/ "What Have You Guys Been Doing Since IE6?" The headline above is a popular question for the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) development team. IE v. 6 has a number of shortcomings, including incompatibilities with Web standards that have been driving Web developers batty for years. People are wondering why Microsoft hasn't fixed this stuff by now. Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft's IE product unit manager, answers that question in the IEBlog. In a nutshell, very little if any work has been done at Microsoft on the core browser. Instead, the IE team has been working on other Web applications like MSN Messenger or the Windows shell, on back-end technology, on specialized versions of IE for large customers, and on security, of course. Hachamovitch tries to put all this work in a positive light but, judging by the reader comments, people are not buying the explanation. The comments rake Microsoft over the coals for going off on all those tangents and forgetting to make the core Web browser a modern, standards-compliant application. Many note that all people want from Microsoft is a simple Web browser, without all the additional cruft implied by Hachamovitch's account of the directions of development. This summer's release of IE7 will clarify the situation.http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/02/22/378470.aspx LokiTorrent Capitulation Angers Defense-Fund Donors When LokiTorrent vowed to fight the MPAA's charges of copyright violation, it garnered a lot of publicity - and more than $30,000 in donations to its legal defense fund. As we told you in NSD 11.06, Edward Webber, the owner of LokiTorrent, folded and handed the site over to the MPAA. Some skeptics raised the possibility that the entire fund-raising effort was an elaborate hoax, that Webber took the money and ran, without any MPAA legal move. A thread at EarthReactor's forums highlighted that suspicion and followed some detailed investigation into the facts, which turn out to be accurate - the MPAA did serve papers to Webber and take his site in a settlement. Still, some in the BitTorrent user community remain angry over what they perceive to be Webber's failure to use the donated money to fight the issue in court. The story presents many morals: don't rely on hastily assembled information (or lack thereof in this case) before rushing to judgment; file-traders snap like twigs beneath the weight of industry; and do you trust your beneficiary to use your donation as you meant it? It would make a good magazine feature, or a series - a hint to our many journalist readers.NSD 11.06: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v11/nsd.11.06.html#BS8 EarthReactor: http://earthreactor.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=2146#2146 Many bands are associated with a particular font, either used to portray their name or as part of some signature album. RockRage has a collection of many such fonts, which prompted Tom Vanderbilt to write a great essay on the historical rise and fall of graphic design in rock and roll. He observes that "the number of readily iconic band logos and typefaces seems, to me at least, to have substantially dwindled." Vanderbilt suggests that the disappearance of the logo and distinct typeface from band designs may be related to the dematerialization of music from physical media to digital formats. You'll certainly appreciate his essay if you're old enough to remember all those great album covers Roger Dean designed for Yes. Rate Your Music has a collection of Dean's work. Band Fonts: http://www.rockrage.com/media/fonts/musicfonts.html Vanderbilt: http://www.designobserver.com/archives/000291.html Rate Your Music: http://rateyourmusic.com/lists/list_view/list_id_is_8881 Apple Developers Decry Apple Lawsuits Late last year, beta copies of Apple's upcoming Tiger revision of Mac OS X leaked out to the Net, apparently posted on BitTorrent sites by members of Apple's developer program. Apple located the offenders responsible and sued them. DrunkenBlog interviewed two of the suspects in January. The interview touched a nerve and generated a great deal of feedback about the Apple lawsuits from many prominent members of the Apple community, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Dozens of other programmers have spoken out about Apple's lawsuit, mostly pointing out that while they support Apple's intellectual rights, given that the leak was apparently a case of carelessness rather than malice, Apple shouldn't come down hard on the people responsible. DrunkenBlog's page offers a good chance to read opinions from, and see links to, the cream of the Apple software development community. It also links to the original interview.http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000473.html "Battlestar Galactica" First Episode Online It isn't often that a major new SF series makes it to TV. Even less often does such a series turn out to be any good. The Sci-Fi Channel's revival of the old cheesy "Battlestar Galactica" series as a modern, well written drama was thus warmly greeted by SF fans. The cable channel obviously wants to woo more fans to the series, and with this in mind it has made the series pilot episode available online in its entirety, along with several unaired scenes. You'll need RealPlayer to view it. Of course, if you want to keep up with the series at your convenience, entire episodes of the series as televised can be found on various BitTorrent search engines. Check out the Battlestar Galactica Fan Club for more than you could possibly want to know about both the original and new series."Battlestar Galactica": http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/ Fan Club: http://battlestarfanclub.com/battlestar/ Controversy Over New Google Toolbar AutoLink Feature Google released a new feature called AutoLink as part of its Google Toolbar browser plug-in. Whenever your Web page shows an identifiable address, ISBN, or vehicle identification number (VIN), the toolbar will helpfully insert a link to Google Maps, Amazon.com, and Carfax data respectively. When Microsoft did something similar a few years back, content providers and users rallied against it, dissatisfied with the way it messed with author-dictated function of Web pages. The Microsoft technology was called Smart Tags, and Google's AutoLink looks mighty similar - and is bringing the old criticisms out of the woodwork. CNET and eWeek have the stories, while you can read up on Microsoft Smart Tags at an old but still valid entry on the A List Apart blog. One key difference between AutoLink and Smart Tags is that users can choose to use Google Toolbar or not - Microsoft built Smart Tags into its operating system.Google Toolbar: http://toolbar.google.com/ eWeek: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1766764,00.asp CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5582792.html Microsoft Smart Tags: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/smarttags/ Google Introduces "movie:" Search Operator Google's new "movie:" search operator limits search results to sites related to movies, and depending on context returns different types of useful information. You can enter a phrase which describes a movie ("movie: ship hits iceberg"), and get links to movie sites which fit the phrase ("Titanic" and "A Night to Remember"). If you're looking for movie recommendations, you can enter a descriptive phrase ("movie: good chick flick", "movie: bad chick flick") and get appropriate reviews. Finally, you can get movie times for theaters in your area by entering a location ("movie: Mountain View, CA"). That last one alone will probably make newspaper movie listings functionally obsolete, especially given that movie times are also available on Google SMS for your cell phone. We're certain, however, that they'll live on as ads. Google has arranged to give you all the movie info you could want, but the Google Blog fortells a potential broader reach: "Popcorn and a date to snuggle up with are up to you. For now."http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/02/google-movies-now-playing.html Naming Google's Web Application Design Methodology In the past year, Google has caught the attention of Web designers with the sophisticated Web-programming methodology behind such popular services as Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Suggest. All these services turn the Web browser into a sophisticated application engine that provides smooth and responsive user experiences with advanced tools like JavaScript and XML. Jesse Garrett of Adaptive Path has named this approach "Ajax", for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML. The key design element in this kind of programming is something called the XMLHttpRequest JavaScript object, which allows the browser to retrieve data from a webserver without having to reload a whole Web page. This design approach is not limited to Google nor is it even all that new, but Google's applications are perhaps the most known and well crafted examples of this Ajax approach and accurately reflect a newly popular fad in Web design. It looks like this kind of programming will spread and that the programming tools for it will become more standardized over time. It's worth keeping an eye on if you're a Web designer.http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php This Is Why Your Game Magazine Sucks The computer and console game industry is now a huge business, rivaling Hollywood in the amount of money it brings in. It has also become a part of the adult experience as first-generation gamers grow up and start having kids of their own. Despite this huge market, the state of game journalism remains middling at best. A good entrance to this debate is a pair of posts at the These Damned Machines are Killing Me blog. In the first, our host Amit concisely summarizes what he sees is wrong with game journalism - "Grow the fuck up" pretty much describes it. In part two, he dissects a recent issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) and spells out in minute detail what he feels is wrong with it. The two entries are somewhat of a rant, but nevertheless do raise some points about what's wrong with game journalism. Reader comments extend the debate and make clear that there is real audience for serious coverage of this huge, influential, and increasingly adult-centered industry.Amit: http://www.damnedmachines.com/archives/2005/02/this_is_why_you.html EGM: http://www.egmmag.com/ Mobile PC came up with this fun list of gadgets, a category it defines as having electronic and/or moving parts, self-contained, and smaller then a bread box. You may be surprised to note that number one on the list is not the iPod, but is an Apple product. Given the source of the list you will not be surprised that several entries are in fact laptops, or luggables. Gadget nostalgia pervades the list with such gems as the 1956 vintage Zenith Space Command TV remote control, and a 1968 Acoustic Data Coupler Modem. And yes, Milton's stapler also made the cut. http://www.mobilepcmag.com/features/2005_03/top100gadgets.html ONLINE CULTURE Paris Hilton's Cell-Phone Account Hacked Tabloid darling and celebrity twit Paris Hilton had her Sidekick cell-phone account at T-Mobile hacked by parties unknown and posted online, prompting an Net-wide feeding frenzy and an aggressive FBI investigation. The entire contents of the account have been made public, including numerous unlisted phone numbers and e-mail addresses of celebrities and her own e-mail and voice-mail. The hackers also nabbed stored photos featuring surprisingly tasteful boob shots and a photo of her making out topless with MTV Latin America VJ Eglantina Zingg. The material is being smothered as fast as it is shows up on Web sites, but that fire is already raging - the files have been so widely reproduced that you should have no problem finding any of it if you want to. O'Reilly's MacDevCenter.com, of all places, has a complete report, while Gizmodo has links to some web sites which archive all this stuff. Gawker has it all, with more Paris Hilton material than most strong stomachs can bear. The hack was apparently no big accomplishment; T-Mobile asks for a pet's name before it supplies you with a password you've forgotten, and the hackers guessed correctly that Hilton had naturally provided the widely known name of her dog Tinkerbell as the answer. You can find a ton of news about this tabloid fodder on Google News.MacDevCenter.com: http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/01/01/paris.html Gizmodo: http://tinyurl.com/55k5w Gawker: http://tinyurl.com/6jfjo
SURFING SITES "Do You Speak American" is so PBS and so interesting at the same time. The TV show looks at linguistic divisions and unity among English speakers of the US. Its Web site has pages devoted to words that shouldn't be, how many kinds of American English are there (no one knows), language preferences, and the future of the language (the most interesting section). Better than all of the major subsections are the special features, which include lists, games, tests and much more. Our reviewer is of Norturn New Joisey extraction (like Brooklynese) and naturally flunked most of the quizzes.http://www.pbs.org/speak/ Get ready to look at some of the most beautiful and graceful women on the planet. To those with an interest in ballet and especially in the women therein, Jorgen Wilhelmsson's Ballerina Gallery presents the photographic images of over 100 dancers dating back to the 1920s. Each ballerina has her own page with multiple thumbnails, plus her personal background, awards, and repertoire. Anyone researching the history of particular ballerinas or of ballet in general should start right here. Wilhelmsson finds his photographs mostly in his collection of 235 ballet books - tiptoeing dubiously close to fair-use copyright provisions, but he does generously list a bibliography for those with an interest in further reading. In addition, a plethora of links lead to other ballet Web sites: dance companies; dancers' home pages; festivals; and more. Don't miss Wilhelmsson's Memorabilia collection, especially the gallery of Margot Fonteyn's size-4 Freed shoes. The news section will keep you up to date on the world of ballet, new DVDs and books, and additions to the gallery itself. http://www.ballerinagallery.com/ Black and white could be the new black if the sheer virtuosity and style of this site spreads more widely. The animated silhouette of the computer-user, complete with keyboard sounds, on the home page draws the casual visitor into a bizarre textual stream of consciousness, and the rest of the site lives up to this initial promise of classy novelty. The quirky e-cards feature genuine interactive artwork, not just the tacky kind we're used to seeing on traditional sites, and the text that accompanies them is equally unusual. The feedback forum gives a new meaning to the term software bug. The site comes in English, Dutch, and Japanese and somewhat defies description even by us experienced NSDers. Our best advice to you is to go and visit it, open your mind, and enjoy the often strange ride. This one gets full marks for creativity and knowing how to express yourself via technology without pretentiousness. http://www.nobodyhere.com/justme/me.here Reveal Your Secrets in Anonymity and Creativity What do you do if you're not Catholic enough for the confessional box, not famous enough for the tabloid press, and not rich enough to pay for therapy? Simple - submit your deepest, darkest secrets to PostSecret. The site asks members of the public to send in postcards that declare their regret, fear, desire, or childhood humiliation, with accompanying artwork of any form. The secrets so far revealed give genuine insight into the human mind and heart - a surprising number relate to affairs of the heart - and most of the postcards on display for all to see exhibit so much creativity and sheer fun that you may be led to believe that clearing the conscience like this could actually be useful to people. Give it a try. Just remember to make it anonymous or Aunt Ethel will know what you did to her cat that Sunday.http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ All You Wanted to Know about Shoelaces but Were Afraid to Ask Has your life become dull and repetitive? Looking for a way to introduce meaningful change to what passes for your daily routine? Search no more! Ian's Shoelace Site might be just what you need. Ian Fieggen lists 22 methods by which you can lace your shoes, all named, illustrated, and even rated. Geneticists might be interested in the Double-Helix method, for example. Perhaps you'd like to impress your dates with cool decorative lacing on your new sneakers. The site is well designed, clever, and offers tidbits of information you need - who hasn't wondered how to repair a disintegrated aglet? The lacing directions are multi-colored and easy to follow, so that actually attempting them isn't a challenge. You even get a mathematical explanation why there are almost 2 trillion lacing possibilities on a shoe with 12 eyelets. Once you've mastered the lacing, check out his knot page for 15 methods of tying your shoes. Velcro, anyone?http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/lacingmethods.htm Scrapbooking is a popular craft hobby today, but did you know that it's not all that novel a trend? Heritage Scrapbooks displays vintage scrapbooks, which date back to 1700 and cover topics such as film stars, political campaigns, and travel. The CRC Studio at the University of Alberta is revitalizing the scrapbooks with digital photography so that their potentially delicate pages can be shared with more readers and researchers. Pearl Robbins's scrapbook, for example, is a document of social history from the early 20th century, which contains newspaper clippings of advice on place-settings, entertaining, and etiquette. You may need the full year to work on your skills with "needle, paint brush or burnt wood tools" to create party favors for next year's Valentine's Day dinner. You can also admire the B+ work of a student who recorded details of the 1948 US Presidential election campaign, or the details of Presbyterian services and politics in historic Detroit. http://www.crcstudio.arts.ualberta.ca/heritage/ Abominable, but Original, Minigolf Minigolf connoisseurs who have despaired of ever finding a truly original course on which to play the underrated sport need to check out Magic Carpet Golf in Tuscon, Ariz. Featuring such obstacles as pooping monkeys, a dinosaur with a red thing, and a 40-foot-high Tiki statue, the course is so perfectly retro, so completely tasteless, and so stupefyingly ugly that it has a kind of timeless beauty all its own. If the assault on your aesthetic sense wasn't enough, the place is actually a health hazard and a danger to life and limb! Such daring is not easy to find in the American service industry of today, where an unmarked two-inch step is cause for litigation. Culture critic Ira Hirsh is kind enough to take us on a virtual tour of this monstrosity and we all owe him a debt of thanks for proving that there are still hidden corners where the relentless homogenization of American culture has yet to penetrate. Should you actually decide to minigolf there, make sure your tetanus shots and insurance payments are up to date.http://www.redtongue.com/golfintro.html Now and then, even the most hardened, most jaded, most dedicated Web reviewer has to sit back, scratch his head and wonder if he hasn't wasted his life. Is there no depth to which a person will not plunge in order to share an unhealthy fixation with some trivial aspect of reality - on a good day - with all the netsurfing public? Of course not! Take this gallery of Disneyland souvenirs. We must suppose that those who wax nostalgic for their distant childhoods or perhaps sociological researchers of modern popular culture might need to know that in 1963 the Mad Hatter moved from the Penny Arcade to the Mickey Mouse Club in the Opera House or that in 1994 you could buy a "Haunted Mansion Pop-up Book". But we don't. Regardless, 50 Years of Souvenirs has this info and more, much, much more. The site has images of the various souvenirs on sale over the years at the world's most famous theme park, as well as a chronology of changes to old and new attractions. All the content is arranged by year, so you get a feeling for the history of the place, to say nothing of the evolution of the park-going public's taste - if that's the right word - in memorabilia. Disney fanatics will go nuts here. http://users.sisna.com/matkinson/ You either know what leetspeak - or l33tspeke or many other spellings - is or you need to ask your children (or Microsoft - see the link below). This list on Timothy McSweeney's elegant Web site isn't, at least according to the l33t, real l33tspeak but most would accept it as a dialect. McSweeney's list is a careful conversion to modern online shorthand of many phrases common to US Civil War letters from soldiers to their loved ones. The language is reduced to the abbreviated and smilied phraseology found in e-mails and chat rooms. Amazingly little of the poignancy and sadness of the originals is lost. w/o:roht lisnbatwtya Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/children/kidtalk.mspx McSweeney's: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2005/1/11feature.html Mailboxes are simply the receptacle whereby one receives and sometimes sends out snailmail bills, notices, and cards. At this site, however, mailboxes are much more than mere containers for correspondence - they are intricately designed works of creativity. While the Web site itself lacks a sense of design, the photographs of mailboxes therein are well worth the visit. The site hosts images of mailboxes sent in from around the globe, a few innovative examples of which might inspire you, or maybe just scare you. Of particular inventiveness is the spine mailbox design belonging to, who else, a chiropractor. There's also a pistol-shaped mailbox located in, where else, Texas. http://sblom.com/mailbox/ You might recall frustrating days of youth spent trying to master the seemingly impossible task of stacking a deck of cards to form a towering structure, only to have it toppled minutes later by your hyperactive little brother. Even if you had some measure of success, prepare to be shamed by the card-stacking prowess of Bryan Berg. At the age of 17, Berg broke the Guinness world record for tallest house of cards with a structure more than 14 feet tall. He has gone on to break his record many times, and now earns a living designing and building monumental card structures, such as a replica of Cinderella's Castle built out of Walt Disney World tickets. Check out some of Berg's creations in the gallery pages of his site or, if you're really interested in the learning the fine art of card-stacking from the master himself, you can purchase a copy of his tell-all book, "Stacking the Deck". http://www.cardstacker.com/ Do You Believe What You Believe? Shrink your mind right here. It's fast, it's easy, and it's free! The Implicit Association Test (IAT) reports on the attitudes and beliefs that you're unwilling, consciously or subconciously, to report. You can run, but you can't hide. At this stage, the IAT series is described as best used as a tool for enhancing awareness of your own (and others) automatic stereotyping. On the other hand, the research psychologists behind this project do note that at some point, the tests may have relevance beyond the lab. Might they include job applications or performance evaluations? Only time will tell. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/index.jspPayPal has a decent reputation among a huge number of online buyers and sellers. Despite being the target of huge amounts of phishing spam, PayPal has earned the trust of many, who use it to complete their online purchases. While relatively few have suffered at the service's hands, Marc Perkel's horror tale of his treatment while using the merchant side of PayPal should give every last person pause. Of course, what's a rant without comedy? Perkel phoned PayPal's telephone support and recorded the call. We couldn't help but smile at his insistence that the message "this call may be recorded" gave him permission to record it. Some of what befell Perkel and many of the others who have added to this "we don't much like PayPal" blog can sting any user. No, what is alleged doesn't pop up in normal transactions, but transactions go amiss, and without care and attention, so might some money that is really yours. Read this carefully and investigate the claims and then decide what you think of PayPal. http://paypal.ctyme.com/paypal/paypalsucks.htm Why Did the NY Times Kill the Bush-Bulge Story? The Bush administration has taken a flurry of punches in public relations lately and we couldn't shake that perspective when we found this revisitation of the Bush bulge debate controversy at FAIR. During the second Presidential debate, viewers apparently noted a strangely shaped object under the President's jacket (see NSD 10.41). Photo interpretation experts concluded that the President had been wearing something, but the story petered out in the mainstream press. Only the New York Times pursued the story with any vigor but, intriguingly, that paper never ran the story. FAIR tries to understand why.FAIR: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2012 NSD 10.41: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v10/nsd.10.41.html#BS2 MyMac.com has merged an Atari 2600, which could fairly be called the 800-pound gorilla of its time, with the lower half of an iBook. The result is a working computer called the iAtariMac. At a glance, it looks Atari, but its soul and output is Mac. The conversion wasn't simple nor without risk, but in the end all worked. The hackers captured the whole process on video (not exactly professional quality) and nicely edited their footage into a series of QuickTime movies. New York City's great Mac shop, Tekserve, sponsored the activity and so there are some pleasant enough ads. They're a tiny price for this entertaining movie. There's enough detail on MyMac.com and in the movie for you to also try the conversion at home. http://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=1928 Is this a guide to the swinger lifestyle? No, it's a list of over 75 free games legally available for download. These are mostly old games out of print, but a surprising number of them are not dreck. The former commercial hits for both the PC and Mac available here include Aliens vs. Predator, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, Civilization: Call to Power 2, and many more. It's a game-lovers bonanza, all collected in one convenient place. Oh, what the heck - let's throw in the Swingers Lifestyle FAQ. Liberated Games: http://www.liberatedgames.com/gamelisting.php Swingers Lifestyle FAQ: http://www.pick-up-woman.com/swingers/index.shtml FLOTSAM & JETSAM Last week, Amazon.com hosted a new trailer for the new "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie. Unfortunately, the site wrapped the video in some silly Flash. Waxy.org found a much higher quality QuickTime version, complete with amusingly quaint "Do Not Duplicate" warnings.http://www.waxy.org/archive/2005/02/16/hitchhik.shtml Beware Counterfeit Mini Coopers Mini is running a clever TV ad that warns people about the problem of counterfeit Mini Cooper cars. It's quite funny, and comes from the ad agency that created the Subservient Chicken (Crispin Porter and Bogusky). The TV ad has a Web tie-in, the Counter Counterfeit Commission (CCC) that's equally funny.Mini: http://www.mini.com/com/en/general/homepage/index.jsp Ad: http://www.gbmini.net/downloads/ccc.mov CCC: http://www.counterfeitmini.org/ Note to ladies: if you've never done it, watch this video. Note to men: if you've ever wondered how women get that smooth look, watch this video. Note to ladies and men: this is nothing compared to the Brazilian style. We especially enjoyed the background music, for plot and peppiness. http://www.transbuddha.com/mediaHolder.php?id=211 Some over-the-top cover illustrations of romance novels just cry out for the Photoshop treatment. Longmire took a collection of real covers and remixed them with appropriate title copy. Make sure to click the link at the bottom for more contributed covers. Hilarious. http://www.worldoflongmire.com/features/romance_novels/ You will recognize many of these 100 absolutely classic jokes in an instant. The old 20/80/20 rule is at work here: 20% brilliant humor; 80% reasonably solid chuckles; and a remaining 20% of "wtf?" quality. This is a great way to waste 20 minutes. http://www.bluedonut.com/100jokes.htm Juergen Specht has photographs of 175 Japanese warning signs, ranging from "Don't climb over the fence" to "Be careful these goats and sheep eat paper". As with so many things Japanese, these are a pop artform of their own. http://www.juergenspecht.com/documentations/?number=1 "A mental illness characterized by the irrational conviction that any problem faced by a group can be rendered solvable through installation and use of a wiki." Reader comments follow the clinical description. http://www.hacknot.info/hacknot/action/showEntry?eid=71 Yes, you, too, can use precious water and some pipes to build a really tall ice wall, suitable for climbing. It probably helps to live somewhere cold if you want to do this. The instructions are copiously illustrated with photos, and one can easily see the results as rather artistic. http://www.alaskaalpineclub.org/IceWall/04-05IceWall1.html SOFTWARE This minor release offers no new features, but has a bunch of bug fixes for greater stability, including several important security updates. At last count, somewhere in the vicinity of 25 million people are using Firefox as their browser of choice.http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ WordPress 1.5 Introduces Major New Features For Bloggers WordPress is an open-source blog application, and this new release is a major revision with new features and many bug fixes. At the top of the list is a new default style sheet for the program and a more flexible theme system that lets you more easily customize the look of your blogs. You'll find other major improvements in comment management, with features to combat comment spam and better manage user registration at the top of the agenda. There's also the ability to let WordPress manage Web pages in addition to just blog entries, a dashboard with status information on your blog, and a much improved internal API for developing plug-ins. With this release, WordPress easily moves to the top of the heap as the blog authoring application of choice.http://wordpress.org/development/2005/02/strayhorn/ CORRECTIONS We are abjectly embarrassed at having called Charles and Ray Eames brothers in our last issue. Please forgive our faux pas. They were, of course, lovers. Married lovers. To each other. As husband and wife, not husband and husband. Charles was a woman. No, make that Ray.http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v11/nsd.11.07.html#AO4 He's from Abhijit's Planet, attentive, long-time NSD readers will remember. We paid attention to Abhijit Dharmadhikari in NSD 6.24, and he dropped us a note from orbit - well, from India - to tell us that he's since sprung for a domain. We're suckers for nice letters. http://www.abhijitsplanet.com |
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Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping
A Cow's Life: The Surprising History of Cattle and How the Black Angus Came to Be Home on the Range
The Goddess and the Bull: Catalhoyuk: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization
To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh (Star Trek: Eugenics Wars)