Bifurcated Rivets

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14 July 1999

The story about Joan Rivers and an advert for Jews for Jesus ((via RobotWisdom) made me go and look for their webpage. I selected Afghanistan since that was the easiest option, I then tried some others. Someone has sat down and found a place in all the capital cities of these countries so that they can generate their idiotic advert. Sheesh. Ah, wait, British Virgin Is. doesn't work! Quick go there you'll be safe!! Eq. Guinea fails too. Check out the bizarre animations, such as South Park and Vegetarians for Meat.

If this SSH in an applet program works then it will be very useful indeed. Very slow download though.

Why not have dinner at the restaurant at the end of the earth.

Chile's parliament's website.

Getting e-books into the home with teleread. Sadly they seem to be rather naive - for instance they seem to believe that Microsoft Cleartype is some new breakthrough.

I am intrigued by TAKEMURA.COM and by TAKEMURA.NET. The latter requires shockwave which I don't have so I am probably missing something. The former, well I just cant work out what they make/do/sell - aah, but wait, maybe they make SIMROCK.

Visit Kota Kemuning electronic village - the coolest neighbourhood in town, or so they claim.

Story webzine.

Riffage looks as though it has some nice tunes available on mp3. They have a mix of genres too which is still unusual.

Naked people with bags on their heads.... (via PigDog)

Excellent NT v Linux article, though I cant agree that that the age for optimal tech learning is 22! (via RobotWisdom)

How many people lie when they fill in those stupid web registration forms? Hey, this is time to copy Jorn and have a poll!

Which questions on web registration forms do you regularly give bogus data to?
Your Name
Your Age
Your E-mail address
Your Address
Your Country
Your Zip/Postcode
Your Gender
Your Income


See the results I suspect that my correct answers mark me out as someone advertisers are not interested in (old and not much money) anyway, so there is no point in lying.


This morning I was listening to some Ultra Nate remixes and an old De Danann album that has been deleted. Which was nice. Yesterday I picked up a whole load of cheap CDs and tapes in a sale including Durga's Feast by the Cauld Blast Orchestra. My next door neighbour did the cover art for this one. Very strange music.

This CMU Speech translation system sounds like a breakthrough of some kind. (via /.)

13 July 1999

I need to read Dan's rant about weblog tools more closely. I am slowly building up a set of similar tools myself and I need to think about how to package them all in a useful way. Or get a student to do it as a project. Ooops, I have done that already, but that won't happen till next year. Dan talks about recognizing formats like poetry and things - I know from experience with my RISKS digest formatter that this is hard to do. I have set formatting projects for students several times and they rarely manage to get beyond the simplest stuff. I suppose if you control the original material then you can impose constraints, but if it is not yours then you always have to do hand tuning. (The worst things in RISKS are conference announcements) More thought needed.

The online Stanislav Szukalski Gallery. Weird sculpture and strange ideas.

Y2K problems caused by long dead Aliens? I knew that.

Visit the San Graal School of Sacred Geometry..... The Alchemical tour of France sounds fun. And why not also visit the Gnostic Center. (Both links via the Fortean Times)

I saw someone using an Arbortech carver on Sunday and I would definitely like to have one. A picture of a bowl someone carved using the tool - it is probably nicer when you see the real thing than the pictures indicate. Whilst on things woody, this is a nice bowl turned out of cocbolo, a wood that is quite difficult to work with I believe.

A wonderful collection of found photos. Well, the collection is great, but the site design is just horrible. (via BeNiceToBears)

This antitelemarketeer site has been around for ages but is very entertaining.

I was making peach melbas last night and had some raspberry purée left over put it in the fridge. Later I opened the fridge, it toppled and now I know what the inside of Jeff Dahmer's fridge looked like.

Good grief, Beenz support actually got round to replying to me!

12 July 1999

Nothing else today.

This has been linked everywhere now, but it is very funny. (via NTK)

9 July 1999

Earthquake prediction newsletter. Some interesting stuff here - I wonder what his succes rate is? Why does he want lost pet reports? I keep getting errors from the site so pages are incomplete. There are a lot of earthquakes on this list and it is only for the last day or two - what a wobbly world we live on.

This dustbowl postcard is astonishing. The whole Kansas Collection is worth a visit.

I am coming to the conclusion that there are far too many books and records being published. Whilst I was in the bookshop I saw at least half a dozen books I would have liked to at least skim, but ended up buying none of them because they were all equally ephemeral. The same is true of CDs - I can't even be bothered to rake through the racks now, too much stuff. I am still buying music that was recorded 70 years ago - how am I going to ever get caught up? Apropos of nothing, there were some fine buskers out on Northumberland Street today.

I go now to see if I can get a copy of the new Harry Potter book  UK for my daughter.

The Tour page is now working though there are still no live photographs. I want a Tour cam!

The Green Lantern Brothel has a website. And they have a gift shop - "Hey, mum, look what I brought you back from my trip to Nevada". There are pictures too - what a dump. And there are employment opportunities - they don't seem to realise they need to employ someone who understands web design though. If that doesn't appeal, you could try the Shady lady Ranch - "Our girls can do anything that Monica can do. But they don't Kiss and Tell!!!"

"Get this stupid hat off me now!"

Be very afraid of papers that start with a note on the meaning of "meaning".

I have absolutely no idea what this means. Amazingly the Wonderful Wankometer rates this at a very low 0.81, so maybe I am just being thick today.

The conceptual metaphor homepage - might be useful if it was implemented properly!

Chinese Philosophy - good links and well put together.

A juggling Java applet. I doubt you can learn to juggle watching this though.

Devilstick.org is a good devilstick site - devilsticking is fun. Devilsticks.net is an unreadable site whose purpose is obscure to me. Devilsticks.com is a site advcertising some drug - completely bizarre!

An eighties revival band? Called the Reaganomics? Please!

The pages for the Tour. The stage profile DHTML thingy is nice. At the time of writing the stage hasn't kicked off yet so the live stuff isn't working, but I will be checking back later on to see if it goes. The rider information is excellent too - the Cipollini page. This is a high quality site.

IPingPong - Happy people bouncing around happy technology. Nothing on the site though...maybe that's why they are happy. And what about PingPongCams.com - just a camera shop, not a video feed of people playing table tennis sadly.

What is a broach? I'm glad the industry was rewarded though.

Dumb Criminals features the Internet's largest database of stupid criminal acts. (via Guardian's "The Editor")

Gangland News for all afficionados of organised crime. (via Guardian's "The Editor")

Very dull interview about the USC Roach cam on Gogagaga - stop talking and play music!

Last night I was listening to Sharon Shannon and Bessie Smith and had Michelle Shocked's Arkansas Traveller (deleted it seems) all lined up but didn't get to it.

I was name checked in the Guardian Online Web Watch section yesterday with a nice mention of the Virtual Memorial Garden.

8 July 1999

Lots of Highland pipe tunes in MIDI format. I like bagpipes (of all kinds) as well as whistling, but I'm sure you could have guessed that. Pity I cant get midi working properly on my Linux box for some reason. I take that back - it seems to be working now for some reason! Well sort of anyway.

A useful list of top-level domain country codes.

Information on tantra.

Moving to non-bodypart whistles, here is the site for the famous Acme Thunderer. Nice design. And here is a tinwhistle site. Also a site dedicated to the low whistle. Oh, and there is a page with tips for people playing in sessions.

How to whistle with your hands. You do know how to whistle? Oh wow, there are lots of whistling pages! I should say now that I do whistle regularly - make of that what you will. I can do the two-handed whistle, but normally it's no-handed. Robert Stemmon's website sells tapes and CDs of whistling. Maybe I should join the International Association of Whistlers. I cant do the whistle where you stick your fingers in your mouth at all - here are some instructions on how to do it though.

I feel we should be told what this man has in there... (And you can get the pattern for it in pdf format should you so wish) (The garment, not what he has in there of course!)

Get your online beverages at popsoda.com. What I got was this link to an antique soda-machine site which is sadly short of pictures. Find out about the caffiene in soft drinks.

This New Scientist article has been popping up everywhere, probably because it is well worth reading.

I like the stars that follow the cursor on this new weblog.

Lileks Insitute does it again - the Peculiar Art of Mr Frahm. A great set of pages beautifully presented with funny commentary. How does he manage it?

7 July 1999

Users want bloated software? Oh come off it. (via /.)

If you ever need a plumber in India....

I think I need a new background for my pages, I'm bored with the yellow - it is supposed to be a delicate cream, but there isn't a delicate cream in the web safe palette...

Some stylish maths.

Portrait of an Engineer with Red Liquid. Go back to the thumbnails for some other nice images, including a good Dr. John shot.

Since this page stretches to fit your window, it must be written using Liquid HTML!! Funny though, because it's the same HTML I was writing in 1993 and it wasn't Liquid then. Searching for liquid html you find Guardian form-fit and pillow liquid tote liners which might be very useful one day. Considering the number of times I've seen Liquid HTML mentioned recently, there is not a single hit to do with it in the first 20 at altavista.

GoGagGa is playing some good tunes today.

This looks as though it could be a useful portally kind of site for writers. There are links (and forms for) some really neat sites to do with languages such as the language identifier (which comes from the same stable as the Lexical FreeNet which is great fun - try this query that "finds the connection between women and computers" ... I have no comment on that one. The Cinema Freenet is useful for playing 6 degrees.)

A great photography site - or so I am reliably informed. It certainly looks good.

Nicely cynical page on how to talk New Age. Check out the definition for tarot. I found this from the writing page of the Online Communicator site.

A map of the Pathways of Jesus in Jerusalem. And it is a public domain image too!

A fine page about Celtic Knotwork. And it led me to this rather nice site about copyright. Which in turn led me to Pure Fiction - the site for people who want to write bestsellers.

I took lots of photographs of our garden over the last few weeks as it has been looking particularly splendid, only to find that the film was wrong in some way and so lost them all. Oh well. I wish I had a digital camera.

Knots are fascinating. One of my favourite books of all time is the Ashley Book of Knots  UK  USA . This is a nice knot site. (via memepool)

I think the Cliché Finder will prove very useful. Mind you the creator has a weird idea of what constitutes a cliché. (via Misterpants)

6 July 1999

A blast from the past - The Longest Cave  UK  USA is all about the exploration of the cave that gave us the Colossal cave, Y2 Bedquilt and all.

Thes Implicit Association tests are rather interesting - the results are revealing.

I thought this was mildly entertaining. Well, for a geocities page anyway.

We had a great time at Newcastleton - it rained some but we were in the pub so we didn't get wet, and we got the tent down dry too. It is the total antithesis of the American style "family festival" - people sit around in bars and lots of people are smoking - but there are kids all over the place and the atmosphere is friendly and uncomplicated. heard (and played) some good tunes - Adrian Schofield (northumbrian/border piper - no website) was on good form and he'd had some more tatoos done since last year.

I do like the Joyce Portal over at Robot Wisdom.

My wife tells me she always reads the words "Internet surfer" as "Internet sufferer"....

These personal webrings are great. Mine is the Weblog Menace.

2 July 1999

New York Fat Spray Tips for the aerosol artist.

Ticket Writing Self Study Course - please note that you get your very own chisel tip marker included!

Brainzinc is a strange site with photos of zinc bearing sites in the brain. Polybrainz is a music site (I think).

The Hot-dog and Sausage Council - obviously not a bustling industry as it has not updated since May.

The Highland Pony Gazette? "Australian Highland ponies go online but highland gene pool needs top-up"

I'm off to Newcastleton Traditional Music Festival this weekend. I may even be lurking in the background of some of the photos on this page - the one in the yellow section is taken in the Stable bar which is where Penny and I are often to be found over the weekend.

Fatbrain has a print advert in WIRED. Lovely print ad, extrememly dull and boring site. I would never (and I do mean never) have clicked on a web ad for this site, but the print ad stuck in my mind and I looked. OK, I didn't much like what I saw, but I crossed the threshold. Nielsen and Norman are right about people ignoring banner ads, but I think they are wrong about there being any other way of getting people to follow web ads. It's like one ignores ads on TV - the only forms of advertising that work are word of mouth and print.

I did it again. I bought WIRED. Why? I am really not interested in reading about the programs of the stupidly rich and not very famous.

No response from Beenz support to the 4 messages I sent them yesterday. Not impressive, especially after a write up in the press.

1 July 1999

OOoh, Everything by e-mail!! And back to mono as well. (via gorjuss)

This piece on why the Military should disconnect from the Internet is entertaining. (via camlist)

USA/UK shopping comparison search engine. It gives Beenz. The Beenz applet does not work on my Netscape under Linux and it crashes Netscape on my Mac. A Windows only currency I assume.

Beenz is (are?) another attempt to start an Internet barter currency. Hmmm, they don't seem to know that e-mail addresses are not case sensitive!

New angle on the Hindenburg diaster. Sounds very likely. (via RobotWisdom)

The Netomat is finally available - though only PC at the moment it seems so I can't try it. There is a WIRED article about it. (thanks eatonweb)

I had not come across the On-Line Books Page before. Tons of interesting stuff linked. (via screenshot)

30 June 1999

Lots of California Goldrush Links. What are Clampers exactly? (Some sort of spoof masons it seems, but it sounds like some of them take it way to seriously!)

Infiltration - the zine about going places you aren't supposed to. (via Memepool)

I just saw a McKinley search that said "Where is altavista"....

What is Starside Awareness group? "Join the war on drugs, Pray B4 Sex"

Nothing like a spelling mistake in your domain name is there? (N.B. If you spell "among" correctly there is no hit so this is a genuine typo)

September 22nd is Elephant Appreciation Day.

Weblog.org is not what you might think! What on earth is it about?

This sounds like fun. I wonder what the "much much more is"?

Some one told me about SuperDeluxe, but when I go there it doesn't look like the site I was expecting. There are some nice links like this Periodic Table of Poetry. And Art is a Verb. Aaah, the site I was meant to go to is superdeluxe.CO.UK - it's basically a Sloane Ranger guide to London and how to spend lots of money.

Zhe Jiang Rui An RuiLaong Latex Pillow Co.Ltd. I dont think I think of many things worse than a latex pillow! The Production Process section is highly informative....

This Hoover site ceertainly does not suck. (via gorjuss)

Peek at Magellan searches.

29 June 1999

Love on the Internet courtesy of Viz.

How to ship a hippo in the US Mail. (via brainsausage)

GoGaga are playing a Spade Cooley track! Western Swing is wonderful. Spade Cooley was a big star - he made movies and had an early theme park - until he murdered his wife and was sent to jail. He died of a heart-attack one night when he had been let out to play a gig somewhere.

The Make Money Fast Hall of Humiliation. Also this page describing how someone strings along a spammer is hilarious. (again via memepool)

Details of the surprise endings in movies. Don't read it if you don't want to know. (via memepool)

28 June 1999

The Netomat seems to be a no show. If it ever was intended to be a show rather than some kind of "art event".

New Ghost Sites. And if you like missing page stuff then try 404 research lab.

Vampire Fangs anyone? Or how about a severed foot?

Cut down the rainforest with Steinway.

Could this be the ugliest piano you have ever seen?

Nothing like confidence..

Why do web design companies persist in having unreadable webpages? Sure it looks nice, but if I cant read it how am I going to find out more? Of course, it is highly likely that the pages will have been made under Windows on a 21" monitor and not checked anywhere else...

Mutation Labs - "Making the world a better place one molecule at a time" But only the one webpage.

People wonder why this page is called Bifurcated Rivets - here's a picture of my original motivation.

Today I am listening to GoGaGa via the Streaming Quicktime plugin. Good stuff.

I always wondered what the Beatnik plugin that came with Netscape on the Mac was for. (via RobotWisdom)

Here's a little geometry puzzle for you all...

"Corpses for Sale". What more can I say? (WARNING: Displaying a corpse in public may break some County laws.)

Everyone else is linking to it so it's a weblog cliché, but it is very funny - Weird Al The Saga Begins.

Want to know about King Arthur - try this link list.

I like this DIY pop art thing. (Via misterpants)

The new Robert Rankin Snuff Fiction  UK is out! I didn't have a lot of time this weekend so I am only halfway through it, but it seems much better than Dance of the Voodoo Handbag UK .

Next time you're walking round a town, look up, don't keep your eyes on the ground. Have a look at what's going on at roof level. There's a lot of amazing stuff you miss.

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