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23 July 1999

Peculiar - someone has registered nominative.com, vocative.com, genitive.com and dative.com. But not ablative.com or accusative.com. (And they have subjunctive.com but not obtative.com)

A truely eclectic collection of links today.

Edmund Kimbell - counter-tenor, pianist.

Taschen are one of the best publishers of art related materials in the world. And they publish stuff that is often censored (like Araki's photographs). I'd like this complete etchings of Piranesi.

This page on ads is good. (via the still illegible Kikaze)

Sticky Rice for People who eat Sushi. (I don't) Or how about the Web's first Japanese Pizza page? Very strange creations. There is another Japanese Pizza page. I started down this route from Jwindow.net which is run by NTT and seems to have lot of interesting Japanese links including Japanese lessons. There is so much stuff here I am not going to put up anymore links - you can rake around for yourself if it interests you.

Japanese proverbs.

A Stick Art Perspective on Deaf Culture. Odd. It lead me to this Web of On-line Dictionaries, which is fantastic. And also this language family guide. There are more treasures here - Numbers from 1-10 in 4000 languages, "Thank you" in 350 languages, Ancient Scripts of the World, Travellers' Japanese with Voice...

The Banting Museum - the birthplace of insulin.

More New Age weirdness from Earthan.

The cult of the living bull. "For those who have never experienced enlightenment - you have now stumbled on the Path".

"Nudes on the Moon" by Slotcar Hatebath, taken from the Hermenaut (Ed Angerish). I also liked this piece about Office Supply Fetishism. There is a lot more writing at the Birdhouse. There is a hermenaut.com site, but there is very little there.

Brain-food.org :

Brainfood is a community-based organization that promotes the positive growth of young people through enriching culinary-related activities to expand their skills, creativity and self-esteem, boost their academic performance and improve their personal health and well-being.

Internet Fraud Watch.

Puzzles - if you like that kind of thing. I sometimes do and sometimes don't.

Read why dried fruit is good for you.

100% Brain Usage! And more weird stuff like this here.

An advert for a self-help book with strange layout.

The I can Eat Glass Project. Nothing to do with actually eating glass, but all to do with saying the phrase in many languages.

This index of drinks recipe sites might prove useful.

How did I get onto this booze theme? Anyway, the Jose Cuervo page looks nice. I made a dish of leeks stewed in tequila and orange juice the other day and it was really rather nice.

A picture of an ethanol molecule.

The Bacardi site pops up a little window full of legalese, which is in such a small typeface that I cant read it. ugh.

Buy a meteorite? Tad too expensive for me though.

Went to see the Matrix last night and enjoyed it. When I left the cinema I was walking through very empty and slightly seedy parts of town and one of the first people I saw was the exact double of the traitor (I can't remember his name). Which was weird.

I love this antipode locator!!

22 July 1999

Does your car match your personality? Check it out with Car-O-Scope. Ugh, hang on, it didn't have outr car in it and the it started to ask me all kinds of questions about car-techie stuff that I don't know the answers too. Only for car nerds.

The image for Amsterdam on japaninsite.com is weird - why didn't they pull up the venetian blinds before they took the photo? (Site is otherwise not of interest)

This page of children's books you will never see is great. (via calmondin)

Of no interest I suppose, but I have changed my picture to a more recent one. This is me sitting in the backroom of the Village hall in Newcastleton, drinking coffee and eating cakes made by the local WI. (You cant see the cakes - I'd eaten them)

Glad to see that memepool does not like perl either. Pity about liking python though. tcl/tk 8.2b1 is now available folks!

Glad to see that Dan has a sensible perspective on the Kennedy brouhaha. Indeed stuff does happen. What is the big deal about the man? It is not as if he was of nayimportance at all. Just another scion of a rich family. (BTW I can tell you what I was doing when JFK was shot - I was watching television (12" screen B/W) at home and my great-uncle George was babysitting me (not that I was exactly a baby))

Oh no, I really have to have an iBoook! Only two colours though, I want it in red. And a batch of Airports would be nice as well. Of course the iBook won't be available here for months, and the airport wont ever be available here because of RF restrictions and anyway I don't have any money. You can drool though.

21 July 1999

The Artchive is fantastic - thank you LemonYellow, another doozy.

Jugglezine is new to me. About juggling life not balls. Looks good.

Just got the latest Haruki Murakami .

I'm pretty sure I've come across Disgruntled Housewife before, but it is good. Thanks to Kikaze for the reminder of it (but I wish he/she would fix the typography on the page as I can't read it - too small and conflicting colours. That may be the point though)

Many strange things on this page. It lead me to Jane's Brain page. Which in turn lead me to the Interactive Brain Atlas. Which is nice.

I'm sure this is old hat, but I hadn't come across Cleo Odzer before. The RealVideo streams are, well, a little strange - she is not exactly a very fluent, relaxed presenter. I wonder what her books are like?

From pHreaks : The Island of Stömgrog and the Fire Eating page.

This "webliography" of Philosophy and Computing looks very interesting, if potentially challenging to the philosophy jargon impaired (like me). The website has great pictures like this of the first transistor. I shall have to get our departmental library to get a copy.

What a very strange person Tabitha Angst of GoGaGa Radio is.

These 3D drawing lessons won't teach you anything I'm afraid. Look at any of them and they completely skip out the hard bit - actually doing the drawing! These drawing tips are much better. Both these via metalog. If you want to learn to draw (and cant just do it naturally) I don't think you can do better than read Betty Edward's "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" (These links are for the latest edition which I haven't seen yet) I cant find a good link for Betty Edwards at all - lots of references but nothing useful.

This article about 3 types of deja vu is interesting. (via gorjuss)

I love this tirade generator. (via misterpants)

Thanks to pigdog for alerting me to pHreaks - free space for strange stuff. (Since it is a UK site I can't believe it will be all that strange - too many laws)

I scanned a new photo of me and some nice images from my garden and then I couldn't read the floppy they were on when I brought them in today. *sigh*

20 July 1999

The Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Grisman made me think of mandolin links - my favourite starting point is Mandolinist.com, and from there I found this Django Swing page - they have a playing Django style page too.

In the car I was listening to David Grisman's "Hot Dawg". An oldy (1987!!) but goody. My absolutel favourite track is the version of "Minor Swing" - they capture the Hot Club spirit so well. (Mind you not everything Grisman does is good, take his album (please!) with Andy Statman called "Mandolin Abstractions" which is a totally execrable exercise in "free" music - it may well have been fun to record and play but it is a trial to listen to.)

Yesterday's peterme has made me think about visual searching too. Hmmm, seems like a good idea. He is also recommending Cragganmore which is indeed a good whisky.

19 July 1999

Jon Katz rant about the Net and access to it. Makes some useful points, though I dont agree with a lot of it and of course it is totally US-centric. The mad rush to get net access for all is crazy when you don't have food or health access for all. Fix the imnportant stuff first!

Also arrived is "How the West was Won" by De Dannan - it's a sort of "best of" with some extra tracks. Good stuff - they are one of my favourite bands of all time. I cant find a link for the album, but I ordered it from Coda Music in Edinburgh who seem to have an excellent stock of folk music.

Another cheap tape, this time by Simon Thoumire and Fergus MacKenzie. It's called "Exhibit A" and is a fusion of dance rhythms and traditional Scottish music. I've been wanting to do this kind of thing for a while myself, and this is excellent stuff. (I still think it could be better though.)

Reformatting.com is enlightening? puzzling? useful? I liked it anyway. (via Perfect)

Even though it is shocked/flashed this is very pretty. (via Perfect)

Why does this Salon article about violent games feel it necessary to tell us that "Dave, who is 14...has spiked hair". What's his hair got to do with anything?

"Let's Eat" is one of my absolute favourite Robert Crumb cartoons. Now I can print out a fresh, new shiny version rather than living with my 30 year old clipping! Oh, and "Keep on Truckin'" as well. Deep Joy. My apologies for having such predictable tastes.

Niche marketing special! Get your car's interior sunvisors recovered by Vinyl Specialties. (I am not at all sure that they have chosen the right word here - the distinction between "specialty" and "speciality" is interesting. They might have been better going with "specialists" (Some of the dictionaries on the web don't even recognise the existence of the word speciality!))

I like this McChurch page - also via Grouse.

Why have I not encountered the Algorithmic Boogie Generator before? (via Grouse (via Virulent Memes))

"The Slashdot Decade"? Can you spell delusions of grandeur?

New poll on what you do with spam - suggested by Al (thanks Al)

BBC gets hold of bbc.com from September.

Lovely triggered lightning image.

These "Gadgets for God" are rather fun. Depressingly the website is serious and this is some kind of self-mockery.

New Cryptogram. The crypto-hacking piece is good.

16 July 1999

Free energy devices and free spelling errors too! How about a giant death ray?

I have seen dowsing work, but I think that dowsing for landmines might well be a bit risky!

A giant maze.

How to place your bed beneficially.

The rippling reflection animation on this Asparagus page is unusual.

Jorn muses that he has been receiving a lot more spam than usual this week - that is exactly what I thought this morning when I was reading my mail.

This guy sounds like he is marketing the Alexander Technique under a different guise. Alexander Technique lessons are fantastic and I can recommend them highly. My teacher is listed by this organisation - as with everything there are schisms in the world of AT. There is an AT Journal called Direction. The Art of Swimmming using AT is something I would like to be taught as I am a terrible swimmer - the book is interesting but of course you cant learn this kind of thing froma book.

Fascinating Womanhood - I found this as a link from the Moonies' webpage where you can find this "excellent short statement against pre-marital sex". If I didn't know that it was serious I would have to thin it was a spoof - "it was great to get off", "wanted to touch some bases". I am particular put off the idea of pre-marital sex by the thought that I might get caught and embarassed! Oh, and a "short statement" it is not.

I dont understand what The Anthropic Principle is all about:

“Observer self-selection theory is an exciting new area in the overlap of probability theory and analytic philosophy. It may have important applications in cosmology, evolutionary biology, SETI and for the future prospects of intelligent life.”

If the Web were a city people would be horrifed at the number of vacant properties and half-finished buildings.

Been ripped off with a timeshare? Help is at hand.

This UK Trading Standards site might prove useful if you had a problem (in the UK anyway). The list of product recalls is scary - " Problem: Lighters may become hazardous", "Problem: Door may be opened when the appliance is in operation", "Problem: Forks can break apart, causing the rider to lose contro". Eeek!

Mini-rant: Why do people put up with inadequate computer systems (especially when they are paying for them)? I handle the orders for our local wholefood co-op and we get all our stuff from Suma. In their latest printed catalogue they announce that because they have installed a new computer system they are having to close their Cash and Carry side of the business because the system can't handle it! They then express regret about this because they say they enjoy meeting customers. So why did they buy the system in the first place if it couldn't handle all their current business? (BTW the webpage still advertises the Cash and Carry and makes no mention of it closing.) I smell consultants and/or naive users. *sigh* (Or maybe they just wanted to get rid of the cash and Carry and were looking for an excuse that people would believe.)

One of the sale tapes the other day I bought was Sandy Brechin's Out of his Box - it is quite clear he writes his own promotional material, but having said that, it is a storming album which I will listen to lots. He has a new album (Out of his tree) out as well - I will have to investigate that.

New Risks digest.

I like this Turing Machine Applet. (via LemonYellow)

15 July 1999

An on-line tarot course.

I like this name Japanisation service.

Another of Dan's Rants that needs thinking about. I don't agree with him about underlined links (in another rant) - I always turn that off. Underlining really annoys me. However I hate HTML in e-mail too and flash. PDF is good for sending people stuff they need to print out but is no good for the web. There is definitely a "never mind the content, look at the design" feeling around at the moment. There are some gorgeuous pages but you only look at them once because usually they have nothing else to say. First off I would ban the FONT tag as it is responsible for more unreadable pages than almost anything else.

Loren Terveen is doing a weblog survey and his page lead me to FanCentral and PHOAKS, both of which are interesting. I just looked at the comp.lang.tcl pages on PHOAKS and it really does seem to be a useful service.

You should start a local chapter of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts. There are other sites too. This wannabe astronaut is totally autonomous (currently site wont load for me).

This is horrible! (via Cardhouse)

The TerraExplorer with a 3D view of stages of the Tour sounds great, but you have to register to get the player and I bet it is Windows only so I can't be bothered! The Tour organisers really need to do something about stupid spectators after Guerini's fall yesterday.

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