9 November 1999

Oh dear, I just deleted /usr/local/bin.....dump time.

If you're not sure about the end of the world you can always visit the Apocalypse Pretty Soon page. A good way of reading insane millenialist material without getting involved with insane millenialists - these guys read it for you. 100% proof quality stuff. This is one to read regularly. I suspect I'll have to but the book. *sigh*

Hmmm, the Liquorfairy is quite strange, but in fact the site is quite well designed (for what it sets out to do).

8 November 1999

Saw Shakespeare in Love this weekend. It was entertaining, but it worried me deeply on two points:

1. I bet there is now a large body of people who believe that the story was true.
2. Did the film makers really expect the audiences to get all the English Literature jokes that were there? How many people have actually seen a play by Webster? (I have but that was 30 years ago)

I tried to use the new epinions Book submission interface, but it can't find the book I wanted to review. Must only be checking US imprints. I'm saying nothing.

At the weekend I was wondering if Cam (who is feeling burned out, and has my deepest sympathies) is snowed under by people looking for information on webcams. I presume he must be, but I haven't noticed him comment on it. (He has had a couple of stonking links lately)

I tried searching for Bifurcated Rivets at Britanica.

If you read Catalan you might understand better, but this appears to be a page for Santa Tecla - the patron of Catalan web surfers. However I tried some of the boxes at random and I get a lot of error messages in English...

A page devoted to making mechanical toys. Some old favourites here.

There's a new Ghost Sites up. Always worth a look, but this is issue is particularly good as the site has been blocked by some cruddy censorware and there is some vitriol released.

Why not plan a trip round the world's hotspots with the Bureau od Atomic Tourism. Or if atom bombs are too puny for you why not try out a Spud Gun.

I am puzzled as to why I haven't seen anyone else with a link to 100Monkeys. Visit it and see if you can get a monkey that makes sense. Warning highly addictive clickery. Or am I just sad? Alternatively you could say it with DNA and send a DNA-o-gram.

I was down in the local shopping centre and saw a machine that was there to gather data for an investigation into psychic ability. I didn;t get to try it out, but of course it had a URL on the side. It's legitimate research not someone selling something.

Want to finally sell that movie idea? Try moviepitch. "You don't need to be a writer, You don't need an agent, You just need a great idea"

The Turkish guy page got written up in the Observer at the weekend. Sheesh!

The Band-O-Matic band name generator is rather fun. I like the "Trouser Biscuits" and "Asphalt Buffet", or indeed even "Asphalt Buffet and the Trouser Biscuits". You really could get a good name from this page. It links to the Canonical List of Weird Band Names which I like a lot too.

Today there is a whole bunch of really strange stuff that I've been sent or that I read about. So let's start with dermatologic findings in the Cinema. Quite, quite bizarre.

An interesting little article about Origami in the East and West. Thanks Pak-o

5 November 1999

I menat to say how sad I was to hear about Walter Payton's death. He was a fantastic player. Not that I watch any American Football these days I must admit since they scheduled it out of watchability on television here.

I really hate it when I get sent to a site with so many books I want to read, when I have no money! gmtPlus9 just did it to me with the Japan Bookstore. So many things, so little time and money!

Here's a useful Language and translation Dictionary centre - good set of dictionary links (Ok, that's pretty obvious from the name, I know, I know - I'm trying really hard to do commentary rather than just links, but it is hard to be witty about a page of dictionary links.) The web of online dictionaries is also rather fine, starts off with esperanto, and then moves quickly to vulcan and romulan, before becoming normal. (I typed "vulvan" there - a freudian slip if ever there was one)

The Foundation for Endangered Languages. Wonder if they have a Teco chapter? Notice that their journal was called "Ogmios" and is now called "Iatiku" - without being much more of an expert it is hard to see the reason for this!

The Digital Museum of Languages and Cultures - very pink and not exciting to look at, but some good links.

A web dictionary for the Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay language. A nice use of the web, though I don't like the frames of course.

Why is this link so popular? It seems to have been cropping up almost as often as the Turkish guy!

Connect Things will provide a barcode to webpage connection. Could be very useful in the long run. The trouble is going to be the data collection.

For those who haven't already seen it Bloat. Though quite why "Sally" thinks I it's British to be enamoured of ones name I'm not sure - I would have categorised that as an American habit!! (The F stands for Forsyth BTW - all my names are surnames!)

4 November 1999

I still feel ill. Ugh.

Pen and I redesigned our kitchen standing in the street outside a furniture shop today. Trouble is we need lots of money to do it, but that's always the case isn't it? We had in fact just visited the Magic Box to buy some fireworks. Clive who runs it is a great bloke and he has a fantastic selection of tricks and jokes etc.

Ah, Ethel the Blog captures my increasing hacked-offness with slashdot very well.

Comprehensive site about American WWII Air Aces.

Photos of Brazilian ferrets....

The Rare Glitch project. No commentary needed and probably everyone has linked to it because it was on /. which I hadn't realised. I was ill yesterday and am not much better today really, but am at work.

2 November 1999

Just in case you were wondering, I do own a phrenological head.

Too slow today - can't get anywhere.

Oh, the great buildings site is good. Naturally it has Durham Cathedral - one of the amazing places in this world. (Via Mike's Weblog which has some splendid links)

Send your name to Mars...have it embedded in the surface?

I need one of the Jikan de Gozaru described towards the end of this page. Sadly they seem no longer to be available.

Interesting - I just had a google search reply with "Result site for this query removed by request". I hadn't seen that before.

Cows with guns?? A band.

1 November 1999

Cam talks about trying to explain Halloween to the British. Huh? Halloween is a British festival! Guising is an ancient tradition and much older than "trick or treat". It is, however, a sad fact that Halloween has been horribly Americanised in this country. Bizarrely my son thinks that dressing up as a punk ca. 1976 is a suitably scary halloween costume.

David Strom's new newsletter looks at the attempts to revive push technology. Very appropriate for Halloween. One of the sites is HP Instant Delivery.

Ulysses for Dummies - illustrated and animated. Fun.

The Amazing Recorded Music Collection of Dr Iain L M Hotchkies. Oh, and he has 4 unpublished novels up there too.

The Bauhaus archive - not the movement, the band. The site is nearly good but somehow doesn't quite make it.

This page would not inspire me to visit the houses listed. Not that I could visit as there is no location information provided - I half suspect that they don't really want visitors anyway. All those plebs traipsing round the garden and frighterning the peacocks. Need the money though.

Amazon UK have started doing music. They list "popular music" and "classical" - what about unpopular music, which pretty well describes most of the stuff that I like. (That being said they list the Easy Club album)

gmtPlus9 telles me about this list of Japanese radio stations broadcasting on the Internet. I've been trying to find some live Japanese top listen to and some of these may well fit the bill.

We thought our cat had vanished, but he turned up in a neighbour's house. Phew.