21 May 1999

A site with someone's unedited journals. Not really a weblog, a real journal. Ah, she is an Amway person. Oh well.

Very strange free UK ISP. The sign up sheet is amazing!

Oooh, James Joyce webified. Good stuff indeed (Ultimately from robotwisdom)

Last night I read Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman (link for Amazon UK users). A slim volume of essays about bibliophilia. If you love books you must read this. Fantastic.

This proposal sounds sensible but I'm sure there is a flaw in it somewhere. (There so many things that are hard to classify, and people will simply argue about the classification)

Plan to reboot America. Methinks a slightly radical view for most USAns

20 May 1999

Recordings of shortwave number stations available on CD. Lots of other stuff too. [Found at BoingBoing.net

A different view of the news from the one to which most people are accustomed. (Warning this is an anti-capitalist website...) I found this link on this page which has an eclectic collection of links.

I liked this zippy cartoon. A lot of truth in there.

Article about spy satellites. [From robotwisdom]

Read all about the nsa-bot!

The room at umbra.com is odd. It is one of these character analysis deals based on items you choose from lists.

19 May 1999

A review of a possibly interesting book about software design.

A page about phrenology. For years I wanted a phrenological head and I finally got one a few years ago. I found this site via an essay about pseudo-science in America, which I found in turn from the indispensable Arts & Letters Daily. Be warned that A&LD will suck you into an ever deeping vortex of fascinating sites that you had never heard of and eat all your free time...

I went to moviecrtic.com and rated some movies. Its recommendations for me were highly unlikely! Not impressed.

18 May 1999

What about Restrooms.org? "The best restroom news from around the globe"

From the ever fascinating Lemonyellow, I found the intriguing favela.org. Perhaps a tad post-modern for my taste (aka pretentious) but there is some good stuff in there.

The Ghost Watcher webcam is rather strange - cameras inside a trunk and under a bed! How about the webcam in Uri Geller's living room?

A nice picture of a PDP-11 and Ken T. and DMR. Of all the machines I have ever used I like the PDP-11 the best.

New issue of Mojo turned up. Best music magazine around (IMHO). Pointless website though - there is almost no content. They need to get a clue about the web.

17 May 1999

Japanese/English dictionary - nice and simple. UK mirror is broken though. Also a Japanese Course using anime. A page about Japanese Chopsticks. - there are some really lovely things illustrated here.

Very weird - Japanese KiSS Dolls. I dont quite see the point myself. Check it out for yourself - there are players for loads of systems.

Cryptome is a crypto weblog. Lots of useful/interesting stuff here, if you are into that kind of thing.

New issue of Risks.

14 May 1999

The MI6 agent list turned up in alt.talk.royalty c/o Lyndon LaRouche.

I just cleaned the crud out of my mouse - what a joy I can move it around again!!

I liked this little piece from lemonyellow. Also linked from there was Wozoco rather nicely designed site.

13 May 1999

The Captain Beefheart boxed set is out on the 22nd June!!! Vinyl and CD.

Interesting navigator software. Uses Java. (From memepool

Salvage Culture - skip contents online. Includes treasures such as "Romance and Sex Life of the Date".

Good article about why we stuck with old browsers for some time to come. Many of the other articles at this site are well worth reading.

Some strange musings - some good stuff though. The rest of the site also has good stuff on it.

Interesting article about safes. (From Robotwisdom)

I wonder where the website that reveals all the MI6 agents is?

12 May 1999

I just fortified my netscape 4.51.

Not sure about the picture in the log!

Strange site at http://www.55dsl.com/. Interesting web trickery but I haven't worked out what it is about yet! (From http://www.perfect.co.uk/)

A new Entropy Grade Reversal arrived - Rageboy claims to have had email from the person who started the barbie/smithsonian story going round the net.

New issue of Web Informant from David Strom. Always well worth reading - his opinions are well founded in real experience. (I don't always agree with him of course!)

I've now seen several references to an online Tai Chi learning system. I am trying to find it...not bad - it was second hit at google when searching with "taichi online". Better than my success rate with "pink holes"! It needs quicktime though so I'll have to visit on my Mac rather than with Linux.

The latest Fortean Times is out. They have redesigned the layout which is definitely clearer and better referenced but has a little too much duplication of content I feel. Lots of interesting links which I shall be following when I get the chance.

11 May 1999

The mathmistakes site provides a much needed service. Of course it should be maths not math, but they cant get everything right!

I translated this page into French using the go service and it certainly looked like a plausible translation.

I was very depressed by reading this article on the Pigs and Fishes weblog. 2000 books! OK, I read little faster than a book week when I am in harness, but it probably averages out, and I'm older than he is as well. This calls for some serious planning.

I found this article about the Titanic sinking interesting and plausible. (Gleaned from Robot Wisdom Weblog)

Some nice blues links here.

A photo gallery of theremins. I'd really like to have a theremin - I've played the one in the Exploratorium and it was great fun (and hard). This page is full of interesting stuff and lead me to the Jews of the 50s in 3-D page.

I really like playing with EJay family of music programs - it almost makes having to run Windows worthwhile (only at home though!). Dance EJay 2 is out now and looks really interesting. The ads claim that the programs are "seriously addictive" - for once I agree with them.

I liked these roadsigns - via a page sent to Spaf's web-heads list. Lots of other good ones of the higher index page.

Another titbit from the wireless this morning. The radio station is running a St*r W*rs competition and yesterday's winner said to the DJ on the phone afterwards that he "used the force" in order to win. He was serious... I dont understand the Star Wars thing at all.

Eben Moglen's essay on free software looks interesting. I'll comment when I've read it...

Thanks to /. for a link to the pink holes stuff!

Thanks to Kathy Bilton for sending me this tube animals link - I had this yesterday and then lost it.

10 May 1999

Lovely item on the news on the wireless this morning about pigeons using the tube in London. The have been seen changing trains and seem to know their way around. Haven't found a web link yet.

Year 5 Billion bug anyone?

I naively searched on google for "pink holes" - trying to find out about the newly discovered astronomical phenomena. Silly me.

Good Echelon site mentioned on /. and TBTF.

07 May 1999

Eliza in javascript.

Ahhh, Band in a Box 8.0 is available!! Where do I get an upgrade in the UK though? And I wish they would fix that horrible interface. They even have the gall to claim the lack of change as an advantage! That being said it is a fantastic program.

A very old Tom Tomorrow on the subject of Wired. How true.

I had not seen disinfo.com - the sub-culture search engine before.

Check out the Dry Stone Walling Association.

Read the analysis of bloat in MSRegclean in Risks 20.37. The article makes an intriguing analogy between code bloat and peacocks' tails. This led me to the book "The Red Queen" by Matt Ridley (For non-UK readers this is the link). It was out when I went to the library, but I have one of his other books which also looks interesting. (I wish there was some way of unifying Amazon links so that I didn't have to keep having them in pairs - triples if I included the one in the .de domain! They should unify their affiliates programmes! Or else there should be an easy way of looking at the requesting hostname and determining where it is so that I could generate the URLs on the fly.)

Interesting article about problems caused by writing on Pilots. Assuming it is not spoof (who can tell these days), I assume that I am OK using my Newton since I just write normally with it. However, I do find that any writing is hard simply because I don't do it enough. Recently I have started paper correspondence with people again and it is a great thing. If you want to write me a letter please do, I'll be delighted to respond.

I had a look at the Tide tcl IDE. I haven't worked out how to get it run yet though!

06 May 1999

I am getting sucked into reading other people's weblogs just as I predicted would happen! I keep finding interesting Stuff: http://www.hearme.com/ or http://www.eink.com/releases/pr7.html. And there's more and more...

I am deeply unconvinced by arguments for AI based common-sense. I am not even sure about human common-sense!

Real tech support calls in real audio at http://www.cyberjuice.com/helpdeskfunnies/wavs.htm.

The Thistle and Shamrock is (or at least used to be!) a wonderful program of Celtic Music on NPR in the USA. There is no program as good on the wireless over here, and of course you cant get T&S easily here. *sigh*

The Easy Club album arrived today (hurray!) but it had this catalogue with it....so I've just ordered the Abby Newton album,

Lots of Canadian sites linked from the Eye Site. some interesting ones in the back issues.

Visited the Holy Body tattoo dance troupe at http://www.holybody.org. Nicely done site, if a little dark.

Started new CTCP2 mailing list at egroups. What a splendid service they provide.

05 May 1999

Checked out the Linux Perl File system.

Porting Linux to the psion at http://www.gumbley.demon.co.uk/softnews.html. Madness.

Caught up on the latest Ghost Sites. Some of mine will be in there some day soon I bet.

I hadn't come across the Pentium gcc effort before. I can't work out whether or not it is a good thing - if people devote time to specialisation then it encourages manufacturers to produce more specialised items.

Shamir's proposed factoring device is interesting.

Ordered the Easy Club's Essential CD. I have all their stuff on vinyl, but there is unreleased stuff on here.

Tried out the new search engine at http://www.alltheweb.com/.

04 May 1999

A wonderful music site with Victrola music. Pity I cant get it to play any of them to me.

I finally managed to find a Real Player for Linux! Mind you I can't get it to work. It's been a big netscape day as I also installed the latest tcl Plugin.

Celebrity Executions! How nice. I note that either nobody voted for Jill Dando or she was tactfully removed from the page....

Visited the Shift site. All "clever" javascript and shockwave. Ugh.

Read the latest Need to Know.

Read RISKS digest 20.36.

I picked up the Swish XML editor.

At last, a source of Klein bottles!

I have a worry that all the webloggers will spend all their time looking at each other's logs and then logging the same sites!

Cheap Lomos in the USA at http://www.freestylesalesco.com/holga.html#Lomo.

Went to Mountainzone to read about the discovery of Mallory's body on Everest.

Been a holiday weekend and my son sprained his ankle falling off a climbing wall... I realised that I need to be able to update the weblog from anywhere which presents an interesting challenge. Whilst online with my daughter we found http://www.droodles.com/ and http://www.bubbles.org/ both quite fun.

30 April 1999

Well, being always at the cutting edge (i.e I cant resist a trendy thing). I'm experimenting with keeping a weblog. And this is it. I got the meme from Ed Vielmetti who keeps one himself. From his log I hit on the Gallery of Regrettable Food. If you go to the root of this site you'll also find some other nice stuff. I like the photos of faded wall-painted adverts.

I keep hearing about lomography - taking photos with this small, cheap Russian camera called a Lomo. I want one, but cant afford it at the moment sadly.

If you are interested in genealogy then you should check out Family Search. it's the Seventh Day people's database on-line. Not exactly easy to use yet but it might get there one day.

I'm working on this weblog with a little tool I just wrote, but I think I need to make it more complicated so as to allow me to use the double column format that seems to be very popular in other weblogs....

I just got my mailbox down to only 5 messages!!

"Grazing the Net" is an interesting article about using the Internet in education. It highlights the inadequacies of the Internet as an information source very well.