Just a minute...

I don't know if anyone actually cares, but I will resume updating as soon as I can get some more articles written. I just need a bit of a break. So keep watching this space.

The Long Now Foundation

The Long Now Foundation is a foundation dedicated to long term thinking. They want people to think about things not only in their lifetimes, but thousands of years from now. They have a variety of interesting projects including a project to catalog all of the world's languages, a long term betting pool, and a massive project to build a clock that will run constantly for ten thousand years. They've got some cool stuff, and I think you should check it out.

365 Tomorrows

365 Tomorrows is a website that posts a very short science fiction story (typically two or three paragraphs) every day. Some of them aren't very good, but if you don't like today's story there will be a brand new one tomorrow. It's a great little site. Check it out.

Officially Pronounced Dead?

Sir Paul McCarthy is one of the two surviving members of the Beatles, the greatest rock and roll band of all time. Or is he? The folks over at Officially Pronounced Dead? think that he might have died in the late sixties and that the Paul McCarthy we know today is a body double who has been faking it for forty years. They say they've got proof to, from hints in Beatles album covers to backmasked lyrics. Their arguments have to be seen to be believed, or not believed as the case will probably be. Check it out.

PolitiFact

PolitiFact is a website started by the St. Petersburg times to analyze the truthfullness of statements made by American political figures like Barak Obama or Sarah Palin and determine whether they are right or wrong. A non-partisan organization, PolitiFact will tell you when politicians are lying and when they are not. They also have the Obameter, which will tell you which campaign promises president Barak Obama has kept and which he has not. They're a great resource for those of us who think that facts are important, and that we should make decisions based on them. Check it out.

The Principality of Sealand

The Principality of Sealand is a small nation located on a derelict sea fort of the coast of Great Britain. Maybe. It depends on who you ask. If you ask the folks on Sealand they will tell you that they are a sovereign nation, and that England has even implicitly recognized their sovereignty in the past. If you ask every other nation on Earth they'll tell you that those guys are crazy. Sealand is the most well known micronation, a small entity that claims to be a nation but that is generally not recognized as such. Sealand arguably has a better claim to sovereignty than most micronations but I doubt they'll be getting a seat in the UN any time soon.

Anyway that link up there is their official site. It's got info on Sealand's history and buy stuff. They sell coins, stamps, and even titles of nobility. The perfect birthday present for the royalty in your life. Check it out.

Sodaplay

It's a special birthday post! Whose birthday? Mine! I was born twenty-one years to the minute before this post goes up. So to celebrate my birthday you get a special blog post. You're welcome.

Sodaplay was one of the first cool websites I found on the internet about a decade ago when I first got regular internet access. It's been going on ever since, and I still think it's cool. Sodaplay lets you build virtual machines out of muscle-like parts that can move, make music, and more! If you can't figure out how to build stuff you can check out the Sodazoo and look at the cool things that other users have build. It sure brings back memories. Check it out.

The Human Marvels

The Human Marvels is a website chronicling side show freaks, people with unusual skills or deformities who made their livings in circuses and sideshows in the earlier part of last century. Their stories are often tragic but never boring. It's certainly something to check out.

CelebriDucks

CelebriDucks is a website that sells rubber ducks of the kind you may have played with as a child made to look like various celebrities. They've got all sorts of celebrities. If you've ever wanted to see a rubber duck shaped like Betty Boop or the pope, this is the place. You can even purchase them, although some are out of stock. Check it out.

Atlas Obscura

Atlas Obscura is a website detailing all of the weird and wonderful places to be found across the world. From abandoned Incan ruins to a cemetery for sports mascots it's got it all. You can ever search it by category or location. I learned that my state has a 3/4 scale model of the white house, a massive time capsule set to be opened in thousands of years, and a strange monument built by a mysterious benefactor. Check out what's weird in your neck of the woods.

Project Gutenburg

Johannes Gutenburg was a German printer who introduced modern book printing to the west. This led to an explosion of knowledge as books became available to a much wider audience who could never have afforded an expensive hand copied book. In that spirit Project Gutenburg seeks to give books to the masses for free. It is a repository of books whose copyrights have lapsed and are now in the public domain, free for anyone to reproduce. It contains the full text of such classics as the works of Shakespeare and Twain. It's a must have resource for any fan of classic literature who doesn't mind reading on a computer screen or who has one of those newfangled e-reading gadgets. Check it out.

SurLaLune Fairy Tales

Did you ever read fairy tales when you were a child? I certainly did. I'm still fond of them. They follow their own unique logic, but it's a logic instantly recognizable to children. SurLaLune Fairy Tales is a site that takes forty-nine fairy tales and annotates them, telling you about the cultural elements in them that might not be familiar to twenty-first century readers. If like me you find fairy tales fascinating you should check it out.

Comic Book Religion Database

The Comic Book Religion Database is a database that records the religious affiliation of comic book characters. This is not as easy as it sounds. They sometimes have to go to great lengths to try and figure out what religion a character is likely to be. It's fun to go through and see what religions various iconic characters belong to. Check it out.

Pandora Radio

Pandora Radio is basically an internet radio station that can deliver you music from any genre you like. What's more, it can look at the songs that you like and tailor its content to your specific tastes. And to top it all off, it's entirely legal. It can be a great way to pass the time or to find new music from artists in genres you like. Check it out.

The Agony Booth

Did you ever watch Mystery Science Theater 3000? That was a great show. It had these guys who watched horrible movies and provided a very funny running commentary on them. It took place on a space station and two of the guys were robots, but that's aside the point. The Agony Booth is like that, only in text form. They also do TV shows. They've reviewed everything from Battlefield Earth to the new Transformers movie with more coming every day. Check it out.

Internet Anagram Server

An anagram is a rearrangement of the letters in a word or phrase to form another word or phrase. So Heaters Gonging Ow is an anagram of George Washington. The Internet Anagram Server, which can be rearranged to spell I Rearrangement Servant, can take anything you like an find you tons of anagrams for it. Its takes a bit, but it'll spit them out eventually. There are options for more precise searches and even anagrams from other languages! It's fun, although I can't guarantee that it will reveal any universal truths like the site says. Check it out.

Strange Maps

Strange Maps is a website dedicated to showing you the strangest and most interesting maps they can find. There's a map of what the world would look like if the planet stopped spinning, a map of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi's plan to carve up Switzerland's land among it's neighbors, a map of the United States made entirely out of pumpkin peels, a map of heaven, and much much more. You'd never have thought there were so many cool maps, but there you are.

Check it out.

Face of the Future

Face of the Future is a website that allows you to take pictures of faces and morph them in various way. It's easier to show than tell, let me show you a few ones I did.

You can take a picture with a face in it



















And change its race


















Or its age

















Or even do weirder things




































As you can see the quality of the output varies depending on whose picture you use and which transformation you select. Some of these came out great, but I couldn't get a single pic of female Bush that didn't look horrible. So play around with it, see what you can do. It's a fun thing. The site uses Java and the app can take a few minutes to load. Give it time. Check it out.

Frontline Online

Frontline is a television show on PBS that take a critical look at issues of the day, from global warming to the financial meltdown. It's very good and quite informative. If you've ever wanted to know exactly what Bernie Madoff did wrong or why someone with a terminal illness would want to end their own life, Frontline has the answer. And now you can watch all of their shows for free on the internet! Frontline Online has a complete list of all Frontline episodes ever, and you can watch them online for free with no ads. Isn't PBS great?

Check it out.

Update Schedule

I've decided to resurrect this old thing. I'm moving to a Tuesday and Thursday schedule to ration my content to better fit my own personal schedule and I've already got a month's worth of material written and ready to go. So if anyone is reading this, stick around. I've got some cool stuff for you.

Dusting this thing off: Dead or Alive?

By Dead or Alive? I don't mean this blog, which currently exists in a state of quantum indeterminacy until I decide whether or not to post this, but today's featured website. Dead or Alive?, a website that has a big list of celebrities and other notable people and whether or not they have kicked the bucket. It can sort them by name, date, birthday, occupation, etc. Useful if you want to know if that guy, whatsis name, who played on that show, you know, that guy. Is he still around?

Check it out.