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.