christopher’s lives (v5.3)

if you have been too busy playing with google earth to explore windows live local’s “bird’s eye” views, here’s a very cool way to get acquainted with it…

Bird’s Eye Tourist

From the site:

First Google brought us Google Local and Google Earth. Then Microsoft followed suit with Windows Live Local, featuring stunning new imagery. Bird’s Eye images provide a high-resolution, low-angle aerial view of a small area.

This website is the definitive guide and repository for the coolest Windows Live Local locations.

with a blog format and links divided into locations (where i found the sandia peak tramway) and categories (DO NOT miss “our favorites“), this is a very cool site…

at the moment the front page includes “the bat cave from the old TV show Batman“, “the Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in Buena Park, CA”, “numerous hovercraft at the Little Creek Amphibious Base in Virginia, “The Simpsons mural at Fox Studios”, and “the fake McDonalds”…

oh, and they also have a list of all the cities covered by windows live local…  very cool - even microsoft doesn’t offer that anywhere, as far as i know…

this is one to keep an eye on…  (btw, they DO have an rss feed!)

The true cost of free iPods - Engadget

Boing Boing: Lucas put malicious Xbox trojan on Star Wars DVD
Star Wars DVD Grosses $115M

Google Search: star wars holiday special
[not only do i remember the fam rushing home so my brother and i could watch this over 25 years ago, i have always rather vividly remembered a couple moments from it (like the stormtroopers searching the wookie kid's room), and the images at these sites were so familiar i found myself saying "oh yeah, i forgot about that part"... yet i have trouble remembering my own phone number...]

ICQ Chat Request

A visual history of spam (and virus) email
The Spam Weblog

Boing Boing: Fave music site: Oddio Overplay

Play the PlayStation Portable — in Japan - Engadget
[um, yeah, i'd probably like to play with that... btw, best pics of the PSP i've seen yet...]

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | Ruined by R ratings
[something of a history of not-safe-for-network-tv language in movies being dubbed for broadcast...]

NetRatings: Broadband users a majority in U.S.
[i somehow missed this news until now...]

The Making of a THX LaserDisc

Cities Collection [via RefDesk's SotD]
This NASA site offers outstanding astronaut photography of cities taken during space-flight.

craigslist - Gorgeous 2br Penthouse on Las Vegas Strip [sigh]

this was in the march 2004 issue of Nybble, and it has taken me this long to post it…

Hey, since we’re now living in the time of e-mail and the more common use of the written language, it is time for an English lesson, mmmkay.

So, with tongue firmly in cheek, here are some rules to keep in mind when using the Queen’s Engerlish:

1. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat).
6. Always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also, too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments. No comma splices, run-ons are bad too.
11. Contractions aren’t helpful and shouldn’t be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. One should never generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Don’t use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is probably not the best way to propose earth shattering ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
28. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a million times worse than understatement.
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Waxy.org: Links Miniblog

Pioneer CLD-D704 notorious for streaking problems???(!!)

Bartender Magazine
Webtender.com - “In My Bar” - “Tell The Webtender what you have in your bar, and get a list of all the drinks you can make.”

Earth and Moon Viewer: Expert Request

the following links come from my LiveJournal Friends page, which i use as a simple online aggregator of site feeds…

boingboing: Deaf children in Nicaragua create new language
boingboing: D&D rarities sold off by terminally ill TSR illustrator
boingboing: Remembering

fark: VIDEO - Reporter covers dangerous intersection - huge crash happens behind him, live

Engadget: The Godfather horse head pillow

RefDesk’s SotD: MapMachine
   ”National Geographic’s redesigned online atlas gives you the world - your way. Find nearly any place on Earth, and view it by population, climate, and much more. Plus, browse antique maps, find country facts, or plan your next outdoor adventure with our trail maps”

and i finally bumped into a website with someone using the .name domain… i really wanted one of these for a long time, before i decided to just get a .com…

http://grant.henninger.name/

btw, it is just some guy’s blog, so no telling if it will be of any interest to anyone, it is just the domain name that caught my attention…

first, the various…

Ender’s Game
“Intruder Signal” on 40 Meters Remains a Mystery for Now
Creepy crawly blanket
apod: Above the Eye of Hurricane Ivan
me with my LaserDisc evangelist hat on

karl sent me these months ago… yes, i am just now getting to them…

MetaSpy
OpenDiary.com
Web FTP Client Version3.5.0
Phone Phreaking Trips [RealAudio]

these links with descriptions are copied from three RefDesk’s Site-of-the-Day email newsletters i have had sitting in my inbox, meaning to check them out…

MIT OpenCourseWare
   ”Welcome to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare: a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT’s mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT’s values of excellence, innovation, and leadership. With the publication of 700 courses, MIT OCW offers educational materials from 33 academic disciplines and all five of MIT’s schools.”

Time Capsuler
   ”To begin your trip in this Time Capsule enter a date. You will be presented with your own customized page that includes all the information you’ve chosen, plus typical consumer prices from that year, Academy Award winners that year, etc. Site has data online for the years 1800 through 2002, although data for the years 1800 - 1875 is probably spotty.”

The Yahoo! Buzz Index Weekly
   ”Check out the top 20 search subjects on Yahoo!, complete with a sardonic round-up of all the newsmakers that are moving and shaking web traffic this week.”

and i am posting these specifically for members of my family…

one for mary, one for mom, and one for jeff (i have been meaning to point this one out to him for something like three years)…

these tools/resources will mostly be of interest to Dreamcast/WebTV browser users, though, a few might be worth a look for anyone who works with with web pages…

AnyBrowser.com - Your Source for Browser Compatibility Verification
WDG Copy/Paste HTML Validator
Cynthia Says - Accessibility Validator
Doctor HTML Quality Assessment Validator

Web Pages That Suck — Daily Sucker
HTMlite tutorials
extended ASCII - Webopedia.com

TL/2 - “a FileManager specially designed for thin-client browsers and a sturdy [webspace tool kit]“.
Draac.com - Web Page Tools
MAiP Developer Tools
Domania Directory Mover
net2ftp

Email Address Encoder
Adobe Acrobat - Adobe PDF Conversion by Simple Form

“JSMFeed is a Perl script that converts RSS XML feeds into standard browser side Javascript in JSMsg convention.” - “Display RSS Feeds on your site- Convert your RSS feeds to JSMsg feeds for easy web-page display”
“phpMyChat is an easy-to-install, easy-to-use multi-room chat based on PHP and a database, supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, and ODBC.”

and, behold The World’s Largest Cylidrical Aquarium…

AquaDom Aquarium [via BoingBoing.net]

Why I hate Microsoft

DTS Online - Consumer - Home Theatre - DVD Title Search

Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert - Movie Answer Man

Museum of Hoaxes - Time Travel Spam
Wired News: Turn Back the Spam of Time

Achaea - Dreams of Divine Lands
IRC Roleplaying - Dungeons and Dragons Games Looking for Players

The Morning News - Tricks of the Trade

SpamTown :: Current Spam-Blocking News And Information
Welcome to Spam Town. We don’t make spam, we learn to live with it.

i may do this more often…

http://albuquerque.craigslist.org/

on april 28, a request was posted on fark.com for people to make their own radio commercial for the site…
there a are a couple really good ones, if you are familiar with fark…

(and, to make sure they don’t get lost, i have added them all to our mp3 subdir…)

[moved from my LiveJournal]

here is the latest version of the same post i have made the last two years on this day…

on this day, three years ago, we went online with our dreamcast and little junky planetweb 2.6 browser on the feb ‘01 ODCM demo disk for the first time…

of course now it is 2 online dc’s and japanese browsers and our Psions are also online, of course…

unlike probably most people, we actually have a videotape of our first time logging onto the web… we just let the tape roll… really fascinating to see yourself klutz around the web for the very first time…

for the record, first site we went to… google

we have our first irc chat on tape, our first time in an online game (PSO) and several other firsts, like when we signed up for hotmail and could not use a space in “insidious plots”, which led to the handle being the way it is to this day: insidious underscore plots…

heh, weird little collection… but, interesting to look back on from 3 years later…

sort of like our own little wayback machine…

(when i fast scan forward on the tape it makes me think “so… this is what broadband would look like…” :D !)