The Crabster

Hooray! It has now been 23 years since the world didn't end in a flaming holocaust.

Puki: The Swarm is a fun little Flash shoot-em-up.

The Spacializer is a 'visual sound mixer'. Huh? Yeah, just check it out. From the website of Sebastien Chevrel. The experiments section of his page is pretty cool, and I like the Road Trip film in the art projects section.

MathWorld claims to be the web's most extensive mathematics resource. It certainly seems to live up to that claim. You can find all sorts of stuff there, from the quadratic equation to more esoteric subjects such as the Pell equation. Hosted by the makers of Mathematica.

Build your own Beowulf cluster.

Check out the website for the human beatbox, Yuri Lane. Listen in awe to his mad beatboxing skills. Maybe even bring out the mat and do some breakdancing.

Go here for a daily dose of imagery.

This site (also on Blogspot!) says they have the world's funniest TV commercials. They also have lots of funny pics.

Finally, check out these people having fun with long shutter exposures on their cameras. The site is in Japanese, but the pictures are easy to understand.

I'll start off today with a bit of silly humor -- when cloning goes wrong.

Check out NerdyShirts.com for some of the nerdiest (and awesomest) t-shirts online.

FactMonster is an online almanac for school children, but it has plenty of good factoids for a trivia junkie like me.

Cosmotions is one of the coolest photography sites I've come across lately. What it lacks in flash and refinement, it makes up for with content. It's a collection of time-lapse photo animations of a variety of natural phenomena. Super Sweet. Now if only the webmasters could spring for more bandwidth (the animated GIF files average around 5Mb and take forever to download, but it's worth the wait).

Go to the Breathing Earth site for a visual representation of carbon dioxide emissions for every country in the world, as well as birth and death rates. Makes me want to hug a tree (nude backside, beware).

The Raw Story is an alternative news aggregator based out of Washington, D.C. From their mission statement: "At the core, our goal is to unearth and spotlight stories underplayed by the popular press, in particular those which highlight betterment and open people’s eyes to injustice throughout the world." Now go read it and see what the mainstream news outlets have been hiding from you.

Once again we have reached the point of the year where the days will be shorter than the nights. Sorry, all you S.A.D. people.

No surprise here, but our president is an idiot. Here are some of his greatest hits:



I found this list of unusual deaths while browsing through Wikipedia. Steve Irwin isn't even the latest entry on the list anymore. A Canadian woman passed away as a result of playing Chubby Bunny. A sad day for campfire games.

You know those cars that have those keypads for unlocking the door? They aren't very secure. In fact, if you punch this code in (see brute force attack), you are guaranteed to get in to the vehicle. What you do then is up to you.

The Modern Living/Neurotica series of flash animations is creepy and disturbing. Fun!

Finally, if you shop online, check currentcodes.com before you buy. They list current promotional codes (those strings of text you type in at check-out in that little box that asks if you have a code from an ad/referral) for hundreds of online retailers. It's always fun to cheat the system.

Yes, I missed another update. I'm sorry. I'm scum. You deserve better. I deserve everything you said about me.

Let me make it up to you. Here are some funnies.

Go to bix.com to see people making fools of themselves in online dance contests, karaoke, and more! Okay, some of the karaoke is actually pretty good.

The Voices of Many will load any webpage through a variety of filters (fun stuff like Elmer Fudd, l33t-sp34k, pirate, and lots more). I liked looking at this page through the Swedish Chef filter.

Perplex City looks like a fun game. It's a collectable card game, a la Magic: The Gathering, but instead of building decks and battling opponents, each card has a puzzle on it. When you solve the puzzle, you go to the website and enter the code. Entering the code unlocks more clues, and eventually you could be the one who finds the (real-life) treasure! Yes, an actual prize of $200,000 awaits the first person who solves the game. Oh my, not another addiction!

Well, my daughter is awake now and doesn't want her dad sitting like a lump in front of the PC, so I'm going to end this update. I'll try to get on later and add some more. No promises though -- I'd only let you down, dear reader.

It's time for my favorite holiday: Talk Like A Pirate Day! Yarrr there.

ClustrMaps is a counter for your website that'll also make a map of the world showing where all your visitors are from. Unfortunately, you need an invitation to make a free account for smaller sites (like this one). Anyone wanna help me out? :D

Godchecker -- your guide to the gods. They have a database of over 3400 gods, goddesses, saints, spirits, and demons from all around the world.

Ricci Adams' Musictheory.net has a lot of free lessons in music theory -- scales, tones, chords, etc. Also cool are the trainers which test your knowledge in a variety of subjects -- notes, keys, notes on a guitar, and more.

Another musical website, Vic Firth's 40 Essential Rudiments for the Snare Drum is a great resource for any percussionists out there. The guy in the videos can drum really fast.

Here's one for your kids. Coloringpage.org has lots of activities for the munchkins.

WallpaperStock.com has loads of free desktop wallpapers and stock photos.

It's late and I'm tired, so I'm making this one quick.

Farecast helps predict the best day to buy a plane ticket for the cheapest fare. It's still in beta, and doesn't have all that many airports yet (including my local one), but it definitely shows promise.

Penguins you must read before you die lists a bunch of great books published by the Penguin Group.

What D&D character are you? I'm a lawful neutral dwarvish ranger-fighter. :D

You've seen those Motivators posters. You may also have seen the Demotivators. Now for nerds, we have the Linux Demotivators!

WHTour.org has 360-degree panoramas of U.N. World Heritage sites.

The International High IQ Society has free standardized IQ tests, and if you score high enough, you could even be invited to join the International High IQ Society (I just like to say that). You could run around telling everyone you know that you're now a member of the International High IQ Society. Wouldn't that be great?

It was two years ago today that Johnny Ramone passed away after a long battle with prostate cancer. I believe that a moment of ROCKING HARD is in order.

FlightAware tracks private and commercial flights across the U.S., and it does so for free. Especially fun to use in conjunction with LiveATC.net (yes, I know I've linked to that one before, but it's too great to ignore).

Futurama is one of my favorite shows, and it's coming back with all new episodes, complete with the entire original cast! Flippin' sweet, man. While you wait for 2008 to roll around, check out this Leela computer case, also reference the Bender case.

If you thought those cases were neat, check out these. I dig the PC built into an old Nintendo box. If you want to know more about case modding, mini-itx.com has news, tips, and a gallery of case mods. The Best Case Scenario is possibly the best case mod site -- if you ever have any unanswerable modding questions, ask at the forums. Someone will know. See the Doom 3 case. It's incredible (if you have trouble with delayed gratification, skip to the last page to see pics of the completed case).

Are you a fan of useless trivia? I sure am. Here's some for you -- the 100 oldest currently registered dot-com domains! See what companies have been on the Internet the longest.

The Google Zeitgeist is another place to find trivia that is somewhat more useful. It tracks what people are searching for on Google, and thus gives us a representation of what society as a whole is concerned with. Unfortunately, society is more concerned with Suri Cruise than the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Sad, but I digress. Check out the year-end Zeitgeist, which breaks down the most popular searches of the year into a variety of categories (current events, celebrities, etc.). There are archives of the Zeitgeist going back to 2001.

The planet formerly known as Planet X has been officially named. It has been named Eris, after the Greek goddess of discord. This makes me happy. Why does it make me happy? Read on.

Eris is also known by the Romans as Discordia. The joke disguised as a religion (or is it a religion disguised as a joke?), a.k.a. The Discordian Society, worships Eris and revels in chaos. For more info on The Discordian Society, and wondrous enlightenment, read the Principia Discordia. All hail Eris! All hail Discordia!

Take part in "the biggest climate experiment ever undertaken"! The BBC is doing a distributed computing project (a la SETI@home) to attempt to predict climate change. Great fun for a weather junkie like me.

I found this 20 questions game last night, and ended up playing it for way too long.

Carnage Blender 2 is a fun web-based role-playing game -- probably the best I've ever seen... I've been able to play it for several days now without getting bored (yet). That's better than I can say for pretty much any other similar game I've tried (except for the web-based game formerly known as Legend of the Red Dragon, now called Legend of the Green Dragon).

That's right, Mario is 21 years old today. September 13th, 1985 is the date that Super Mario Bros. was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System. My life was never the same.

Did you know our miserable failure of a president called the Constitution "just a goddamned piece of paper"? That really exemplifies the contempt he has for the freedoms and rights that our country was founded on.

Read Print is (yet another) free online library, filled with thousands of classics.

Loic Peoc'h (whatever that means... is it a name? I don't know) is a photographer's portfolio. There are some great portraits here, but be aware if you are at work, some of the work in galleries two and three contain nudity.

Need to get that blood out of your overalls? Go to the Stain Removal Guide and follow their directions. No one will suspect A THING.

Here are some photos of a sand storm in Iraq. I experienced one of these when I was living in the low desert in Arizona -- scary stuff.

Check out these awesome paper cutouts.

Today I'll end the update with this comic for all of you tabletop role players out there. Much love.

It's been a magical year at, well, the most magical place in Hong Kong. Or something.

Are people really retaliating against stingrays? Talk about totally missing the point (no pun intended).

I really can't stand wacko 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Seriously, people will believe anything. If you have watched the conspiracy video 'Loose Change' -- no link provided, you can find links to free downloads here at the Loose Change Viewer Guide. The guide dissects the video, point by point, so if you were inclined to believe anything in the video (which presents an assortment of 9/11 conspiracy theories) I can only hope that the viewer's guide will at least plant some seeds of doubt. Respect the people who died that day. Understand the facts -- 9/11 was caused by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists (not Iraqis), not our government. Our government simply used the events of that day to their advantage (illegal wars, stripping American's of their Constitutional rights, etc).

Kick Ass Classical lists classical's top 100 greatest hits (sound kind of funny, doesn't it?), based on their exposure in popular culture. It's hard to find a song that doesn't have any lyrics to search for, so try KAC -- they just might have that tune you've been trying to find. Love their tagline -- Rock out with your Bach out.

I just discovered Channel Chooser. As I write this, they have 169 free channels you can watch. I had to tear myself away from the Police Channel (in the Reality tab) just to post this update.

Skeptic Report is a good site if you're into critical reasoning, thinking for yourself, and plain old common sense.

Here's an interesting timeline of U.S. military interventions, coups, proxy armies, and other examples of American imperialism from 1801 to the present. Found at the website of the legendary culture jammers, Adbusters. See also the Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia.

Dusso.com is the website for Yanick Dusseault (aka Dusso), a visual artist who does matte artwork for Hollywood. His credits include matte painter for War of the Worlds, Star Wars Episode III, Pirates of the Caribbean, Terminator 3, the first two Lord of the Rings movies, and more. Check out Hangar 7, a 3-minute test scene shot by Dusso and some friends. His gallery includes many pieces of art from his various movie projects, as well as his personal gallery, which shows a lot of futuristic, H.R. Geiger inspired pieces.

Yes, today is Bill's 57th birthday. At least it is according to Wikipedia, so I make no claims about the veracity of that data. In honor of his alleged birthday, here are some (of the many) videos of Bill making an ass of himself.

Bill making up facts and sources:


Bill interviews Michael Moore and says he would tell the parents of dead soldiers that they were in Iraq because of a mistake:


Part two of the interview, where Bill implies that he wouldn't want his children to go to Iraq:


The best part of the Michael Moore interview, to me, is that Bill seems to have a lot of trouble coming up with any coherent arguments to Michael's points -- and then at the end he says he 'produced evidence' and gave it to Moore, who was so blinded by his ideology that he wouldn't acknowledge this 'evidence'. Laughable.

Body Language (not safe for work). Find the link that says 'click here for a bit of body language'.

ThoughtAudio has free mp3 audio books for download. The titles are all classic literature, philosophy, and history, so having them in audio form might be nice, since you won't have to plod through the texts! :D

And finally, cool camera tricks. This Flickr slideshow has lots of examples of the 'transparent screen' technique.

Also, allow me to apologize for the lack of an update yesterday. I failed you, dear reader. Please don't hold it against me. You know I love you.

Yes, it was 40 years ago today that the first episode of Star Trek aired, and things have never been the same for nerds around the world.

Evil Dead: The Musical? Sounds like it could be fun, but where's Bruce Campbell? It's just not Evil Dead without the original Ash.

A chief Nuremberg prosecutor who was responsible for the conviction of many of Hitler's SS for war crimes has said that George Bush is a war criminal for starting the illegal war in Iraq, and that Bush should be tried alongside Saddam Hussein.

Jumptheshark.com is a site where users get to vote on when exactly a TV show 'jumped the shark', or began to go downhill.

Sorry for the short update -- I'll try to get another one in before the end of the day.

Check out the Reno Air Racing Association's image gallery for some photos of their events. There are lots of unusual planes featured.

Here's some neat subway artwork using perspective for some interesting results.

Jacques Resch has an online gallery of his oil paintings. Lots of religious/apocalyptic/abstract themes.

Want to see what the sun looks like when seen through the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope?

The MegaPenny Project aims to help you visualize large numbers (such as a quintillion), and besides that, it's full of useless trivia (my favorite kind of trivia).

The Webtender is a great resource for all you lushes out there. You can search for a drink by name, ingredient, or just make a list of all the ingredients you have in your liquor cabinet, and it will show you all the drinks you can make.

The Atlas of Plucked Instruments is an encyclopedia of pluckable stringed instruments (your guitars, banjos, dulcimers, etc.). Great pictures and histories of some rare instruments.

Oh dear. The executives at Hewlett-Packard (the company my employers work for) seem to have gotten themselves in some hot water over the use of illegal eavesdropping methods. Apparently they were just following our president's lead.

The MIT Gallery of Hacks is a database of the hacks (not computer hacks) that are famous on the MIT campus. My favorite is the campus patrol car on the Great Dome.

Did you read the Chuck Norris facts from an earlier posting? Here are 10 reasons why Johnny Cash owns Chuck Norris.

Here's something completely uncalled for.

Our president is a master of comedy. Check out his awesome jokes:



And here Keith Olbermann from Countdown on MSNBC takes Donald Rumsfeld to task -- he puts very eloquently what I have felt for a long time -- that the Bush administration is turning our country into a fascist state.



Well, now I'm going to be late for class. See you next time.

You've probably heard by now. Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, has died. He was fatally wounded by a stingray in the Great Barrier Reef. My condolences to Irwin's wife and children.

Here's a video of what increasing entropy looks like. It was made using the game Trackmania Sunrise. The creators of the video raced the same course 1,000 times, and then made a video combining all 1,000 runs on one screen. Awesome video, too bad about the music.

Help end genital mutilation in the US. Find the facts at MGMbill.org.

Save the Internet! Right now, Congress is pushing a bill that would end network neutrality on the Internet. This means that the companies that run the backbones of the Internet, companies including AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, would be able to give preferential treatment to the traffic of one company over another. This could easily be abused, and end the Internet as we know it. Microsoft could pay to have their search service load faster than Google. Blogs like mine wouldn't be able to afford the cost of a preferred connection, and would take forever to load, perhaps not loading at all. Please sign the petition and contact your local representative.

Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. I blame society.

Hollywood Bitchslap has honest reviews of movies by real people. Don't believe the hype -- get your reviews here.

Another way to see if something is any good is to check the Metacritic. It compiles reviews from all over the Internet, and not just for movies too. Books, TV shows, video games, and music, and every item shows a number between 1 and 100 based on all the reviews it's gotten.

This page is from fordads.com, it's called Cool Stuff For Cool Dads, and has lots of activities you can do with your kids.

The kind folks at the Temple of the Screaming Electron believe that information should be free. Finally, a place where you can find out how to manufacture heroin, build silencers for firearms, and lots of other fun stuff that I probably shouldn't mention if I want to stay off of the no-fly list.

Legos are the best toys ever. They also have a pretty cool website. Download the Lego Digital Designer and make your own designs on your PC, and print out a list of the pieces you need! Super.

I found a pretty neat front-end for Wikipedia, it has an auto-complete feature. Also super.

Okay, I just got home from work and am pretty tired, so I'll keep this one short.

Best. Mineral. Ever. Who comes up with these names?

Need an overload of cuteness? Check out Cute Overload!

The guys over at wiseGEEK have lots of answers to all sorts of questions, check it out.

If you had a modem back in the 80s or early 90s, before the Internet caught on, you probably used it to log on to BBSes. Ever wonder what happened to your old buds? Maybe they've signed up on BBSmates, a resource to find your old chat buddies from that bygone era.

Survival Research Labs blows a bunch of stuff up, and calls it performance art. Way cool.

Finally, go read Panel One. It's quite entertaining, but make sure you start at the beginning.

Apechild has lots of funny stuff on it. Plus, the ApeMaster seems to have a fetish for women's tennis stars, and especially their underwear, so if you want panty pics of Anna Kournikova or Maria Sharapova, this is the place to go.

Readymech has some free plans for paper robot models that you can download, print, and assemble. All you need is a printer, some cardstock or similar thick paper, an X-Acto knife, and some two-sided tape. Good times!

Today, I turn 9,559 days old. And no, I didn't do the equation to figure that out. I'm not THAT sad. I just punched in my birth date at dayofbirth.co.uk.

If you're like me, then you're a lazy college student. Maybe you didn't quite finish (or start) the book you're supposed to be reading for your literature class. In that case, the guys at AntiStudy have what you need. There are links to summaries of over 500 novels, plays, and poems available for free. The only site they don't seem to link to is the original slacker helper, CliffsNotes, even though they too offer free summaries of good quality. I would also like to point out that you can find pre-written essays to slap your name onto them through AntiStudy. If you choose to take that route, then I happen to know for a fact that you are a twit and a cheat who doesn't even belong in an institute of higher learning -- you should probably just resign yourself to a life of waiting tables or working a cash register, because your professors will find out (they all know about the pre-made essay sites), and you will likely be expelled from your school for cheating and plagiarism. On behalf of all students who actually write their own papers (even if they fail to read the assignment), I would like to say GO TO HELL.

But I digress. This is supposed to be a links page, not an editorial. Back to the linkage.

The Darwin Awards are always good for a laugh, unless you have some objection to laughing about other's misfortune and deaths. If that is the case, then you are a weirdo. This is the official site of Wendy Northcutt, who has a series of books that compile all the best occurrences of natural selection. From the website: "We salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who remove themselves from it."

Google Earth is the coolest program ever. I find myself opening it up to look for something specific, and then I end up spending an hour just flying around looking at random things.

Lots of things have been said about our current president. Some are true, some are just opinion. Definitely true: he lacks public speaking skills, despite having been a public official for over a decade. Check out Slate's frequently updated list of Bushisms.

Prison Break has already begun its new season. House starts on Tuesday. Yes, it's that time of year again, when all the best network shows begin their new seasons. Find everything you want to know about your favorite TV shows at TV.com. They have schedules, cast information, episode guides, and lots more.

Finally, check out Spongeback Mountain. A little dated, I realize, but still funny.