Cool multimedia sites
Here are a couple of cool shockwave sites. This one features Eugene Mirman singing songs such as 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' (bono has nothing to worry about). , Tudy Cooper a web site with some awesome comics. If you like flash sites check out XDude's site . he got screwed at the bank and he's letting everyone know about. Way to stick it to the man! . Get your aggressions out on these poor defenseless sheep or at the flash arcade
Central time
This is absolutely hilarious. I'm here in Chicago (more later). The local news is doing a piece on how the gas prices have soared. They're talking about boycotting the gas stations because they feel the stations are gouging gas prices. The story goes on and on: there is some conspiracy going on, this is unacceptable yada, yada, yada. The lady at the car rental place even wanted to sell me some kind of insurance where I can lock the price of filling up my tank when I bring it back just in case the price of gas goes up. They end the piece with a note that Chicago doesn't have the highest prices that title goes to San Francisco. HA! Wussies.
OK, Chicago. I was sent here to help introduce some of our employees to our products. They know the stuff but I'm not about to argue. I get a free trip to Chicago out of it. Besides I know what its like when you're trying to learn something and you have to do it all on your own. Sometimes you just need somebody to pat you on the back and give you some warm fuzzies.
So I got in around six, hopped in the car and took off. I'm driving down the street when all of the sudden I see a toll booth. What would a tollbooth be doing out in the middle of nowhere. There cant be any bridges around here. I saw it on the directions to my hotel but I figured it must just be the name of the expressway. Nope sure enough they wanted money. Fine, a random tollbooth, I can deal with that. A bit corrupt but when in Rome... So as I approach the booth I see these signs that direct drivers to the automatic tollbooths and the manual tollbooths. I figure they want to charge the people driving automatic transmissions more just because (again more corruption). I get in the automatic lane but I know I only have twenties 'cause I stopped by the versa teller before I went to the airport.. I get to the toll urinal (I swear that's exactly what it looks like) and notice the guy in front of me threw some coins into the urinal. I've seen this on TV, I thought to myself, but shit, I don't have any change. Now I know in California if you ditch one of these things the cops will come after your ass even if they have to drop their donuts although according to t reliable source the cameras on the San Mateo Bridge are non-functional (a tip for those of you who want to stick it to the man). So went through the gate waiting for the cage with bars to come down and hold me for the proper authorities. Well I make it through the gate, no alarms no bars and pulled all the way to the right. Now on the Dumbarton Bridge back home you can pull off and if you don't have the cash you can drive back onto the main road and back off the bridge (another tip for those of you who get caught). So I figure I'll explain to the guy and he'll either give me change or let me mail in my forty cents. He let me off and told me they weren't going to track me down for a one-time offense. He also explained the signs when I volunteered my idiocy. So I went on my way again. A few miles later (no kidding it was like 12 miles down the road) I ran into another toll road. This place is littered with those damn things.
Anyway I made it to the hotel. Grant, the guy at the front desk, Karina the hostess, and Cathy the waitress have all been very friendly. I started off the night with a little pasta dinner and a Corona. My new friends suggested a couple of places to go hang out. I'm planning to take them up on their advice in just a bit. But first I wanted to fill you all in.
Lie, lies, lies, yeah
I woke up early this morning and went to church. I like to do that every Sunday being the devout catholic that I am. I went in and ran into father Dominique the head pastor at my church and even though he never molested me as a child we've become very close. Ok I don't even know where to go next with that lie...
Pier 39
I'm in San Francisco today. Entertaining some guests from out of town. Where do we go other than pier 39 of course. We have the usual silver and gold robot guys. And of course there's that bongo kid that I always see around here. I wonder if it's still the same kid. Doubt it.
All your files are belong to us
I got this message this morning from telling me their system had been hacked.
I'm not surprised he got hacked. I'm
surprised it didn't happen to him sooner. Security is kinda like backups.
You don't pay any attention to it until you get bitten then all of the sudden
it becomes the most important thing. In light of his misfortune, I have
assembled a collection of links on hacking. I've sorted them into a couple
of categories. Keep in mind that I am only listing web sites! I'm also only
listing the more popular ones. The list would go on and on otherwise. If
you're really interested in these topics you may want to look for
mailings lists
or
newsgroups
on these
topics. The first category 'Security Resources' are sites set up by security
organizations to keep administrators informed about security topics. 'Hacker
Resources' is a collection of links for hackers (sometimes the best source of
info) and I will forego the traditional rambling of
cracker vs. hacker
. There are a couple
of links on Hacker Culture and I wrap up with some readings that are security
related.
Security Resources
http://www.securityportal.com
Hacker Resources
http://www.insecure.org
http://www.textfiles.com
http://www.hackerwhacker.com
Hacker Culture
http://www.hackers.com
http://www.etext.org
http://www.cultdeadcow.com
http://www.2600.com
http://www.hack.org
http://www.hackernetwork.com
Readings
http://csrc.nist.gov/secpubs/rainbow/ (NSA rainbow series)
http://www.hf.ah.cn/computer/unixbook/index1.htm
Flaky ostrich
I'm in San Jose at a little place known as the 'Tide House'. When I heard the name I thought it was tied as in kinky not tide as in water but whatever. They have a wild game burger and today its made with ostrich...Ooooh gotta try that. What!? I did that veggie thing for what four years its time to make up for lost time and trying things that sound strange gets me bonus points. No Gordon Biersch but they have a really nice Hefe Weizen. A couple of those and my blue cheese ostrich sandwich and I'm on the road again. Not a bad G-ratio at this place btw. It's about 3:1 but unfortunately the guys are turning out to be on average better looking than the women and of course that always skews things. Lets say 3:1-.
Elevation
You'll never guess where I am. Don't you hate it when people challenge you to guess something then blurt it out. Better guess quick. I'm at the U2 concert. We've got Larry Mullen Jr. (the crowd's favorite). The front row chickies are holding up a sign with his name on it. I don't see signs for Bono, Adam or the Edge. The concert is a little different from their usual theatrical performance. Remember when they brought out the huge lemon thing on their pop tour? Well there's none of that. The reviews that I've read on the concert have been really positive. In fact the group has been commended on having gone back to basics and focusing on the music. Hey a chick is coming up on stage. Oh hello, she's a cutie. She's slow dancing with bono. I'm sure the other girls up in front are trying to get their jaws off the floor...and she's breaking away from him to do a little dance of her own. She'll probably kick herself in the morning. Wait a second she's freaking 'em. Nice. Wait this girl is way to good to be a random girl from the audience. She's got to be a plant. The music sounds really good. They've got a really good collection of new and old stuff. I wonder if they're going to play silver and gold or maybe a little desire. A little dedication to the guy from INXS... A little bit of theatrics with mysterious ways (I knew bono wouldn't be able to resist)... Give the band a little intro (with a little sass from the edge)... To be honest I miss the flash and props but it kinda feels like I'm at one of their earlier concerts. It's like they're a new young band and I'm one of the first people to see them. It definitely gives you a sort of freshness that you wouldn't normally feel if they had spent all that money on the extras. What can I say I love this band. They could come on stage and just talk and I'd be here.
Untitled
Knowumayin
Blue screen of death
Canadian boarder spoof
Satelite tracking program
Peg the backstreet boys
Exotic giraffe decor
Check out the Web's hottest sites (hehe)
Build your own racetrack
voice synthesizer
Try these on the synthesizer
Mastercard threatens rec.funny over satire
pinstruck
drunken losers
naked webmaster news
...and of course boobies
Classmates
I went over to classmates.com the yesterday. If you've never been you should definitely check it out if only for the horror factor. And don't sign in with some bogus name like Mickey Mouse because then what's the point. OK you probably don't want anyone to know that you're geeky enough to go to a site about your high school. You're way to cool to care about all that stuff. Well then, you've probably got a lot of bent up frustration about high school and you really need to get over yourself. I signed in and left a bio of a email and address. I was really freaked at how many people were married. The real freaky ones are the ex girlfriends. Look them up and see how many of them are married. Like any smart minded male I like to sever ties to my ex girlfriends completely. You can trace the last time I talked to them to a second and that's that. Oh sure it lest thing muster but it makes it a lot easier to weave your own version of what really happened :). Like my journalism teacher once told me, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Weblogs
Here are some sources of information on weblogs:
Userland weblogs
There are just so many sites its hard to keep track of them all. Here are just a couple of personal sites that I ran into. Some of them are really well done. Take a look...
My Personal Favorite
John's Crawlspace
Those with a tld:
americanjackass
charismama
cheesythighs
digitalkitten
drivenbyboredom
imnothurtin
iwantanewgirlfriend
kompulsive
larrycarlson
lilcowpoke
mija
robotskull.com
sinnocence
turdpile
urbankitten
validatethis
whatever-dude
Those without
renee
aphidangiera
rhiannon
eren
Obey this sign
I found this sign in Redwood City the
other day and couldn't resist taking a picture of it.
Buddy Icons
Some time back I mentioned AOL Instant Messenger. If you haven't installed it
yet what are you waiting for?! One of the cool things you can do with AIM is
customize your buddy icon so that when people are sending you messages they will
see an icon that you have chosen for yourself. AIM sends the icon to the other
person auto magically after a few lines of conversation. Below are a couple of
links to web sites that allow you to customize your buddy icon. Simply click
on the image and you will be prompted to replace your current icon with the
newly chose one.
http://www.badassbuddy.com
http://www.ballericons.com
http://buddyicons.cjb.net
http://www.dragid.com
http://www.graphicsbydezign.com
http://www.aimicons.net/
Urban legends
I can't tell you how many emails I've received from friends and family warning me about people who have had their kidneys removed after a night at a bar. You know who you are. I usually end up replying to their emails with a link from www.urbanledgends.com. The site has a vast collection of urban legends and some information as to why they think the hoax is valid or false. Unfortunately my emails get back to the person after they've already sent the message to all their friends and they do not usually send out a retraction or if they do they don't bother adding me to their list. Anyway before you send some crazed email warning someone about AIDS infected needle pricks try searching for your news flash in the urban legends search page . Oh and by the way the 809 scam is not a hoax.
Animal world
Today I have collected a couple of animal related links. We start with a link to a multimedia presentation on the pigmy shrew . If you like that, check out other pox films . 10acresbackyward.com has setup a site where they inform people about the cows on their farm. Where does an Elephant Seal sleep? Anywhere he damn well wants . Sony's new Aibo has caused several web sites to pop up. Here are just a couple of movies of the new pooch in action. If your interest of animals is culinary in nature you can see visit the lobster cam by iMediaWorks. Or, if you prefer a more Generation X approach to the animal world, try T-Bone's Stress Relieve Aquarium . This story isn't animal related in my opinion by the airline industry may beg to differ . They may be in cahoots with ManBeef.com .