Links

First and foremost: Robert Woodhead's

And then, in no particular order:

• It's rather like looking through 15% of the sky for a needle which may not exist. I don't care: SETI@home is to me the most exciting scientific research project in years, all the more so because I can have a part in it--and so can you.
       What is SETI@home? Using an antenna mounted to the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico, SETI@home makes a continuous high-resolution high-sensitivity recording of radio signals as the earth rotates and sweeps the telescope beam across the sky. The amount of data they are gathering is enormous; it would tax many supercomputers for hundreds of years to analyze all of it. So they have broken this gigantic task down into very small chunks and farmed them out to anyone who has a computer they're willing to devote to it--you, for example. You simply go to their site (click on the graphic), download their client and install it on your computer, grab your first chunk of data (about 350K) and set the thing to working. On a Pentium/Celeron computer running at at least 250 mHz and with at least 64MB of memory you can let this thing run continuously in the background without it getting in the way of your machine's normal operations (it is very good about getting out of the way when you need the CPU resources it is using); otherwise, the package includes a screen saver version which won't interfere with a slower machine. If you have a 24/7 net connection the SETI@home client will connect to the 'Net when it finishes processing a packet of data, upload the results of its current analysis, grab another, disconnect from the 'Net and go back to work; otherwise it flashes an icon in your taskbar to let you know that it needs more bytes to chew upon. This way, you can put the vast majority of time your computer's processor is sitting doing nothing (including while you're away or asleep) to good use! When the project first started their servers were heavily overloaded and it was difficult to get in. Things have calmed down now and I had no trouble grabbing the client and installing it. More info is available on the SETI@home site--go for it!
• Save Pacifica! KPFA, Berkeley, California (owned and operated by the Pacifica Foundation) was the first listener-sponsored, public radio station in the country, going on the air in 1949--a time when there were so few FM radios in existence that they had to give FM radios away so people could hear the thing. For many years KPFA (and its sister stations WBAI, New York; KPFK, Los Angeles; WPFT, Houston; and WPFW, Washington, D.C.) were the stations you could hear radio that no one else would present, primarily the viewpoints of those who did not fit the white-bread middle-class American stereotype, whether for political, ethnic, or lifestyle reasons. Pacifica stations were the first to air regular commentary from the full political spectrum, from the far left (Communist) to the far right (KKK). Of late, Pacifica has slid downhill: its programming has been dumbed down, its range of views restricted, and the current Pacifica Board of Directors has taken some steps that many of us find objectionable and even frightening, including exploring selling KPFA's valuable frequency (at 94.1 mHz, in the commercial part of the FM band). There is a major fight going on, and this web site is the nerve center for those of us who want to keep Pacifica alive according to the vision of its original founder, Lew Hill. Check it out, and contribute money if you can!
• Southern California Earthquake Center. In here you'll find (among other things) an almost-real-time display map of Recent Earthquakes in California (it takes the puters a couple of minutes to digest things and get them up on this page) and also the Realtime Seismocam on the WWW, displaying six and a half minutes of real-time (well, delayed 30 sec.) seismograph information from five southern California stations. This is a kick to look at right after a major 'quake ... or, if you have a 24/7 connection, to keep running all the time--it gives a "bleep" when a quake is detected. It's a Java applet, best on Internet Explorer; it does not record stuff, so if you want to see something happen you have to be watching. (They do post recordings of past major events in another part of the site.)
• Rusty is a Homosexual
• The Cam-Cam.
• The Half-Dome Cam. Continuously-updated view of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, California. There are also time-lapse movies of storms, etc.
• The Internet Movie Database. So what if it's now owned by amazon.com? That just gives the staff additional resources to keep the page up-to-date. This is the most comprehensive compendium of information on The Movies you're likely to find anywhere, and I find the links for buying tapes, LaserDiscs and DVDs to be a great help.
• The Compendium of HTML Elements is by far the most comprehensive reference source of what all that Stuff you see when you view a web page's source means. Not only does it list the various elements, it also gives a comparison chart showing whether a given element works on various browsers and notes exceptions to the specified behavior. An invaluable source for web page programmers.
• Acme Klein Bottles. A Klein Bottle is the three-dimensional equivalent of a Mobius Strip ... and now you can have one of your very own!
• Eat Your Fruits and Veggies!
• Not enough technobabble in your life? Then consult The Wired Phrase Generator! Remember: Up-to-the-nanosecond content providers are spinning the silicon dynamic of the hyper world.