Links

Various Bag o' Links

Bag o' LINKS! PKD at PG, Author v Author written slaps, HPLHS's Whisperer trailer, and old DW novels for free (21 Apr 2010). Small collection of links that I wanted to share. One's a trailer (for The Whisperer in Darkness), one's a collection of author versus author quotes, ones to Project Gutenberg's collection of PKD shorts, and the last is some of the old Doctor Who novels at the BBC's DW website.

Bag o' Links: The Long Lost Edition. In which I close a crap ton of tabs, links, notes, and et cetera... (12 Sep 2011). I have a long backlog of links and notes that have been percolating around for a bit. I decide to close them all at once.

Bag o' Links, The Long Lost Edition, Part II and Conclusion. Post 'em or Delete 'em? Here goes.. (21 Sep 2011). A second round of getting rid of links that I've held on for a bit and, as a bonus, this will be the final round. Once I clear this lot I'll delete those I couldn't stand or had no urge to post.

Friend's Pages

Though (currently) just starting, you can visit my good friend Becca at her Google Site.

Strages.net is the homepage of my good friend Raymond, one of my oldest and dearest friends from the Huntsville region. It has a ton of information and, better yet, a good sized photo gallery.

Websites I Probably Couldn't Live Without

I am not a true media junky, but the site that I have tagged the most is going to have to be IMDB.com (Internet Movie Database). If you don't know what it is, you probably want to look into it. It collects a lot of information about movies and is one of the biggest user submitted content pages. But, if you do go, avoid the message boards for the love your sanity. While not the worst user comments ever (that would have to go to Youtube.com (the video posting site)) they still range from painful as brain surgery to painful as spinal surgery.

Quickly overtaking IMDB.com as my most visited site is the old Wikipedia.com. If you don't know this one, it is a site where users edit encyclopedia like articles on a lot of subjects. A lot. It gets flack for being free-to-edit but really it stands as top notch where it counts. Also, this is the Internet. Everything is user submitted (some users just pay more and run websites, like me).

Another of the daily rotation is the four geeks and a blog website of BoingBoing.net which has all sorts of geek news, ideas, art, musings and so forth. One of the best sites to keep track of discussions of electronic privacy and copyright discussions, as well as numerous other topics.

Seeing as how I am one of those smart-ass generation-x news junkies that often mocks the concept of news (though not one that would make a claim that all my news comes from a faux news show like The Daily Show), I love the website Fark.com. Not only is it the home of some the best user comments on the face of the earth, but it chronicles just about every news story that should not exist due to bad writing, bad choice of subject, or just how depressing it is. Sure, there are some good articles in there, too, but they are kind of just to keep it real.

I am a long time Mad magazine fan, but I used to read Cracked, too. Recently, I found out that Cracked had disolved into a website: Cracked.com. The website has semi-regular articles usually taking the form of "The X Most [Adjective] Y". In other words: "The 9 Most Disgusting Faces in Hollywood", "The 8 Scariest Car Advertisements", "The 12 Longest Footraces", and so on (note, to the best of my knowledge, none of those are actual articles...yet). It is kind of hit-or-miss, with it not being too uncommon for it to be informative but not funny, or funny and really messed up on the facts.

The last non-news daily visit site for me is Project Gutenberg which aims to keep back-ups of all (and I do mean all) of the important historical text. Quasi-user submitted, it has thousands of texts ranging from fictional classics to nineteenth century cookbooks. It gets about ten new texts uploaded a day (if not more).

Webcomics I Really Like

First off, note that I sometimes review webcomics on my "on Media" page. Most of these will show up there eventually.

Gaming Guardians is my friend Graveyard Greg's best comic. It is a comicbook style sf/fantasy adventure set in the world between games. If you like geek comics, then I also suggest Greg's Dungeons & Denizens.

Of all the comics I read online, the one whose story I am most geeked about (pun intended) would have to be Girl Genius. It combines steam punk, humor, action, romance, breasts, geekery and more. My wife and I both love this comic (and the fact that my wife looks at least a little like the main character is neat to me, as well).

The second most eagerly anticipated story line would go to Order of the Stick (fantasy role-playing as a webcomic). It plays out a lot like my handful of gaming sessions, including the rampant meta-gaming and the slippery plot.

8-Bit Theater (at Nuklear Power) is another of my favorite webcomics of all time and is probably third right now for continuing stories that I am into. It is a sprite-based retelling of the first Final Fantasy game which has picked up quite the cult following.

While not a concentrated storyline, another superb geek comic would be XKCD. It mixes a bit of sarcasm and science in with musings about life.

Other comics that I read involving geek things (games, science, RPGs, etc) would include:

• Penny Arcade. One of the most read comics in webdom, so it really needs no introduction from me.
• CTRL + ALT + DEL. Kind of similar to Penny Arcade, but has a different flavor overall. Some days I prefer it.
• Commissioned. Often has gaming references, though occasionally it focuses more on how great life is.

Another type of comic that I regularly read are the "one-offs". These involve unrelated strips, sometimes single panels, that make a quick punchline. There can be themes and repeated characters, but rarely do they need you to read past comics to get a sense of things. Most of them, at least the ones I visit, are kind of sardonic, so be forewarned. My favorites are Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Edible Dirt and Perry Bible Fellowship.

For lack of a better place, I guess A Softer World, which takes photos and puts surreal but often beautifully wicked bits of text upon them, and Red Meat (which is really hard to describe but to say it uses "clip-artish" things with really funny dialogue, over a cast of several characters) both fit here.

The last general type of comic I read can be considered "Slice of Life" I suppose. They range anywhere from the geeks doing whatever antics of Devil's Panties (which is not Satanic Porn, apparently) to the Alaska Paintballing comic -- The Whiteboard. For cat lovers, you have Two Lumps. For robot (and pain of life) lovers, you have We the Robots. For just about a mix of everything lovers, you have Diesel Sweeties.

Neat/Funny Media

One website that always makes people nervous when I mention it is the Exploding Dog. It has no exploding dogs, no really any exploding anythings. Instead, its an odd little gallery of images inspired by quaint little phrases. It goes back and forth between really good and kind of alright, but give it awhirl.

If you are into interlanguage barriers, then Engrish.com might be for you. Its a collection of humorous "whoopsies" with the language that occurs when Asian people incorrectly use English.

Though nearly everyone has heard of it by now, you may still want to check out Postsecret where anonymous secrets are displayed through postcard art. It might sound weird, but it is actually awfully sublime.

Other Links of Interest

Deadmalls.com: which looks at malls and shopping centers that have shut down across the nation. Kind of strange to think about how much money and business flows through them, and then they just die off over a period of a few years.

If you wanted a visual cue to see how BIG our piles of trash are and get an idea about how many million paper cups we use, I recommend Chris Jordan's Running the Numbers, an American Self Portrait.

Useful Links of Utility

• Foodscores.State.AL.US, for those who want to look up information on Food Ratings in Alabama.