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>>> March 11, 1999 Have a nice day. Honest. From the minds at Pleasant Productions comes Pre-Apocalyptika Gone Bad (http://gonebad.net/), a small net-zine featuring some games, a segment titled Raving Lunacy and the Year 2000 (coming soon), and the requisite About Us section, which is worth the read. With both a good sense of humour and style, Gone Bad's a good way to kill some time, and you'll find some flash games in the games section. My personal fave is Pepper the Protesters, where you pepper spray the "godless dissidents" to protect our leaders at the APEC conference. Of course, both the Hamster Golf and Baby BBQ games have their charm as well. While we're discussing great-looking sites, check out www.mediaboy.net. Produced by Taz, a programmer at Gone Bad, mediaboy has tons of slickness, sprinkled about judiciously. Stop by sometime. |
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>>> March 4, 1999 Entropy sucks Y2K, shmy-2-K. You think the millennium bug's a problem? It'll seem minor compared to the Y5B bug. In 5 billion years, the sun will combust no more. Thankfully, a site has sprung up to warn us before it's too late. At the Year 5 Billion Problem (www.y5b.com) Web site, you'll learn all about this flaw in the sun's design. Read up on some Y5B vocabulary, how to prepare your Year 5,000,000,000 finances or the Y5B what's hot (cold fusion), what's not (solar eclipse) list. Check out which of your electronics are Y5B compatible, and find out what the UN is doing to prepare. Enter the digital dragon: I recently came across this short computer-generated animation. It's a really stylized clip of Bruce Lee, muscles a-rippling with a nice attention to detail--très slick. Created by one Shannon Ma, it's well worth the download (7 megs) (http://www.ee.cityu.edu.hk/~96471536/ex_videos.htm). |
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>>> February 25, 1999 Black bytes The locally produced Black History Pages (http://www.cam.org/~emru/bhp/) began in 1996 with the goal of serving up a daily piece of black history to the masses. Due to other commitments, the site then stagnated for a while. This February the site has returned to active duty, dishing out daily black history for all of February. All the back days are archived, so you can catch up on what you've missed. Well organized and easy to navigate as well Force fed: As the frenzy builds towards the May 21 release of Star Wars Episode I, a number of great Star Wars spoofs/parodies have been hitting the Web, including Trooper Clerks. It's a shot for shot copy of the Clerks trailer, with Stormtroopers working in a dep on the Deathstar. The site also provides instructions on how to make your own Stormtrooper costume (http://www.studiocreations.com/trooperclerks/). |
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>>> February 18, 1999 The Game of (Brad's) Life Ever wonder what it's like to live a white-trash existence? Well, here's your chance to find out with Brad: The Game (www.bradthegame.com). It's basically like a Choose Your Own Adventure™ book, with Brad's lifestyle choices ranging from the silly to the absurd. Put together by the Reverend Brendan Powell Smith, you'll even find all the background on Brad's sordid life, as well as pics and short bios of all the players. Eyecandy fun: After you get bored with choosing your trailer park life that could have been, stop by iCONiKlaSTique Design KliniK LLC (www.IDK-A-OK.com). Click around a bit, but make sure to visit their Liquidsmoke Test Facility. All I can say is, very cool, both just to stare at and play with. Go check out Ribeye Jones on the Animation Plantation, and use the Power Poo Interface. Flash is de rigueur for this site. |
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>>> February 11, 1999 Who loves the sun? The Hallmark holiday is upon us, and PDAs will burn our eyes from our cynical, bitter skulls come Sunday. For like-minded romantically jaded geeks, it's all the more reason to stay in and surf. A good starting point is Heartless Bitches International, chock full o' vitriolic goodness. Join the bitches as they bash sappy people and sappy sites. The site also has "Mail from Males," the most entertaining being letters from angry males, who--surprise surprise--can't take a joke. You can also try to join the HBI. Just fill out the application. Warning: you better have good reasons for wanting to be a Heartless Bitch International, or you risk having your application posted and ridiculed by one and all. Keep yer pants on: Aliens are abducting our pants: www.sock-monkey.com/pants.html. Need I say more? |
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>>> February 4, 1999 Titanic in my Star Wars Like peanut butter and chocolate, it only seems obvious after the fact: Titanic and Star Wars, a combination that can't be beat. This delectable mixture comes in the form of Sim Wars, a mixture of two seemingly incongruous computer-generated animation sequences. Rather than let the HMS Titanic computer model gather digi-dust, some of the minds at Digital Domain took the good ship out for a spin around Tatooine. What results is a very slick, fun to watch Star Wars spoof, with the Titanic playing Star Destroyer and a lifeboat replacing the X-Wing Fighter. It's 15 megs and you can find it here: http://www.dailysci-fi.com/media/SimWars2.MPG. |
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>>> January 28, 1999 The truth is in here Joe Firmage has become something of a hero of late. You may have heard of him in the news: he recently left US Web/CKS, the $2 billion company he helped found, due to controversy over some of his views--in particular, his belief in UFOs. However, the best part is, no one can accuse him of doing this for any economic motive--he's already rich, and he's certainly not helping his reputation. He has a great Web site called The Truth, which includes a series of documents known as the Majestic 12 (MJ-12) documents. To find them, once in the site click on "They Are Watching Us Now." There are scans of the original documents and some analysis. If it's real, it's pretty heavy, and if it's a hoax, it's a damn fine one--which raises its own questions. On his site you'll find a condensed version of his upcoming book, The Truth. |
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>>> January 21, 1999 Cones through the ages An oft-overlooked area of scientific study is the traffic cone. Which is shameful, really, as traffic cones--those orange pylons that mark construction sites, obstacle courses and the like--have been one of the greatest helpers of humanity throughout the industrial age. Thankfully, this situation has been rectified with the Traffic Cone Preservation Society. The sites contains a traffic cone field guide, which you can use to identify cones in the wild. The guide tells you how to recognize the deadly Conus Estheris from its more benign cousin Conus Leprecus. Examine the evolution of the traffic cone via the pictorial history of cones through the ages. And, lest we forget, the contributions cones have made to pop culture are also chronicled. On your way out, check out other cone-related links and be the first of your friends to join the Traffic Cone Preservation Society. |
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>>> January 14, 1999 Kodak moments At the last drop on Splash Mountain, the famed log-in-water ride at Disney World, an automatic camera snaps a picture which you can later pick up. Wouldn't you know it--some people actually flash the camera. While the over-exposed photos normally get destroyed, some intrepid employees smuggle them out of the Disney bunker. And 15 of them ended up on Flash Mountain. There's also a link to a site running a contest to find the splash flashers in real life. And then there's Jurassic Girl, who's become a bit of a celeb for her quality flash of the automatic camera on the Jurassic Park ride. Get a check up from Doctor Girl and maybe grab some Fast-Food Girl on the way out. Not for the kiddies. Bork, bork, bork: Get the skinny on swearing like a Swede at Anne & Johan's Cursing in Swedish website. |
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>>> December 17, 1998 Disinform yourself Disinformation (www.disinfo.com) is a handy site for all your subcultural searching and yearning. Aiming to be the search engine of subculture, Disinformation is a well-designed and highly organized site. Disinformation is divided into six areas: propaganda, revolutionaries, censorship, counterculture, counterintelligence and newspeak. On the site you'll find tons of useful information and some good reading--which is welcome, given political counterculture's tendency towards overwrought manifestos and calls to arms. Of particular interest to pranksters and media jammers is the section on barcodes. Learn how to make and break barcodes. Slap a $2 barcode onto a $10 item--fun for the whole family! There are plenty of valuable links here, so it's worth trawling, even if you're not of the mind for reading. |