|
>>> April 1, 1999 Desktop contact Why waste your spare computer time moving toasters across a screen when you can pitch in with the search for ET? The folks at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) are bringing the search home with their new distributed computing project, SETI@home (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/). The program acts as a screen saver. While you're online, it automatically contacts the SETI@home server and downloads a little chunk of raw data collected from the Arecibo radio telescope to analyze. Later, when your computer's just hanging around doing nothing, it kicks in and processes the data. The next time you log on, it uploads the results to SETI@home, and grabs a new chunk to work on. Should your computer be involved in the discovery, you can be listed as a co-discoverer. Woo-hoo! Your ticket into the history books. The project is nearing launch in late April. Be the first on your block to sign up. Comes in 3 flavours: Unix, Mac, PC. |
|
>>> March 25, 1999 Please, no screwing in the lavatory Planning a trip on a plane? Maybe you should brush up on emergency procedures first. Airtoons (www.airtoons.com), created by Taber C. Buhl, a student at Syracuse U, breathes a whole lot of new life into those boring old safety instructions. With a keen sense of humour, Taber has changed the captions (and modified some of the images) on those emergency instruction cards. You know, the ones that show how to slide down the ramp, or inflate your vest. Great stuff. It's da shit: Well, I don't know what to say about this one. It's Tom Winkler's Doodie.com (www.doodie.com). Each weekday Tom serves up another shit-related animated cartoon. Short and sweet, especially if defecation humour's your thing. |
|
>>> March 18, 1999 Park Wars At this rate, there should be a new Oscar come next year for best Star Wars parody. Three months in the making, from some of the brilliant minds at Countdown:The Ultimate Fan Site (www.countingdown.com), comes the trailer for Park Wars Episode I: The Little Menace. A remake of the first Star Wars trailer starring the familiar faces of South Park., the short does a great job capturing the South Park look and feel. Some of the crossovers include Chef as Mace Wendu, Cartman as Yoda, Kyle as Obi-Wan, and Satan as Darth Maul. Created by fans of both Star Wars and South Park, the piece stays true to both universes. Unless you absolutely hate South Park, this one's a must see. |
|
>>> 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. |
|
>>> 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). |
|
>>> 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/). |
|
>>> 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. |
|
>>> 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? |
|
>>> 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. |
|
>>> 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. |