Sunday Link Roundup

More of the links that shape my little world.

• As everyone knows, I was meant to be an engineer. Fewer people know that I've wanted to build robots since I saw Star Wars back in 1977 -- big surprise. And now, as my birthday (too) rapidly approaches, Radio Shack chooses to distribute this awesome robotics system. The fools -- ultimate world-conquering power will soon be within my grasp! (link)
  
  
• Remember Bob McDonald from CBC's Wonderstruck? He was always outstanding as a science guy -- better than that Bill Nye poser, and more Canadian. Bob's been hosting Quirks and Quarks on CBC Radio for almost 15 years, and now CBC has archived episodes of Quirks and Quarks as MP3s; so you can search through the shows for your favourite science questions! (link)
  
  
• Take this quiz to see how grammatically correct you are. I'm a Grammar God! (link)
  
  
• There are a ton of legal issues associated with blogging these days, mostly because the legal status of electronic communication is largely undefined. To help people be able to blog without fear of repercussions, the EFF has issued some instructions on how to blog anonymously. (link)
  
  
• Progressive Boink has issued a list of the 25 best Sesame Street moments. It's a fairly good list overall, with only a couple of things I disagree with. I do think they omitted one of the seminal Sesame Street moments, however -- where's Buffy St. Marie breastfeeding? (link)
  
  
• With Google Sightseeing you can take a trip without leaving the comfort of your computer chair. I believe it's limited to North America only, right now. I even found my house! (link)
  
  
• Kingdom of Loathing is this great online game that a friend hooked me up with. It's hilarious and has terrible graphics, two things that I look for in an online game. I'm Three Thumb Jake, if you decide you want to say hello. (link)
  
  
• Freecycle is a community built on the idea that one person's trash is another person's treasure. Unlike eBay, the items listed here are for free or for trade only -- no cash sales allowed. Regina's Freecycle community has over 500 registered members! (link)
  
  
• This video of basketball shots literally had my jaw pasted to the floor. (link)
  
  
• storTroopers are doll-like avatars you can dress up with different hairstyles, clothing, and accessories. I normally don't traffic in these sorts of sites, but they do have a large fan following, and Tamara and I spent at least an hour building people, fighting at some points as to whose turn it was. It was more fun that I'd like to admit. (link)
  
  
• Hitachi has combined a lesson in hard drive storage with the look and feel of Schoolhouse Rock to bring you Get Perpendicular. It's not only interesting and fun to watch, but it's pretty catchy, too! (link)
  
  
• Yes, you can now get Cliff's Notes online. I kinda scanned through it, just in case it was on the exam, but I didn't have time to read the whole thing. (link)
  
  
• Skype is free internet telephony. This means that the Skype software will allow you to send and receive voice calls over the internet to anyone also using Skype. Unfortunately, with our free evenings and weekends long distance calling plan, it's not really all that effective in my house, but I suppose we could use it for daytime calls -- if we had anyone to phone. (link)

Sunday Link Roundup

It's beginning to look like weekly link posts is all I can do these days -- which is a shame, because I have so much to blog about: leaving the coffee shop, starting my new job, training for the Regina City Police Half-Marathon, and this post about the "slash-fiction writing retards" I commented on last week. I stand by my comments regarding slash fiction, even after reading this Wikipedia article, but I obviously need to explain myself.

Anyway, without further delays, here are the posts I'm talking about this week.

• Now you too can use apostrophes like a pro! (link)
  
  
• Schmutzie uses Diaryland; I use Blogger. Schmutzie uses Kinja; I use Bloglines. To-MAY-to, po-TAY-to. I'm not quite sure how I feel about Bloglines right now, especially as these RSS feeds can be added to My Yahoo!, but I'm giving it a go to see how it fits my lifestyle. One good thing I learned is that Bloglines polls an updated source once and distributes the content to all subscribers, reducing server load. I don't know how many other aggregating services do that. (link)
  
  
• Google has doubled its GMail storage, now offering 2Gb. If you don't already have a GMail account, you can use the GMail Spooler to get one -- over 700,000 invitations available! (link)
  
  
• With eMessenger, you can now use MSN, AOL, and Yahoo! Messengers on the web -- with no Java applets and nothing to download. Yeah, I know MSN offers this already, but Yahoo! doesn't, so what the hell. (link)
  
  
• Clocky is, without doubt, the coolest alarm clock in the world. It's just a prototype right now, but I will seriously consider buying one when they come to market -- and not just because I've cast aside my 20-plus year-old alarm cube in favour of a tiny but bowel-strummingly annoying travel alarm. I'm also concerned about how many of my weekly links deal with timepieces, especially after my steadfast denial that having an accurate timepiece is of any importance to me. (link)
  
  
• Jian Ghomeshi has been working on CBC Radio with panelists and the general public on building a list of the top 50 essential Canadian songs. Now, I didn't have the opportunity to listen to the programs, due to me working at the hateful coffee shop, but I understand the discussions were very interesting. So while this list lacks the punch of why these particular songs were chosen, you are at least free to agree or disagree with their choices. (link)
  
  
• Two things come to light with the death of Pope John Paul II: the first is a look at the process of the papal transition, of which both America Magazine and Wikipedia give a thorough overview. The second is the excoriating of the deceased by Chris Hitchens over at Slate. This is nothing new for Hitchens -- he also skewered Bob Hope in the wake of his death; shame he hasn't the balls to put the same columns forward while his targets are alive. This time I'm not nearly as pissed as I usually am because he does make some important points -- but I do disagree with his last statement about America being a secular society. America has been a lot of things, but I sincerely doubt is has ever been secular. (link)
  
  
• There's also some biblical prophesy that comes forward with the death of an important religious figure, but you can't take any it seriously because it all looks like this. (link)
  
  
• This is a great story in Wired about a bunch of guys from MIT and how they made a bajillion dollars playing blackjack in Vegas. It's an older story, but it's popped up in my conversations a couple of times in the last few days, so maybe it's time to bring some attention to it. (link)