Handwritten Recipes found tucked here and there.

[via a tweet from Forgotten Bookmarks]

Labels: blog, recipes, twitter, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:32 PM|| |

AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com -- as the name says.

Labels: photographs, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:07 PM|| |

Dickensurl.com

Convert your URL to a Dickensian quote.

Mine?

Under an accumulation of staggerers, no man can be considered a free agent. No man knocks himself down; if his destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick him up again.

From The Old Curiosity Shop

Above quote has been attributed to
http://www.towse.com/blogger/blog.htm

[via Bella Stander's twitterfeed]

Labels: app, URL, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:41 AM|| |

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and 32 partner institutions today launched the World Digital Library, a website that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world. The site -- located at www.wdl.org -- includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs. It provides unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.

from the site: The WDL focuses on significant primary materials, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other types of primary sources.

See also UNESCO's Memory of the World project.


[via LOC's Twitterfeed]

Labels: history, libraries, maps, photographs, resource, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:29 AM|| |

The Phrontistery: Obscure Words and Vocabulary Resources

I did one of those "Twenty Five Things" sorts of things over on Facebook. On that list were four items pertaining to Webbie things:

16. I collect quotations and factoids and bits of sparkly info and stash them away and then can't find them when I want them.

17. I do the same with Web bookmarks and then discover that a site I just discovered is one whose bookmark I'd stashed away nineteen months ago. Too many pretties?

18. I no longer cut recipes out from newspapers and magazines (much...) because things of that sort are all on the Web, or a decent substitute is.

19. I worry (seriously) that one day the Web won't be there and I'll be lost and archive-less because I've given all my stuff away and grown dependent on the Web as resource. And then where would I be?

What does that have to do with Phrontistery?

I came across Phrontistery today (AFTER I put together the Facebook note) and thought, oh, cool. Wordstuff stuff. I loves Wordstuff stuffs.

I clicked my Delicious click to bookmark the site ... and found that I saved it 06 Jun 2007 ... which is just under twenty months ago.

Oh.

If you like Wordstuff, though. Go there.

Since 1996, I have compiled word lists in order to spread the joy of the English language. Here, you will find the International House of Logorrhea (an online dictionary of obscure and rare words), the Compendium of Lost Words (a compilation of ultra-rare forgotten words), and many other glossaries, word lists, essays, and other language and etymology resources.

Labels: life, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:55 PM|| |

Someone dropped me a line today, asking to buy internet-resources.com and its content for something more than $1K and less than $2K.

Coinkadinkly, just now on Facebook I found an ad telling me they could tell me what my blog or Website was worth. Well, why not?

Internet-resources.com Estimated Net Worth $10,614.20 USD

Woo hoo.

How WebValuer got its numbers is anyone's guess. SiteMeter puts my pageviews and visitors a stretch higher than WebValuer has them. There's no ad revenue, even though WV estimates $3.84 - 9.60.* No ads, so no ad revenue.

Domains linking (est) 13,685.

Really?

Entertaining for five minutes or so. I need to get back to the guy who was offering cash for the content. (Serious? A scam? A hoax? ... No, thanks.)


* His nibs said, "$3-$9/day? That could add up over the long run. ..."

Labels: life, URL, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:34 PM|| |

Down for everyone or just me?

Enter a site. downforeveryoneorjustme.com checks to see if it thinks the site is up.

[via tweet from Jessamyn West]

Labels: app, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:09 AM|| |

I checked all my links on the internet-resources' WordStuff page yesterday, using the handy dandy Free Link Checker as a first pass and then following with a check of all the other links as a cleanup sweep.

One of the links the free link checker found was a definite 404. (Robin Queen's collection of linguistics links ... The page was 404 and after I found her UMich faculty Web site, seems her collection of links is no more, or not what I remembered.)

I went looking for the substitute link or another link just like it.

And found this.

ovablastic.blogspot.com has cut and pasted and reformatted my wordstuff links page onto its blog -- a blog, I might mentioned, that is surrounded by ad stuff.

No mention that the links and commentary aren't its.

No mention that link collection is mine as is the commentary.

No mention of my collection of links and how to get there.

Now ovablastic itself found that little nest of links through Stumbleupon, which does point people to my site.

Why did it cut and paste the HTML and pop it on its blog with no hattip or pointer to my site?

Because it's clueless and a thief. Yeah. That could be it.

n.b. for allz of you who may say, "But links are links and not copyrightable!" The collection of links with the associated commentary is copyrighted. 'tis just not worth it to go lay sue papers in ovablastic's mailbox. I'd rather mention here that someone with ads on its site stole my content and is a thief.

(Hi, ovablastic! Hope you Google your nym every once in a while! If you'd had an e-mail easily available on your blog, I would've dropped you a note. This is the next best bet.)

Labels: blog, peeves, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:57 PM|| |

Spinning, a blog.

The thing ^H^H^H One of the things I find fascinating about the Web is all the things I find fascinating and stash away in a links folder or delicious or a Web page or a post and then forget all about and never return to.

Too many fascinating things.

With delicious, though, if I click to save a link to a page I've found interesting and I've already saved a link to that page, delicious lets me know.

I came across Susan Marie Rose Maciog Gibb's blog from somewhere else earlier today and found the first post or two interesting enough that I clicked on her "about" page. I found her self-description and the items that were used to categorize her self and her life interesting. So I saved a link in delicious.

I then went back to the blog and read back a ways and said, that's interesting. I'll keep a link.

When I clicked to save a link in delicious, delicious told me I'd already saved a link: 05-Jun-2007.

I must've liked it then.

I've never been back since. (That I remember.)

How did I find it eighteen months ago?

Ah, the Web.

Labels: blog, life, URL, web2.0

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:30 PM|| |

Yes, there actually is a Web site called CUTE THINGS FALLING ASLEEP.

Found via CuteOverload.

Specifically ... this post.

And why was I over at CuteOverload? Well because Jessamyn was tweeting that her Mom had never seen CuteOverload, and I said outloud (in a two-person office) that not everyone's Mom has seen CuteOverload. And his nibs was all, "What's CuteOverload?" and things went from there to there to there.

So there.

Labels: blog, fun, URL, web2.0

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:06 PM|| |

The Clinton Foundation has released its donor list on its Web site.

And /ahem/ the site seems overwhelmed by the interest. (I got a timeout each time I tried. Couldn't get through.)

NYTimes article to get you through the wait. And one from Huffington Post.

Labels: history, politics, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:11 AM|| |

Airbrushing History -- American Style by Scott Althaus and Kalev Leetaru. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

AIRBRUSHING HISTORY, AMERICAN STYLE

Legacies are in the air as President Bush prepares to leave the White House. How future historians will judge the president remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: future historians won't have all the facts needed to make that judgment. One legacy at risk of being forgotten is the way the Bush White House has quietly deleted or modified key documents in the public record that are maintained under its direct control.

Remember the "Coalition of the Willing" that sided with the United States during the 2003 invasion of Iraq? If you search the White House web site today you'll find a press release dated March 27, 2003 listing 49 countries forming the coalition. A key piece of evidence in the historical record, but also a troubling one. It is an impostor.

And although there were only 45 coalition members on the eve of the Iraq invasion, later deletions and revisions to key documents make it seem that there were always 49.

The Bush White House seems to have systematically airbrushed parts of the official record regarding its own history. How extensively White House documents have been rewritten is anyone's guess, but in the case of the coalition list, the evidence is clear that extensive revision of the historical record has occurred.

[...]

I remember reading about this a few weeks ago (end of November) and I thought, hm. interesting, but, this isn't the first time this has happened.

There was a fairly well-documented instance back when Enron was crashing, where the bio for the Honorable Thomas E. White, Secretary of
the Army, was revised to elide a couple paragraphs about all the wonderful things he had done at Enron to "From 1990 to 2001, Mr. White was employed by Enron Corporation and held various senior executive positions."

Seems folks would learn that you can't change history in these days of archives without someone poking around and finding out, but ... no.

As always, these little glimmers of change are brought to you thanks to Brewster Kahle, whose Internet Archive not only stashes away the original of versions later changed, but also offers up such gems as

The Grateful Dead Live at Winterland 17 Jun 1975

Warren Zevon Live at The Main Point 20 Jun 1976

Betty Boop Betty Boop for President -- 1932

India Travel film, India (c1930)

San Francisco San Francisco (1939) from the Prelinger Archives

Labels: history, URL, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:44 AM|| |

Learned about Wordle via cygnoir. Played with it with my Delicious bookmarks as the resource.

Saved the Java applet results with CutePDF Writer, then pulled the PDF into Photoshop, messed with it and saved it as a .jpg.

Voilà!




So, a bit early, but heartfelt, nonetheless:

Labels: app, graphics, life, URL, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:40 PM|| |

OEDILF - The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form

An aphorist states what is known
In a pithier, folksier tone.
He is given to joke
That the mightiest oak
From a balanoid object is grown.

(BAL-uh-noid) Acorn-shaped.



Sorts by topic, author, word, &c.

We are presently accepting submissions based ONLY on words beginning with Aa- through Dd- inclusive.

Labels: URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:55 AM|| |

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

[via Scott Beale @ laughing squid]

Labels: history, photographs, URL, web2.0

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:28 PM|| |

MapTube

"MapTube is a free resource for viewing, sharing, mixing and mashing maps online. Created by UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, users can select any number of maps to overlay and view."

Love maps. This site's brill.

Map of the Week this week is Big Mac Index, which graphs (in 2007 prices) the price of a Big Mac in various countries across the globe.

UK tilt because of the UCL connection.

Site reference came via links sent on to me from Dan Goodman's delicious bookmarks. Thanks, Dan, for all of 'em.

Labels: maps, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:14 PM|| |

British Battles - analysing and documenting British Battles from the previous centuries

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Interesting site: from Hastings through the Boer Wars.

Labels: history, resource, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:59 PM|| |

Make your life good. Invest in what's real. Cook a meal for someone you love. Pause before reacting. Clean out your space. Read something beautiful. Treat yourself to something. Go to a city you've never been to. Learn something new. Don't be lazy. Workout and stick with it. GOOP. Make it great."

-- Gwyneth Paltrow. Intro to her new lifestyle Web site: GOOP. Not much there yet, but I loved this intro.

Labels: lifehacks, people, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:42 AM|| |

Old Bailey Online - The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 - Central Criminal Court

[courtesy of Auntie K. Thanks, K!]

First thing I did, of course, was pop /towse/ into the search to see what the Towses were up to from 1674-1913.

Labels: history, resource, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:56 AM|| |

http://www.internet-resources.com/writers/

Hit counter stands at 999439. When it rolls over to zeroes, I plan to swop it for a different counter.

Mercy me. A million hits. Who woulda thunk back when that this day would come to pass?

Labels: stats, URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:54 PM|| |

The Memlng Index - A Long, Obscene and Fascinating List Of Links

Some gems. Some not so. Interesting collection.

Labels: URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:27 PM|| |

Human Proteinpedia -- the wonders of the Web.

A researcher at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Genetic Medicine has led the effort to compile to date the largest free resource of experimental information about human proteins. Reporting in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology, the research team describes how all researchers around the world can access this data and speed their own research.

Zounds, eh?

No anonymous postings. Only experimental results. (i.e. no predictions) You must be registered and logged-in to add data, but anyone can query.

Human Proteinpedia is a community portal for sharing and integration of human protein data. It allows research laboratories to contribute and maintain protein annotations. Human Protein Reference Database (HPRD) integrates data, that is deposited in Human Proteinpedia along with the existing literature curated information in the context of an individual protein. All the public data contributed to Human Proteinpedia can be queried, viewed and downloaded.

Data pertaining to post-translational modifications, protein-protein interactions, tissue expression, expression in cell lines, subcellular localization and enzyme substrate relationships can be submitted to Human Proteinpedia.

Protein annotations present in Human Proteinpedia are derived from a number of platforms such as

• Co-immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry-based protein-protein interaction
  
• Co-immunoprecipitation and Western blotting based protein-protein interaction
  
• Fluorescence based experiments
  
• Immunohistochemistry
  
• Mass Spectrometric Analysis
  
• Protein and peptide microarray
  
• Western blotting
  
• Yeast two-hybrid based protein-protein interaction

And if you understood all that, this site's for you.

So far 71 labs have contributed information on 2,695 experiments covering 15,231 protein entries.

Zounds.

THIS IS WHAT THE WEB IS FOR.

The Web wasn't created just to distribute pron and LOLcats (although it's very good at that too).

Labels: resource, science, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:42 PM|| |

Every Christmas as the younger guys were growing up, we listened to Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge on an old family record (later xfered to cassette tape the year I gave a tape copy to each of my living siblings).

The older younger guy's partner had heard about this tradition but the two of them were never over for Christmas Eve and he only knew of the practice from being subjected to "a blot of mustard, a bit of undigested beef" sorts of "God bless us. Every one!" riffs.

Christmas Eve 2006 they stayed with us (so we could all head off the next day to my younger brother's home for Christmas festivities) but that year we couldn't track down a sound system to play the tape and didn't have a record player in the house to play the record.

Finally, this last just past Christmas, the older younger one's partner finally was over for Christmas Eve and got to sit down and listen en famille to the Barrymore do his Scrooge.

And a wonderful Scrooge he is.

Just got a note that the older younger guy's partner had found a Barrymore Christmas Carol at the Internet Archive.

And there it is! The Christmas Carol I've listened to every Christmas Eve since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.

Barrymore's A Christmas Carol -- mp3

The Web is a wonder. ...

(God bless us. Every one!)

Labels: culture, life, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:15 PM|| |

Welcome to FoodieBytes - eat something new

Choose your city (Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, DC) and fill in "what" you are looking to eat.

Choose "San Francisco"
Enter: foie gras

Read entries for 142 (mas o menos) restaurants that serve foie gras in San Francisco (mostly, found one listed in Larkspur). Some restaurants are listed multiple times for multiple items on the menu. Brief (lunch, appetizer, &c.) indication of where on the menu, brief detail ("with stone fruit mostarda and cornbread") and a click to View Menu.

Don't know how current the menus are as the listings included an entry for Monte Cristo which died a while back.

[via Eater SF]

Labels: food, San Francisco, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:12 PM|| |

Word out in today's SFChronicle that Sara Zarr -- whom I met many many moons ago at a WTQ gathering of misc.writers, back when she lived in this fair city, before she moved to Utah -- is a finalist for the National Book Award for The Story of a Girl in the Young People's Literature division.

Yippee! Yahoo! for Sara!!!!!

Sara's Web presence: The Stories of a Girl

Sara is published. Sara is a finalist for a National Book Award.

Sara no longer engages with folks on misc.writing.

Hmmm. Is there a connection?

(A slight one, perhaps. Her success is primarily due to ... Sara is talented, and determined, and focussed and ...)

Yay, hooray for Sara!

Labels: blog, books, URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:04 AM|| |

A request from DebbieRO, my former Inkspot.com boss lady, on her Inkygirl blog.

If you have a link to Inkspot.com, PLEASE DELETE IT.
Pass the word.

A plea to anyone linking to Inkspot.com

Labels: URL, webstuff, wordstuff, writing, writing-market

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:42 PM|| |

Typographic Collaboration | Typophile

Typographica a journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design.

typography a photoset on flickr

viaLetter Spell it out

Jules Vernacular Lettres oeuvrières & incongruités typographiques. French signage and lettering from Jack Usine.

Triborough's photos of NYC Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual = a flickr photoset

Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans at Emigre

Typetester - compare screen type

FontFeed a font blog

Labels: blog, design, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:32 PM|| |

[via the brilliant collection of advertisements at I believe in advertising]

Labels: blog, culture, media, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:30 PM|| |

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.

Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.

* It's a dictionary! It's a thesaurus!
* Great for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists.
* The online dictionary is available wherever there’s an internet connection.
* No membership required.

Visuwords™ uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. Combined with a visualization tool and user interface built from a combination of modern web technologies, Visuwords™ is available as a free resource to all patrons of the web.

I popped in "errata" and ... nada. "brigadoon" ... nada.

I popped in "graffiti" and made two connections.

... then I popped in "giant"

How fun is this?

"literature"

And "encomium" begets "panegyrist" and "prosody" begets "hypercatalectic."

Fun!

Labels: URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:51 PM|| |

Added my del.icio.us cloud tag over in the righthand sidebar 'cause I think it's purty.

(Yes, I know that tag clouds have been called the new mullet, but I like having it there. Of course my blog-based cloud tag means that even your grandma has one and it might be time to take yours off your site.)

Most of the bookmarks I imported from Firefox to del.icio.us are still in the "needs to be looked at before they're added" stage but I decided 500+ were enough to make a decent tag cloud.

total links @ del.icio.us: 3509 links (and counting).
"still need to be looked at": 2970+

Some of those links go back to April 1995, back when Yahoo! was just a wonderful collection of links on akebono.stanford.edu, back when I was thrilled to watch the cam pointed at the Trojan Room coffee pot at Cambridge.

Eventually almost all the links will be available on del.icio.us, but it'll take some time. I'm checking each link to see if it still works and still goes somewhere I care about, adding tags, &c. and so on.

What an exciting life I lead.

Labels: app, URL, web2.0

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:17 PM|| |

StumbleUpon - SalT's StumbleUpon Web site reviews

Since I started with StumbleUpon umpty ump (March 17, 2004) years ago, I've rated 1777 sites and, must admit, sometimes spend months without checking in. These days I not only put links on my blog but also put links on Tumblr and links on del.icio.us and, sometimes, on StumbleUpon.

I'm not dutiful about my StumbleUpon duties.

Obviously. ...

Just came across starspirit, who has rated 124,289 sites.

Zounds. Even gmc has only rated 17962 but then he's been busy building SU into something eBay wanted to buy.

Labels: app, life, URL, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:47 AM|| |

Available online at the CIA FOIA site

Two significant collections of previously classified historical documents are now available in the CIA's FOIA Electronic Reading Room.

The first collection, widely known as the "Family Jewels," consists of almost 700 pages of responses from CIA employees to a 1973 directive from Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger asking them to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency's charter.

The second collection, the CAESAR-POLO-ESAU papers, consists of 147 documents and 11,000 pages of in-depth analysis and research from 1953 to 1973. The CAESAR and POLO papers studied Soviet and Chinese leadership hierarchies, respectively, and the ESAU papers were developed by analysts to inform CIA assessments on Sino-Soviet relations.

According to ABC News The recruitment of mafia men to plan the assassination of Fidel Castro, the wiretapping and surveillance of journalists who reported on classified material, and the two-year confinement in the United States of a KGB defector -- those are just a few of the past CIA activities revealed in documents released Tuesday. [...]

Update:A more in-depth look at some of the "activities inconsistent with the Agency's charter" from The Seattle PI.

Labels: history, politics, resource, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:48 PM|| |

Love data and mashups and obscure weird factoids and coincidences?

Check out Swivel.

For a taste of what's on-site, check out Tasty Data Goodies

Labels: information, resource, URL, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:17 AM|| |

Badgers! Foxes! Rabbits!

New tumbleblog for stashing interrrrresting stuff. Between del.icio.us (still processing thousands of bookmarked URLs) and tumblr and stumbleupon and twitter ... I'm getting all Web2.0'd out.

Labels: app, life, URL, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:13 PM|| |

morguefile.com Where photo reference lives.

A place to keep post production materials for use of reference, an inactive job file. This morgue file contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use.

The term 'morgue file' is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues flats. Although the term has been used by illustrators, comic book artist, designers and teachers as well. The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits. This is the world wide web's morguefile.

Amazing resource. (Oooh. Shiny! Pretty pictures!) Thanks, SourGrapes.

Labels: photographs, resource, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:12 AM|| |

Found a link at the Sentinel to a video of Gavin presenting the 2007-2008 budget. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the photograph of Gavin to commence viewing.

The video (and the presentation) clocks in at just under an hour. Luckily, with a video you can click on the pause button if you just can't spend an hour watching him go over his proposed $6b budget.

If Gavin hasn't had a speech coach, he doesn't need one. If he has had one, that person should crow. I love watching Gavin in action. Smooth, so very smooth. Even those who don't like his message usually admit he speaks well. Watch the hands. Watch the movement back and forth with the microphone. Watch the facial expressions and listen to that roughened voice with just a bit of folksy drawl. Self deprecation. Public nods to the good things done by those rascally supervisors. Thanks, Tom Ammiano. Thanks, Ross Mirkarimi. Close your eyes and you can almost picture Clinton (that's Bill Clinton, not Senator Clinton) up at the podium.

If you don't have the patience to listen to Gavin 'xplain the budget, he did mention something cool near the very end of his presentation. This year you can access the proposed budget on line, hot links and all.

Well, that's all very well and good but I couldn't for the life of me find the proposed $$ for the public library. (Shouldn't the library be under Arts and Culture or somewhere like that? I searched everywhere) I finally had to break down and pull up the Mayor's Budget Book to find the answers to my questions.

Labels: libraries, San Francisco, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:12 PM|| |

Welcome to Anthony Trollope

We're bringing Trollope's world to life with character descriptions, plot summaries, details of Trollope's career as well as free e-texts of the novels to download.

It's the 150th anniversary of Barchester Towers. Stop on by. Grab a piece of cake!

The folks behind the site are giving away 50 copies of Barchester Towers. You can't win unless you enter. Deadline 30 June 2007.

Must be resident of UK to win. (It's not fair, Mom!)

Labels: books, contest, history, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:52 PM|| |

Sic Press not only sells supplies but also a how-to book: UNBOUND: Book Repair for Booksellers ($16).

Sic Press also offers (free!) on-site informative how-to videos with titles like "How to Remove a Bookplate" and "Re-attaching a Single Cover."

Useful info on the Web for the bibliophiles with beat-up old books amongst us.

Labels: books, URL, video

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:44 PM|| |

The amazing world of the Web.

Robot Scans Ancient Manuscript in 3-D by Amy Hackney Blackwell

[Action takes place in Venice at the Public Library of St. Mark.]

After a thousand years stuck on a dusty library shelf, the oldest copy of Homer's Iliad is about to go into digital circulation.

[...]

To store the data, the team used a 1-terabyte redundant-disk storage system on a high-speed network. The classicists on duty backed up the data every evening on two 750-GB drives and on digital tape. Blackwell carried the hard drives home with him every night, rather than leave the data in the library.

The next step is making the images readable. The Venetus A is handwritten and contains ligatures and abbreviations that boggle most text-recognition software. So, this summer a group of graduate and undergraduate students of Greek will gather at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., to produce XML transcriptions of the text. Eventually, their work will be posted online for anyone to search, as part of the Homer Multitext Project.

Brilliant use of technology.

Labels: books, culture, science, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:28 PM|| |

The Bata Shoe Museum - Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Labels: culture, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:40 AM|| |

OK. This site is just plain mind-stretching. I came to it from the discussion of Olbers' paradox.

Subtitled "a playground for thinkers," this site has articles ranging from science to philosophy to bumperstickers to programming. The index is a breeze to use. The site is full of fascinating stuff.

Dip in: www.arachnoid.com

Labels: science, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:59 PM|| |

HyperPhysics, "a continually developing base of instructional material in physics."

Amazing collection of physics-related information.

(Found whilst looking for information on The Michelson-Morley experiment, which drove a stake into the heart of the theory of a luminiferous aether|ether back in 1887.)

Labels: science, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:35 PM|| |

Free! No subscription required.

Welcome to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). From its inception, the SEP was designed so that each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field. All entries and substantive updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board before they are made public. Consequently, our dynamic reference work maintains academic standards while evolving and adapting in response to new research. You can cite fixed editions that are created on a quarterly basis and stored in our Archives (every entry contains a link to its complete archival history, identifying the fixed edition the reader should cite). The Table of Contents lists entries that are published or assigned. The Projected Table of Contents also lists entries which are currently unassigned but nevertheless projected.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Projected Table of Contents

(Found while looking for a précis of Aristotle's metaphora.)

(Have I mentioned that I didn't get too much of this philosophy/sociology/lit stuff when I was getting my biology/chemistry degree? I feel like such a dunce at times. ...)

Labels: URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:27 PM|| |

From the Web site of T.I.L. ProductionsSARL (Paris), which specializes in production of videofilms about automata and mechanical music and creation and manufacture of music boxes) comes this History of automatons, androids and artificial animals.

(Found while tracking down information about Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin and his automatons.)

Labels: history, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:17 PM|| |

John Jenkins' SparkMuseum

Welcome to my "virtual" radio and scientific instruments museum where I display the radios and other items I have collected over the past 35+ years. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I'm always interested in early wireless, radio, scientific and other electrical items up to about 1920 (including books and other publications)

Highlights of Jenkins' collection.

This site is amazing. A prime example of Web sites offering up a treasure trove of information simply because someone (in this case Jenkins) has a passion for a subject.

(Found whilst searching for information on Geissler tubes.)

Labels: history, science, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:07 PM|| |

SocioSite: SOCIOLOGICAL SUBJECTS

Amazing collection of links. ... and all I'd been doing was trying to track down some bits about Baudrillard!

The SocioSite is designed to get access to information and resources which are relevant for sociologists and other social scientists. It has been designed from a global point of view - it gives access to the world wide scene of social sciences. The intention is to provide a comprehensive listing of all sociology resources on the Internet. The enormity and constantly changing nature of the Internet makes it impossible to develop a definitive and comprehensive listing. That's why the SocioSite will always be 'under construction'.

The SocioSite is a project based at the faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. We present the resources and information that are important for the international sociological scene. It links students of sociology to many interesting, sociologically relevant locations in cyberspace. The SocioSite is a comprehensive information system which is very easy to use. That is why it has become a very popular yellow guide for social scientists from all over the world. The SocioSite is a toolkit for us social scientists. It contains high quality resources and texts that can be used as wheels for the sociological mind.


(Found the Baudrillard bits here. Now if I could only understand them bits ...)

Labels: URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:56 PM|| |

Talk last night turned to timewasters. e.g. the way a click at Grapes2.0 to an amazing YouTube video (a masterpiece of morphing called Women in Art) can lead to a similar morph based on Caravaggio work and then on to Picasso and then Matisse (all justifiable because they are art and educational) and from there to GeorgeW and (a couple wasted hours later) you come out of your zombie state to find you've wasted how much time? watching Barats and Beretta YouTube videos and the like.

"Happen often?" I was asked.

"Oh, hardly ever," I answered. "That's why it gave me that oh-shake-it-off-yick feeling that I used to get years ago when I'd overdosed on Barbara Cartland."

So what do I do today? I hied over to popurls (which I mentioned a while back -- Wednesday, to be exact) and starting poking through Digg's hot hits.

... and found a click to Schrodinger's LOL cat which led me to I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? ?, the weirdest collection of LOLcats I've ever seen.

[as defined on Wikipedia: Lolcats, a compound of lol and cat, are photos of cats with humorous captions]

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? ? has seventy-five pages worth of pictures with captions (not all cats). With, perhaps, ten pictures with captions per page, we're talking a lot of pictures. I started to get that queasy overload feeling long before I got to page #75.

What kind of pictures are we talking about? Something like ALICE CAT FELL DOWN




Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Sweet!

His nibs came over and was standing behind me to see what I was snickering about.

"Remember the conversation last night about time wasted on the Web?" I said.

[note: As I was rummaging through Grapes2.0 to find the link to the "Women in Art" video on YouTube, I realized he'd covered I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? ? recently ... like just this immediate past Wednesday! That's three days ago! Guess I should pay more attention to the plethora of entertaining links he collects on his blog. I could've been wasting time earlier this week, instead of today.]

Labels: timewaster, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:44 PM|| |

As mentioned in the post immediately preceding this one, I came across the San Francisco Herb Co. today while searching for a source of Long Life Tea (my supply being about four mugs-worth from the bottom of the bag).

San Francisco Herb Co. is local. The 26K sqft warehouse is located at 250 14th St. The small retail operation at the front of the warehouse is open M-SA 10-4.

San Francisco Herb Company provides Wholesale prices on the highest quality culinary herbs and spices, extracts, teas, dehydrated vegetables, nuts, seeds, botanicals, essential oils, potpourri ingredients and fragrance oils.

You can browse through the available stock, which is sorted into the following categories:

• Herbs and Spices - Baking
• Herbs and Spices - Botanicals
• Herbs and Spices - Miscellaneous
• Catnip
• Green Tea and Other Bulk Tea Products
• Dehydrated Vegetables
• Essential Oils
• Extracts
• Fragrance Oils
• Nuts and Seeds
• Potpourri - Ingredients
• Potpourri - Pre-Mixed
• Potpourri - Recipes
• Spices
• Spice Blends

The bulk of their business is mail order. The online catalog is worth a look. I'm planning a field trip to the retail outlet. Soon.

Labels: food, San Francisco, shopshopshop, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:13 PM|| |

Web wandering brought me to Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages.

I'd had the brilliant idea two days ago of creating a Web site called wherecanifind.com/ where, f'rex, if I wanted to know where I could find Long Life Tea in San Francisco, I would go to wherecanifind.com/sanfrancisco and type in my request.

Handy helpful w2.0 folks would swarm the site, providing searchers with solutions.

Alas. I went to godaddy.com and every single wherecanifind.* has been snapped up, except .mobi and ...

Well, another brill idea up in smoke.

But I still wanted to know where I could find Long Life Tea in San Francisco, so I searched and came across the San Francisco Herb Company down on 14th St. which had not only a HUGE inventory but also a small retail operation. (A later post.)

Rambling through the SFHCo site, I came across a reference to Nigella sativa, which I used to have growing in our old front yard. SFHCo was selling it as a cooking spice. Who knew you could use the seeds for cooking? (I always saved them to scatter the next spring ...)

But was the Nigella sativa really the one I'd been growing in my front yard?

Check Google images!

No. Turns out I'd been growing Nigella damascena AKA Love in a Mist.

Ah, well. Still curious, though, a further search took me to Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages where he gave me the lowdown on N.s. in great and gory detail.

What a site. Depth and breadth about spices.

solid information on (currently) 117 different spice plants. Emphasis is on their usage in ethnic cuisines, particularly in Asia; furthermore, I discuss their history, chemical constituents, and the etymology of their names. Last but not least, there are numerous photos featuring the live plants or the dried spices.

Labels: food, science, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:58 AM|| |

eBay Acquires StumbleUpon

The $75 million cash acquisition gives eBay access to about 2.3 million people who have filled out profiles at StumbleUpon, founded in 2001 by three Canadian software engineers in Calgary.

... and the acquisition of my profile will provide eBay with what?

Let's hope the eBay folks don't mess up an excellent app.

The news from the StumbleUpon blog

Labels: app, social networking, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:11 AM|| |

Internet Resources - Writers Resources - Writing Links & Writers Links for Writers - Business: Submissions & Markets

Labels: internet resources for writers, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:46 PM|| |

popurls | popular urls to the latest web buzz

Aggregate of W2.0 feeds like digg and reddit and boingboing. Someone called it a look at the hive mind. Probably a good analogy. Similar to and with more links than THEWEBLIST.net (which was inspired by popurls). Includes flickr links and fark.com.

Looking for article ideas? This site gives you a look at what's poppin.

[Caution: Can be a HUGE time waster ...]

Labels: app, social networking, URL, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:38 PM|| |

Darwin Correspondence Project

Welcome to the Darwin Correspondence Project’s new web site. The main feature of the site is an online database with the complete, searchable, texts of around 5,000 letters written by and to Charles Darwin up to the year 1865. This includes all the surviving letters from the Beagle voyage - online for the first time - and all the letters from the years around the publication of Origin of species in 1859.

Labels: science, URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:13 PM|| |

Well, looks like she's serious.

Miss Snark, the literary agent, has retired from blogging. She'll keep agenting, she sez, and It wasn't a specific event. The questions were increasingly ones I'd already answered or ones I couldn't answer.

Adieu, Miss Snark. Bon chance. It's been a grand run.

(Miss Snark promises to keep the blog up with all its tasty bits of knowledge for the foreseeable future. ... and, no, she's not writing a book based on the blog.)

Labels: blog, URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:46 PM|| |

The site for all you'd want to know about The Pulitzer Prizes

• Resources
• Archive of winners (including Full texts, photographs and cartoons [...] for Journalism winners from 1995 - 2006)
• History
• Luncheon Remarks

Labels: journalism, URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:47 PM|| |

Classic Shorts brings you the texts of classic short stories.

The majority of the stories are old (classic) enough to be out of copyright. How did they get a Tobias Wolff short though? Or GGM?

Sample shorts:

• One of These Days by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield
• The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
• Hunters in the Snow by Tobias Wolff

[via StumbleUpon]

Labels: URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:55 PM|| |

passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers

for the purposes of this project, we're using a pretty broad (and to some extent, arbitrary) definition of "passive-aggressive" that roughly correlates with how the term is popularly used. (most people don't go diving for the dsm IV when someone describes his or her roommate as "so passive-aggressive" — or "so antisocial" or "so sadistic" or "so schizo," for that matter.)

some of the notes here are really more aggressive in tone, and some of them are more passive — polite, even — but they all share a common sense of frustration that"s been channeled into a written note rather than a direct confrontation. while it may be more accurate, "asshole-ish notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers" (or "well-deserved notes from roommates…") just doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily, you know?

Read 'em. Send in your own.

A companion blog to wrongkmiller.

[Thanks, cygnoir!]

Labels: life, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  8:25 AM|| |

Ah. The Web's a Wonder.

"Towse" isn't exactly the most common last name in the States (more like 77,020th most popular last name (surname) in the United States [ref: http://www.placesnamed.com/t/o/towse.asp]), so I don't get too many wrong e-mails addressed to a different s.towse, but Miller is a different story.

kmiller claims that Miller is the seventh-most popular surname in the States. (which placesnamed.com confirms)

Nearly five out of ever 100 people is a miller.

[actually 0.424%: k.miller didn't grok the difference between percentile (4.660) and percentage. ref: http://www.placesnamed.com/m/i/miller.asp]

the census doesn't calculate how many of those millers have a first name starting with "k," but i think it's safe to go with "a lot." maybe even, "a shitload." i should know: i get their email.

So, k.miller started a blog called WRONGKMILLER.com: there are lots of k.millers in the world. i get their gmail.

Entertaining, but then I'm easily amuzed.

[via a link at passive-aggressive notes]

Labels: life, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:45 AM|| |

What Should I Read Next?

Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our database of real readers'
favourite books (over 32,000 and growing) to suggest what you could read next.

e.g.

Enter title and/or author

Enter title: The End of Mr. Y
[click] What Should I Read Next?

App comes back
Did you mean:
The End of Mr. Y - Scarlett Thomas

Click the title above if correct, or amend the details below

[click] title above

results:

The Carpathians - Janet Frame See Amazon UK | US
My Life as Emperor - Su Tong See Amazon UK | US
Charades - Janette Turner Hospital See Amazon UK | US
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon - Jeffrey Masson See Amazon UK | US
The Gourmet Club: A Sextet - Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, Anthony Chambers, Paul McCarthy See Amazon UK | US
The Secret World of Og - Pierre Berton See Amazon UK | US
Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust - Charles Patterson See Amazon UK | US
Quicksand - Jun'ichiro Tanizaki See Amazon UK | US
Tales of Hoffmann - E. T. A Hoffmann See Amazon UK | US
The Collected Stories of Frank O'Connor - Frank O'Connor See Amazon UK | US

more results ...

Interesting app. And, yes, Scarlett Thomas' other books do not pop up in that first list of suggestions.

Register if you'd like to be part of this Web2.0 app. Site money stream seems to come from those Amazon click-throughs.

[caution: The response time can be a bit slow.]

[mentioned in a post from the Project Wombat list.]

Labels: app, books, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:15 PM|| |

takeourword.com Blog: the companion blog to the Take Our Word For It webzine and site.

Melanie and Mike are back in action. Check out the blog. Check out the site. Word-huggers and amateur etymologists rejoice.

Labels: blog, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:55 AM|| |

I've decided to keep writing markets "stuff" at the writers' resources site from this day forth. The posts were taking up too much real estate.

The resources blog will carry the markets information I've been carrying here. Coolio writer stuff may wind up in both this blog and that. Info on the writers' resources site will be updated to include new markets information and links wigati. The resources blog will probably be updated from its 2002 look some day as well.

From now on writing markets info will live there not here. Those of you who read here for great apps, interesting sites, San Francisco foodie news and life, the universe and prayer flags can continue on uninterrupted. Those who only cared about the markets info will find their focus more focussed at the other blog.

This has been a management postie. We now return you to the normal blog content, sans writing markets information.

Labels: blog, internet resources for writers, URL, writing, writing-market

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:11 AM|| |

Jan Freeman's 13 May 2007 column on eggcorns

[via Benjamin Zimmer's Language Log ]

Labels: blog, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:06 PM|| |

Writers' Guidelines for Yoga Journal

Yoga Journal covers the practice and philosophy of yoga. In particular we welcome articles on the following themes:

1. Leaders, spokespersons, and visionaries in the yoga community;
2. The practice of hatha yoga;
3. Applications of yoga to everyday life (e.g., relationships, social issues, livelihood, etc.);
4. Hatha yoga anatomy and kinesiology, and therapeutic yoga;
5. Nutrition and diet, cooking, and natural skin and body care.

Payment varies, depending on length, depth of research, etc. We pay within 90 days of final acceptance: $800 to $2000 for features, $400 to $800 for departments, $25 to $100 for Om Page and Well-Being, and $200 to $250 for book reviews.

No unsolicited e-sub.

Labels: URL, writing-market

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:48 PM|| |

Writers' Guidelines for Escape Pod, a podcast genre 'zine.

EP is a genre 'zine. We're looking for science fiction and fantasy. Please don't send us anything that doesn't fit those descriptions. And by the way, we mean SF/F on a level that matters to the plot. Your story about a little boy receiving a balloon before his heart transplant may be touching literature, but it probably isn't something we're interested in, even if you edit it so that the balloon's an alien and the heart came from Satan.

(UPDATE: As of August 2006, Escape Pod no longer runs horror. We've spun that off into a sister podcast, Pseudopod, edited by Mur Lafferty and Ben Philips. We do not share our slushpiles, so please send them your horror stories directly. It's a great podcast to listen to, by the way, if you like to be disturbed.)

We're primarily interested in two lengths of fiction, which we've dubbed (somewhat arbitrarily) 'short fiction' and 'flash fiction.'

PAYS: $100 for short fiction (2-6K wds) and $20 for flash fiction (up to 1K wds. "sweet spot": 500 wds.)

[...]

Labels: URL, writing-market

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:39 PM|| |

List of paying poetry markets from sfpoetry.com

Labels: URL, writing-market

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:26 PM|| |

Writers' guidelines for South Florida Parenting.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
Most South Florida Parenting articles are purchased from freelance writers. In a typical issue, readers will find a variety of regular departments: Out & About, Baby Basics, Preteen Power, Family Money, Family Health and more. We also run feature articles of 800-2,000 words on topics of pertinence to South Florida parents. Features require careful research, independent reporting and well-developed interviews with South Florida sources.

Our focus is on our three-county market and we prefer features that use sources and settings in South Florida. Assignments, when given, go almost exclusively to writers who live in southeast Florida. However, we do consider insightful, captivating essays and features from outside our area, particularly those that deal with universal themes and issues. All stories must include clearly identified, real sources. Articles or essays that use only first names, composites or fictional examples will not be considered.

We welcome your submission of material previously published outside South Florida, if offered to us on an exclusive basis in southeast Florida. No submissions or queries that are offered to other publications in southeast Florida will ever be considered. We do not buy work from writers who are published by our competitors. For reprint offers, send either typed manuscripts or clips and let us know where the material appeared.

E-sub only.
$150-$300 for first publication
$30-$50 for reprints, including online rights.
You *must* not submit work to any other publications in South Florida.

(n.b. The wording is weird: do they mean must not submit *this* piece of work or *any* piece of work? ... If you're interested in the market, might behoove you to check ...)

Labels: URL, writing-market

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:23 PM|| |

KFOG KaBoom! 2007 Highlights

The video and soundtrack for the 2007 KFOG KaBoom! are up! Twenty minutes worth of fireworks with music.

Enjoy.

Labels: life, music, San Francisco, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:22 AM|| |

The Encantadas: Galápagos History & Cartography

Wide-ranging collection of materials on the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, collected by the author of CHARLES DARWIN SLEPT HERE.

Ephemera, maps, texts, factoids. Darwin's Journal. Darwin's Diary. H.M.S. Beagle logs. Eleanor Roosevelt "My Day" (her description of her trip to the Galápagos in 1944).

More.

Labels: history, science, travel, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:49 PM|| |

His nibs' great great aunt, the peripatetic (and boat and horse and camel and stage coach) traveler, she of the photos of Venice, Japan and elsewhere in the late 1800s, was still in her teens, early twenties, on a trip with her parents when, family legend has it, they were caught up in the siege of Paris. We still have some books around that she bought at the time. French.

Some day (I have fifty or so more years, after all) I will learn me better French than I have and take a crack at reading the things she read while she was cooped up, unable to get home. That's the intent anyway. The old family books in French and Italian and German, the Spanish-Greek dictionary and the like, show that Americans, at least those in his nibs' family, used to be far more fluent in languages than we are today.

Northwestern University's McCormick Library of Special Collections has a terrific collection of photographs and images of the Siege and Commune of Paris (1870-1871).

This site contains links to over 1200 digitized photographs and images recorded during the Siege and Commune of Paris cir.1871. In addition to the images in this set, the Library's Siege & Commune Collection contains 1500 caricatures, 68 newspapers in hard-copy and film, hundreds of books and pamphlets and about 1000 posters. Additions are made regularly.

Search by word or phrase, browse by image type, scroll through the master index (title) and the subject index.

The collection doesn't let you just click [next] and get to the next item, which would be swell. You must click a link, check out the item, go back to the link list, click another link ...

Even so ... you are there and sometimes elsewhere and not always in the narrow date span that the title of the collection implies. Some of the photographs come from the early 1900s, f'rex, and yet, if you like looking at old photographs of people and buildings, come along and wander through this archive.

Amazing thing, this World Wide Web.

Labels: history, photographs, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:30 AM|| |

David Parry, a San Francisco REALTOR® has articles he's written about San Francisco architects on his site.

Want to know about Willis Polk, Bernard Maybeck, Conrad Meussdorffer? Check out Parry's collection of information.

[via Curbed SF]

Labels: architecture, San Francisco, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  8:55 AM|| |

JPG Magazine: Photos

Explore.

Labels: app, photographs, social networking, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:06 AM|| |

Derren Brown on subliminal advertising.



... on NLP

Fascinating stuff.

Derren Brown on C4's site

Derren Brown's Web site

I'd never heard of Derren Brown until tonight. I just went back to see how I'd fallen into this Derren Brown universe. My original heads up was from a post on AdRants.

Labels: URL, video, woowoo

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:40 PM|| |

Online Etch-a-Sketch

Click screen to clear. Use arrow keys to control.

[Arleen wrote about this.]

Labels: app, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:29 PM|| |

http://www.ocean.com

It is the mission of The Ocean Channel to provide 'ocean people' from around the world with a comprehensive and centralized source of ocean news, education, conservation, and entertainment.

[...]

Focus is the aggregation, production and distribution of premium ocean content for an array of media--specifically, broadband Internet, television, and DVD home video

Deep resource. Conservation issues. Film.

It is only through knowledge and education that we can expect our audience to recognize the challenges the sea faces now and in the future.

Wander through this one.

Labels: science, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:32 PM|| |

Labels: food, life, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:25 PM|| |

DRO has posted her updated "Tax Tips and Resources For Freelance Writers" over at InkyGirl.

Here's my annual updated list of useful tax resources for freelance writers. Sadly (for me, anyway, since I live in Canada), most of the info is specific to the U.S., but I did manage to find some info specific to Canada and other countries, listed below in the "international tax info" section partway down this list.

I was unable to find ANY tax-related resources of use to writers outside of North America. Suggestions welcome! [...]

Labels: information, URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:05 PM|| |

[via Sour Grapes @ tumblr]

Labels: life, misc, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:56 AM|| |

Checked and updated all links in the Business section of Internet Resources for Writers.

Before breakfast! Before coffee even!

The page includes over one hundred links classified in subsections:

• Unsorted
  
• Agents
  
• Book Publishers
  
• Copyright
  
• E-Publishing
  
• Legal, Contracts, & Taxes
  
• Marketing, Sales, Promotion, & Publicity
  
• Print-On-Demand Publishing
  
• Self-publishing
  
• Your Website

Replaced some broken links. Added a few. Commented out links to my articles on Web design and copyright that I wrote for Computer Bits, which is no more. I need to bring those articles onto either this site or internet-resources.com some day, now that the Computer Bits online archives are no more.

Labels: information, internet resources for writers, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:36 AM|| |

The Curmudgeon cranks on about Craigslist ads that offer next to nothing (or worse!) as payment for wordsmithing.

Yahoo! sez: The Curmudgeon's chief complaint: would-be content providers that offer wordsmiths no pay. More specific no-nos: ads offering piddling in-kind compensation, ads with dubious payment schemes, ads offering nothing but "exposure," and ads offering no pay for ridiculous assignments.

And the ad-meisters fire back.

Entertaining all around.

[nod to Yahoo! picks]

Labels: URL, webstuff, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:43 PM|| |

I'm not a huge TIC fan. I can't imagine ever buying a TIC unit. Sure, I know. TICs are usually a chunk of change cheaper than a similar condominium, but the legal squirreliness involved with TIC agreements and the funding behind them just shiver me timbers.

And yet. ... There are those who buy TICs and there are those with questions about TICs who need the straight scoop about what they're getting into.

Anyone with questions about TICs (apartment units sold to buyers who own the entire building as Tenants In Common) should not ask the agent who was showing two TICs that we went through today.

Potential buyers who didn't even know the difference between a condominium and a TIC were peppering her with questions. That agent was glossing over the drawbacks of TICs, giving misleading information about the ease of converting to condominiums, and other forked-tongue exercises. She claimed that the City limited the number of TICs that could convert to condominiums each year because the City wanted to keep rental units available and not have the City fill up with condominiums.

Huh?

Well. No, I can't even say, "kinda." There is no law against renting out a condominium. A TIC doesn't have to be owner-occupied. Neither does a condominium. I don't know where the agent was getting her information, but she was blowing smoke on this and on other TIC/condo conversion matters too.

The rules about TICs and TIC conversions go far beyond what the agent was telling the naifs who were taking her word as gospel. There's a history behind the rules and regulations governing TICs and condo conversions in this fair ville and it's nothing like the gloss-over she was giving her potential buyers.

Read up on the issues swirling around TICs and then if you have questions (and you should), head over to Andy Sirkin, Attorney's site. Sirkin is the guy who wrote the book (and the agreements) and is the go-to guy for TICs.

Don't rely on the word-of-mouth not-legally-binding schmooze from a real estate agent trying to sell a TIC. Get your information straight from Sirkin, no frills, no trussssssssst me, no BS.


... and before you make an offer on that TIC you have an eye on, find yourself a real estate agent other than the one selling the property to represent you in the transaction. Both real estate agents are paid by the seller, but the one representing you will have more of your interests at heart than the one representing the seller.

Labels: real estate, San Francisco, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:21 PM|| |

Geometric Sculpture of George W. Hart, mathematical sculptor.

George W. Hart does some amazing things. Click your way through his links, explore the Pavilion of Polyhedreality and Hart's links to polyhedral sites.

Labels: geometry, mathematics, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:23 PM|| |

First heard about Smashing Telly over at Sour Grapes, where SG offered up a link to Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville.

Man, what a resource Smashing Telly is.

Everything from Jean-Luc Godard to this forty-one minute interview with Buckminster Fuller ("Everything I Know") to over an hour with George Carlin to Charles and Ray Eames' Powers of Ten to interviews with Philip Glass and Godfrey Reggio for The Making of Koyaanisqatsi.

David Galbraith explains: Smashing Telly is a hand edited collection of the best free, instantly available TV on the web. Not 30 second clips of a dog on a skateboard, or the millionth person to mime the Numa song, but full length programs. Smashing Telly, not Gimmick Telly.

Many of the items that I'll be putting up on a regular basis are documentaries, since that's what tends to be out there at the moment.

Labels: film, media, URL, video

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:16 AM|| |

Found the MacTutor History of Mathematics while looking for information on Johann Benedict Listing, the guy (not August Ferdinand Möbius) who actually discovered the Möbius Strip.

Labels: factoid, information, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:04 PM|| |

Spent a chunk of the morning checking, updating and augmenting the collection of links in the Reference & Research section of Internet Resources for Writers.

The page includes over two hundred links classified in subsections:

• Unsorted
  
• Assorted Information
  
• Experts
  
• Maps
  
• Names & Naming
  
• News Links
  
• Online Texts
  
• Research & Reference
  
• Search Engines (including image search and video search engines)
  
• Tools
  
• Warnings & Rumors

Amazing resources out there on the Web. What a wURLd.

Labels: information, internet resources for writers, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:14 PM|| |

midomi

Oh, my. Whither next, Web 2.0?

"Our mission is to build the most comprehensive database of searchable music. You can contribute to the database by singing in midomi's online recording studio in any language or genre. The next time anyone searches for that song, your performance might be the top result!"

Oh, my.

[a nod, I suppose, is due the Tech Chronicles at sfgate.com.]

Thanks a lot, guys.

Really!

Labels: media, music, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:26 PM|| |

Index of artists and architects. Digital Imaging Project: Art historical images of European and North American architecture and sculpture from classical Greek to Post-modern.

Not just European and North American anymore. Also includes images from Vietnam and Cambodia.

Mary Ann Sullivan, Bluffton University, has pulled together more than 13,000 images. Index. Monthly featured site. More.

Labels: architecture, art, history, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:36 PM|| |

Senses of Cinema: an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema.

Articles, festival reports, DVD reviews, book reviews, links, lists.

The great directors archive is stashed full of information, as is the annotations for films screening at the Melbourne Cinémathèque.

e.g.

Comments on David Lynch's Eraserhead by Catherine S. Cox.

Alfred Hitchcock by Ken Mogg
Hitchcockian articles in Senses



[found while I was looking for something Hitchcockian ...]

Labels: film, media, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:09 PM|| |

From the Making of America collection comes a link to An elementary dictionary of the English language. By Joseph E. Worcester, LL. D. (1865).

I love old dictionaries. The actual wordstuff for this one begins at page 31, after all the frontal matter regarding pronunciation and all that.

Seeing how a word was used in 1865 gives one a glimpse at how the current day definition evolved. Some words in Worcester's dictionary have evolved beyond recognition. Some no longer exist.

e.g. p 168 (lacerable - lapful)

laconism - pithy phrase or expression
Lady-Day - 25th March. The Annunciation.
laic- a layman; -- opposed to clergyman.
lamantine - an animal; manatee or sea-cow.
lambative - a medicine taken by licking
laniate - to tear in pieces; to lacerate
lanuginous - downy; covered with soft thin hair

Some of those words are still in use today, although perhaps not in as common use as they were 142 years ago. "lanuginous" was used in the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.

Fun stuff, words.

Labels: books, history, information, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:20 PM|| |

Found a link to this site from someone I know who is working through the Japanese language course and thinks highly of the experience.

MIT OpenCourseWare is

a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world.

MIT OCW:

• Is a publication of MIT course materials
  
• Does not require any registration
  
• Is not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity
  
• Does not provide access to MIT faculty

Japanese, German, Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, French, tralala come under "Foreign Languages and Literatures" as do classes about cultures and texts written in those languages such as "A Passage to India: Introduction to Modern Indian Culture and Society," "Twentieth and Twentyfirst-Century Spanish American Literature," "East Asian Cultures: From Zen to Pop."

The Chinese I class, f'rex, includes a downloadable textbook and other study materials. The course assumes you know absolutely NOTHING about the language.

The purpose of this course is to develop:

• Basic conversational abilities (pronunciation, fundamental grammatical patterns, common vocabulary, and standard usage)
  
• Basic reading and writing skills (in both the traditional character set and the simplified)
  
• An understanding of the language learning process so that you are able to continue studying effectively on your own.

Or you could take Introduction to Aerospace Engineering and Design, Computational Cognitive Science, Urban Design Politics, or Special Seminar in Applied Probability and Stochastic Processes.

The list of Readings for Bestsellers: Detective Fiction changes each time the class is given but the Fall 2006 session uses the following books:

• Doyle, Arthur Conan. Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1992. ISBN: 0468270556.
  
• Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1999. ISBN: 0679723420.
  
• Poe, Edgar Allen. Tales of Terror and Detection. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1995. ISBN: 0486287440.
  
• Cain, James M. The Postman Always Rings Twice. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989. ISBN: 0679723250.
  
• Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989. ISBN: 0679722645.
  
• Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. New York, NY: Berkley Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 0425200477.
  
• Weber, K. J. Five Minute Mysteries. Philadelphia, PA: Running Press, 1989. ISBN: 0894716905.
  
• Sobol, D. J. Two Minute Mysteries. New York, NY: Scholastic, 1991. ISBN: 0590447874.
  
• Browning, Robert. My Last Duchess and Other Poems. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1993. ISBN: 0486277836.
  
• Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1991. ISBN: 0486268772.

The world is my oyster and MIT Open Courseware is a pearl.

Labels: information, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:02 PM|| |

News from Internet Resources for Writers:

Checked and updated all links on Business/Submissions.

The page includes subsections:

• Grants, Prizes, & Contests - lists
  
• Markets - market listing resources on the Web
  
• Scams - known scams and how to avoid them
  
• Submitting - information on manuscript formats, queries, writing a synopsis and more.

I also added a separate header for our Miss Snark's blog.

Occurs to me that at some point I need to port all the content over to a CSS-driven revamped site.

sigh

Not today.

Labels: internet resources for writers, URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:05 PM|| |

Making of America -- 19th c primary sources (and some 20th c too)

Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. For more details about the project, see About MoA.

Amazing collection of stuff.

I was wandering around today trying to see if I could find some written context for "The man who doesn't read books has no advantage over the man who can't read them" (and variations), attributed to Mark Twain -- a discussion that popped up yesterday on Project Wombat (formerly, the Stumpers list).

I never did find confirmation or attribution for the alleged Twain quote, but I did find an essay -- patronizing to say the least -- explaining to the dear little women what sorts of books they should be asking for their husband's permission to buy and read: a six-page article titled, "Reading," by L.L. Hamline, found in "The Ladies' repository: a monthly periodical, devoted to literature, arts, and religion."

Whoo boy.

With the thousands of books and thousands of articles the MOA folks have scanned and continued to scan, you could spend a long while in these archives.

Maneuverability is good. The search is FAST and can be simple, Boolean, &c. MOA pulls up matches giving title &c. and number of pages your search terms are on. You can wend through the pages of a given work or ask for those specific pages within the work that have your search term(s).

The app doesn't highlight the found word on the page, which is unfortunate when you have a dense page filled with tiny print.

Interesting stuff. A peek into where we've come from.

Labels: books, history, information, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:52 PM|| |

Christopher Lockhart, Executive Story Editor at ICM has a blog called THE INSIDE PITCH: a Hollywood Executive answers questions from screenwriters.

What applies to screenwriters can also apply to writers.

Take a look-see, if screenwriting or fiction writing be your smack.

Labels: blog, URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:05 PM|| |

How to leak a secret and not get caught - WikiLeaks from New Scientist Tech, 12 Jan 2007.

wikileaks.org

Good? Worthwhile?

Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide. Wikileaks will provide a forum for the entire global community to examine any document for credibility, plausibility, veracity and falsifiability. They will be able to interpret documents and explain their relevance to the public. If a document comes from the Chinese government, the entire Chinese dissident community can freely scrutinize and discuss it; if a document arrives from Iran, the entire Farsi community can analyze it and put it in context.

I give it a month before WikiLeaks is either so full of garbage as to be useless or the able meta monitors start shutting down "undesirable" wiks and creating WikiLeaks' own form of censorship.

(Cool logo, though ...)

Labels: URL, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:23 PM|| |

Mathematical Quotation Server from Mark Woodward and the Furman University (SC) mathematics department.

Keyword Search - Alpha by Author - Browse - Download - Random

Text references given when known.

Labels: quotation, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:23 PM|| |

From WSU, the archived coursework and resources for the university freshman-level World Cultures class.

Texts, maps, &c. Ignore the "available for distance learning registation" [sic] notices and the links to discussion areas. This site is archival only.

Want to read up on Bhagavad-Gita? You'll find yourself here. Click "contents" and you'll get to an online text (a downloadable version is also available) or click "resources" and you'll get a list of hyperlinks to other online texts, essays, commentaries and such like.

While away the afternoon.

No search functionality, alas.

(Found when searching for the etymology of "no retreat, no surrender" -- the title of DeLay's new book-- which drew me toward Sparta, which brought me here. Could any of the erudite readers reading this tell me whether there was a Spartan rule which translated as "no retreat, no surrender"? Thanks much.)

Labels: information, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:57 AM|| |

From Grant Barrett, lexicographer for The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English, Double-Tongued Dictionary: Slang, jargon, and new words from the fringes of English.

RSS feed or just wander. Comments are entertaining too.

e.g. cheddar curtain n. the divisions real and imagined that separate Wisconsin from neighboring states, especially Illinois. Also cheese curtain. Related: Sconnie, Wisconsin, English

Editorial Note: This term is parellel [sic] to Orange curtain, cotton curtain, and other, similar terms.

Citations: 1992 Chicago Sun-Times (Aug. 7) "The Mix" p. 5: Lift the cheddar curtain. The Wisconsin State Fair celebrates its 100th year in its current location at State Fair Park in West Allis, Wis., through Aug. 16. 1993 [Julian Macassey] Usenet: alt.tasteless (Nov. 10) "Re: Tasteless Secret Santa": At that time of year (Feb, March), I will probably be in Wisconsin. So I will fly back from behind the Cheddar curtain. 1994 [Bob Christ] Usenet: alt.tasteless (Jan. 14) "Re: Rock 'n Roll for geezers": He's done it! Julian has moved behind the cheese curtain. 1994 [Joseph Betz] Usenet: talk.bizarre (Oct. 12) "Re: Longest Known Palindrome": Wisconsin—Behind the Cheese Curtain. 2003 A. Forester Jones Yellow Snow (June) p. 65: The pilot announced that they had crossed the "Cheddar Curtain" and were over Wisconsin. Adam started visually searching the land below for large warehouses stuffed with surplus cheese. 2005 Northwest Herald (Chicago) (May 23) "Don’t let road work ruin travel": People heading to Wisconsin can find information about road construction behind the cheddar curtain by logging onto http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov. 2006 Bike Black Ribbon (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) (Nov. 19) "BBRS Ride with the Bums": Mid November, behind the cheese curtain is not known for its balmy climes or great trail conditions, but this particular November day turned out to be dry, with a few peaks at blue sky.

Labels: URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:51 AM|| |

The Wooster Collective is dedicated to showcasing and celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world.

You know: not just graffiti, street art, projected art, found art the world over.

Stuff like



Yow.

Labels: art, urban, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:28 PM|| |

Mozilla Firefox Cheatsheet from lesliefranke.com

Labels: app, Firefox, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:58 PM|| |

Brilliant app: Montage-a-google.

Montage-a-google is a simple web-based app that uses Google's image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user.

A click on any image (max 20 images, scattered with dups over a 9x12 grid) takes you to the source of the image.

The grid size can be fiddled with, as can other features using the "advanced" mode.

You'll need Flash player version 8 (or up) to run the app.

If you want to save your results, use [alt][print scrn] (if you use a PC -- don't talk to me about Mac stuff) to copy the image. Then pop the image into your photo app with ^V and clear the bits you don't want before printing.

You'll wind up with something like this [click image to enlarge]:



Not bad for a first try. I could've trimmed the edges better but I won't go back and fiddle some more because at some point conscientiousness veers into compulsiveness and we're not exactly creating lasting art here.

Google search for "bixby creek" "big sur"

Coolio.

Over 2.5m Montage-a-googles served.

Check out the photos tagged with "montage-a-google" on Flickr.

Labels: app, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:50 PM|| |

A link on Sour Grapes and then my search (undereducated 'r' me) for a translation for "AVT DOCE, AVT DISCE, AVT DISCEDE" took me back to a place I've been before: the Diary of Samuel Pepys, a very entertaining blog which Grapes hisself (iirc) told me about many many many moons ago.

Pepys' diary is a blog which follows Pepys' diary day-by-day with clicks to the appropriate "whatever is he talking about?" explanations.

Mrs. Pepys, btw, seems not to be an easy keeper.

Today's entry (Sunday 13 December 1663) includes the following (run-on-sentences-r-Pepys) bit.

To church, where after sermon home, and to my office, before dinner, reading my vowes, and so home to dinner, where Tom came to me and he and I dined together, my wife not rising all day, and after dinner I made even accounts with him, and spent all the afternoon in my chamber talking of many things with him, and about Wheately’s daughter for a wife for him, and then about the Joyces and their father Fenner, how they are sometimes all honey one with another and then all turd, and a strange rude life there is among them.

Love that "sometimes all honey one with another and then all turd, and a strange rude life there is among them."

Dysfunctional families 'r' us.

Labels: blog, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:42 PM|| |