So you’ve had a wild and thoroughly debauched festive season, and now the dust has settled, you realise you shouldn’t have sold your soul to that nice gentleman one night. Luckily you can buy it back, go to the Soul Repurchase Program. Once you have it back, instead of doing deals with demons, just Learn To Dance properly.
What’s the next best thing to watching paint dry? Listening to our President speak? Watching religious programs on TV? Well, those take some beating, but bird watching is on the list, so let’s go a step further into the truly weird – and consider the fine relaxing art of Plastic Bird Watching.
Then, for a surreal online argument that’s part joke and mostly just a good example of folks with too much time on their hands, take a look at Online Argument’s Oh yes it is and Oh no it isn’t. And staying with fun URL’s, why not Have A Nice Cup of Tea and A Sit Down. And wow, Africa gets featured at this next site, which has some pix that look suspiciously like they’re from Grahamstown. Run towards the great reality check site at Blow the Dot Out Your Ass Dot Com.
Take a look at an online student magazine that has a certain cheerful something about it (and take their advice to heart about voting for the Fat Guy on Pop Idol) Student Magazine.
For a glimpse of the world of single people, according to the covers of TV dinners anyway, take a look at all the odd foods we dont seem to get here at The Single Man’s Guide to TV Dinners. Or, for more recipes than you can eat, All Recipes. And if you’re curious about African food, but don’t want to venture in reality towards any place which actually has ‘real’ African eatables – then do it online, at Congo CookBook.
Regular readers will have bookmarked this next site, which features something we could do with locally. Its a site filled with awkward and often fascinating documents that are in the public domain but aren’t widespread. From police pictures of busted celebrities and others – try The Smoking Gun Archives. Or try their main URL.
The FBI continue their struggle to get their hands on data – a recent virus grabbed and sent 300 000 emails containing users password info to a webmaster, and the FBI made contact, wanting access to all that info. The webmaster wasn’t impressed and refused to play ball:
Rotten.com.
BadTrans.B.
Database.
Microsoft covers its butt time and again. Major security hole in XP, 98 and ME – allowing the baddies to take control of your PC online. Read up about it at Wired and grab the patches at Patch
Unlike the prehistoric thief ridden and sheltered employment hovel known locally as ‘the Post Office’ other countries actually treat mail as more than a source of free money for its employees. Curious to see what it costs to send parcels around the world? Take a look at the useful little tool known as The UPS Quick Cost Calculator.
By now you’re well acquainted with the online scourge known as Spam – and some of you may have received the much talked about ‘419 Scam’ – (email from some ‘rich’ person who need your bank account to funnel money to somewhere else.) Well, someone decided to play along for the hell of it, and see how far the scam artist was willing to go – take a look at what happened at 419 Scam.
What happens when you combine a fetish for a Japanese cartoon called Hello Kitty – with too much time on your hands, and a laptop? Well, if you’ve never seen a pink furry laptop before, go to Hello Kitty PC.
Until the next time, if the local post office or the Nigerians don’t get me.
Ian Fraser is a playwright, author, comedian, conspiracy nut, old-time radio collector and self-confessed data-junkie. Winner of numerous Vita and Amstel Awards, he’s been an Internet addict and games-fanatic since around 1995, when the Internet began to make much more sense than theatre.