Favorite websites and pages: we all have have a few. Here are some links to sites, in no particular order, that I've found to be either useful in a utilitarian sense, humorous, thought provoking, or otherwise unique. A description of each is provided with enough info for you to decide whether clicking the hyperlink is a good idea or not. I trust you'll find one or two worthy of adding to your bookmark or favorite files. Enjoy!
Silver Creek 78250 - Dave is a fellow West Virginia Surf Report reader (see below), and I met him through clicking on his link in a comment he left on the WVSR.
Silver Creek is a fun blog of Dave's view of his neighborhood, San Antonio, and beyond. He and his wife visit many restaurants and report their findings in a most enjoyable and down home way - complete with photos!
One warning: reading Silver Creek 78250 may cause unexplained visits to the pantry, kitchen cabinets, and/or refrigerator!
UPDATE: With a recent move to rural Texas, Dave has retired Silver Creek 78250, though never fear -- he has a fresh, new site with plenty of the down home friendliness of the old site. Check out Living Out Here.
Lonely Pamphleteer Review - D. R. Zukerman marches to the beat of the Federalist 51 drum whilst bouncing back and forth between NYC and northwestern Connecticut. Check out David's "miles from the mainstream" thoughts, views and commentary on his excellent website. Great stuff!
UPDATE: Zukerman has been MIA from LPR duties for nearly a year now. Lets hope he is just taking an extended vacation..."
UPDATE 2: Zukerman has returned, though the archives link on the website only covers 2014. That means I can't seem to nail down the disappearance and reappearance dates. Regardless, the important thing is that LPR and Zukerman are back on the scene!
The West Virginia Surf Report - Finding this true gem happened quite by accident: a result of an long string of connected links during one marathon session of link surfing. Webmaster and writer Jeff Kay spins humor into every nook and cranny of his site in an honest, regular-kind-of-guy, all American way.
And from the number of comments to entries to his daily blog, it's clear that Jeff's style and humor are enjoyed by many!
Player vs Player - A forwarded strip from this comic came my way from Austin of Omega Verse fame. The particular strip caught my attention, so I checked out the site and quickly became hooked. Though not a computer gamer, I do have some history: in the 1980s I was hopelessly hooked on Pac Man and held the record for months on end in a number of Hartford area bars. That was then ...
Cartoonist Scott Kurtz has developed a wonderful cast of characters who all work in the offices of a computer gaming magazine business. Check his site out. You might very well be adding PvP to your "Check Daily" bookmark as I have.
Austin Wise's An Exercise in Futility - I first met Austin in the post-911 mania on #newsflash: an IRC current events chat room. Our views on things were strikingly similar and usually contrary to the mainstream, so we were frequently asked to leave, sometimes forcibly kicked from the channel, issued "temp bans," and ultimately were sentenced with the dreaded perma-ban. heh. So much for freedom of expression.
We took our "show" to various other channels and after a particularly disturbing confrontation with network administrators, we decided to permanently vacate the network and move on to one with more open-minded and less egotistical management.
Check out Austin's fantastic site. It's a tremendous labor of love that offers several stories as well as his blog.
ACME.COM - I found this site quite by accident when working on a web page that was screaming for something other than what basic HTML header programming offered. A faux-Dyno Label Maker type header was more appropriate for this particular page. A quick search on google.com listed acme.com on a list of possibilities. And I'm glad I checked it out.
Besides the faux-Dyno Label Maker generator and a variety of other utility goodies, there's a cool feature called the Acme Mapper. It's a template control panel, for lack of the correct technical term, that links up to on-line data bases at the United States Geological Survey to provides satellite images of virtually any American locale. Here's an typical image from the Acme Mapper of my former Hartford, Connecticut neighborhood.
Those still shackled to a dial-up ISP will be sorely disappointed at the time it takes for images to load. Faster ISPs will offer far more enjoyable time with this feature of the web site.
The mapper is reasonable intuitive for those not faint of heart, though commanding the program could be easier. Regardless, it's a hoot. Give it a try!
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