Archive for July, 2001

Fraser’s recounting of the local sites of Moscow has reminded me that I do have something of an obligation, content wise. To that end, allow me to present the following public service announcement:

So, you want to be an adult webmaster? You have a few options. You can, for instance, pay this guy $140 for his best suggestions.

Or you can get the info you need for free here. Or here. Or here.

Please note that you may get fired for clicking on any of the above links at work. We now return you to your regularly scheduled ramblings.

Posted by Rich Pizor

Greetings from Moscow. First of all, let’s get the cliches out of the way: Time taken to join first queue after disemabarking from aircraft: 1 minute. Length of queue: 90 minutes. Number of times approached by prostitutes in first 24 hours: six. Less patronsing reports to follow.

Tomorrow I embark to Ulan-Bator on the Trans-Siberian railway. Coming the other way will be North Korea’s mysterious leader, Kim Jong II, on a rare visit outside his own country. Apparently there’ll be two locomotives travelling ahead of his train, just in case someone has forgetfully misplaced a bomb on the track. I’m hoping this doesn’t occur just as we’re travelling past, but I guess the chances are pretty slim on a stretch of line 9000km long.

I wonder what the story behind this is. Was the boy so hungry, he would do *anything* for a slice of watermelon? A slice of watermelon? That’s just plain sad.

I just stumbled upon a link so blindingly and unbelievably useful I simply had to put it up somewhere. You’ve all heard, by now, of those nefarious automated pieces of software that comb the web, searching out unsuspecting email addresses to harvest and sell to spammers. Beat them at their own game by encoding your email address so that browsers display it correctly, (as in richpizor@home.com) but spam spiders see nothing more than ampersands, pounds, semicolons, and numbers (as in r i c h p i z o r @ h o m e . c o m ).

Sheer, unadulterated genius, I say.

Although inititially a shocking alternative, there is much evidence to suggest that the easiest way to ease the suffering of battery-farmed animals (without having to rely on genetically modified meat) is to eat the whales. This advice is endorsed by Peta. Really.

Some things I’ve come across:

Babysmashers, started by a pair of mysterious individuals “concerned about the propagation of truth in society.” They’re apparently “tired of seeing the government and big business work together to pull the wool over the American public’s eyes.” 1, 2, 3, 4, smash the state!

Dictionaraoke, quite possibly from the same culture-jamming source as those devillish droplift project and negativeland tykes. It features a wonderful selection of downloadable tracks, each a cover version of a well-known tune done in a strangely disembodied Stephen Hawkins style.

The Website Fulifier. Put your website through the mangle.

They Rule, which “allows users to browse through the interlocking directories of some of the most powerful American companies and easily run searches on them.” It seems that subversion is now flash generated.

Hairytongue. Not a new site, but a new discovery. If they gave out Oscars for superlative hidden source code, this site would walk away with an armful.

I am a relieved man. With five days until I go away on holiday, the call I have been waiting for arrived – my Russian, Mongolian and Chinese visas have been approved, and I’m all set. While I’m gone I’ll be leaving you in the extremely capable hands of Dave Roozendaal and Rich Pizor. You’ll have to be gentle with them when they start posting, and in the meantime it’ll be necessary to put up with a few more days of my inane wittering. Apologies.

“We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true“. Robert Wilensky (1951- ), American academic. He must have been reading this site.

The armit as a sex organ. Ugh.

The City and Council of Honolulu have a splendid website that offers visitors a pretty comprehensive list of what’s available on the Island, from the services offered to local businesses to activities that might be of interest to visitors and tourists. Judging by the site’s religion section the Council are happy to welcome all sorts of people to the Island. Either that, or the link to the Satanist Church of Hawaii is an oversight.