Books News

CNN.com: New Alexandria library expected to boost Egypt’s role in research and study.

Link via Garret.

Weblogs

There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday which also appeared in the New Jersey Online NewsFlash: E-World: Individuality conquers information overload as Weblogs proliferate, by Thomas E. Weber.

“Combining the personal perspective of a journal with the vast databank of cyberspace, a good weblog can take you in a hundred different directions in just a few minutes. Compelling and interactive, it represents the most successful new literary form of the Internet Age.”

Link via Zannah, whose weblog, /usr/bin/girl, is mentioned in the article.

Good old Europe

Surprise is back! Mira writes:

“Behind a surface of continuity Europe is going through a big transition. The forming of the new united Europe is still at its beginning. […] Once one enters Europe all this hassle of customs is gone and one can move freely. It makes sense and brings people closer. Now it is not a big deal to move and to work whereever one wishes to do so. One feels the effect – all of a sudden life becomes more international, more open for changes and exchanges: It is a time for new possibilities and chances.”

Why do you keep a weblog?

“What’s the point of personal weblogs? Does it fulfill some psychological need? Is it for attention? For fun?” asks Graham Walker in this Metafilter thread.

It’s interesting to read about the different reasons people have for blogging.

The ‘Hell Desk’

Are they serious about this one?

“HellDesk: Hello, I.T. Department, how may we help you?

End User: Oh, hello. I was just trying to install the latest version of the Internet Browser software which you’ve sent me. I need to run the program called ‘iesetup.exe’. And I can’t find the strange upside-down exclamation mark type-thing on my keyboard. Any ideas?

HellDesk: Sir, try the key between ‘U’ and ‘O’ on your keyboard.

End User: Yes, that’s the one! Thanks very much indeed!”

Once again, link via /usr/bin/girl.

Emoticons

Bored of the good ol’ :-) and ;-)? There are lots and lots and lots of emoticons on Bronwen & Claire’s Really Huge Emoticon Collection.

Do you know this one?

3:*>

It’s – Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer!

And here’s Elvis:   5:-J

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Flipped the page!

Ahem… what was that again? – No, I’m not addicted to weblogging, I can stop any time I want to, and I can easily skip a day…

Okay, I admit it. I just had to flip because it’s Monday, and that’s usually the day with the most traffic.

It has been pretty stormy today in Germany. Last night we got a storm warning, with prediction of wind speed up to 120 km/h.

Although the wind is pretty strong, it was not as bad as the fall storms I’m used to from the time I was living in Northern Germany. One advantage is that we’re inside a city here, not in the open country, plus we are further from the sea here.

Tad Williams again

The Official Tad Williams FAQ, Version 1.0.1.

And the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Interactive Thesis, by Guthwulf.

Sunny!

Ah, what a wonderful day. The sky is blue, the sun is shining. But it’s quite stormy, so the air is very fresh. This is no day to spend in front of the computer.

So I guess I’ll work on my thesis instead.

Boo!

The scariest books of all time on CNN. – I vote for the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is my favourite story by Poe and a classic. I found The Tell-Tale Heart online, in case you want to read it. (Here is another, more scary-looking version with horrible sound – or is it music?)

I would recommend listening to the story even more than reading it. Here is a real audio version of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, but since I don’t have a real audio player installed, I couldn’t test it.

Link via Sheila.

Big brother is watching you…

Die Big Brother Awards “soll missbräuchlichen Gebrauch von Technik und Informationen aufzeigen und so zu ihrer Akzeptanz beitragen.”

Unter den Ausgezeichneten 2000: die Payback-Karte, Bahnchef Mehdorn, Mailanbieter GMX und das Bundesverwaltungsamt Köln.

Die Big-Brother-Awards sind ein Cousin der Big Brother Awards USA/Kanada; weitere Awards gibt es in Großbritannien, Österreich und der Schweiz.

Hör mal wer da hämmert

That’s the German title for ‘Tim Allen’s Home Improvement’.

Garret and Sandra are getting excited about their house, and Garret is thinking about woodwork so much he fears his blog “may turn into a santa fe version of tim allen’s ‘home improvement’ …”

Hey, Garret, I wouldn’t mind at all! I used to watch ‘Home Improvement’ a couple of years ago (when I still had a TV set).

Today’s Sunset

More good news

Hey, Christopher came home from the hospital! Good to hear he’s better.

Finally!

Okay, I’m veeery late on this. But still – congratulations, Susan, on the release of ‘Bryce 4’! What a happy day!

Gefunden

Die Referrer logs sind schon was Interessantes. Fand ich da doch einen Besucher, der von http://blah.blah.de/ronsens/ gekommen ist. Und was finde ich auf ronsens? Einen Link zu mir. Okay, das war nicht so überraschend, aber ich fand dort auch jede Menge Lego-Links!

Leider hat die Site ja überhaupt nicht meine Neugier hinsichtlich der Autorin oder des Autors befriedigt. Kein Link zu sehen… Wer bist Du?

Lego links

Legopolis online – “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a minifig…”

This is just too cute. The site has everything for the daily life in Legopolis, even an online flower shop – which of course sends Lego flowers!

Be sure to visit the Legopolis Museum of Science’s Dead Dino Exhibit

The Minifig Museum of Modern Art is also pretty neat.

Links via ronsens (German site).

Happy Birthday!

I just read on dangerous meta that it’s Sandra’s birthday today…

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag, Sandra!

Coke is evil-discussion

Garret posted another message today and asks:

“art laffer is a questionable source for information, imho. it’s his ‘laffer curve’ that got us into deficits in the first place. [i wonder, if the curmudgeon is reading this, if he could tell us what the rep for laffer currently is amongst scholars. the american economic association, at the time of reagan’s election, had very few proponents of supply-side theory. very few. i wonder how many currently are supply-side converts?] “

John, if you are reading this and could help out, we would be most grateful!

Tad Williams

Tonight, André and I are going to see – and listen to – Tad Williams (deutsche Site), author of Otherland, the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy and several other books. He’s one of my favorite authors, so I’m looking very forward to tonight. He is going to read from his latest book, Montain of Black Glass, the third part of ‘Otherland’. The book has recently been released in German, but of course we bought it in English last fall while in the USA.

Since reading it, I’ve been waiting for the fourth and last part… (I’ve written about his books here (deutsche Version).

Here are two interviews with Tad Williams:

• SF Site: A conversation with Tad Williams, August 1999.
• SFFWorld.com: Interview with Tad Williams, October 1999.

IMDb

The Internet Movie Database is ten years old this month (on October 17th)!

Ich habe auf IMDb auch einen Link zur deutschen IMDb-Site gefunden, aber da scheint was nicht zu stimmen, denn die Texte sind alle auf Englisch, nur eine deutsche Bannerwerbung konnte ich entdecken…

Lego links

The Schockwellenreiter had a ton of links for me last night!

The Matrix (Matrix on IMBb), Monty Python’s Holy Grail (Holy Grail on IMDb), and music album covers, all done with minifigs! They’re really cool!

Mathematics

Ever needed the first 5 million digits of the square root of two? Look them up!. (Only 4.8 MB…)

Link via Schockwellenreiter.