Jack’s Old & Busted Blog

(ugo.com): “Some of these items are already on sale, though many are only available direct from their parent companies. Others haven’t quite hit the streets, and it’ll be some time before we know if they ever will. Either way, Toy Fair is about more than what we’re going to see at Toys ‘R’ Us this coming fall, so if you want to really see how far it reaches, consider this list as the best of the rest…or at least, the best of the strangest.”

(The Surreal Gourmet): “For those with a sense of culinary adventure The Surreal Gourmet serves up fresh attitude towards cooking and entertaining and shows you how dysfunctional kitchens, mismatched dinnerware and low budgets can be easily overcome by a little creativity and an armful of fresh ingredients!”

(link): “Light playing on water drops, dust or ice crystals in the atmosphere produces a host of visual spectacles - rainbows, halos, glories, coronas and many more. Some can be seen almost every day or so, some are once in a lifetime sights. Find out where to see them and how they form. Then seek and enjoy them outdoors. “

Well, this is depressing. (Guardian): “A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.”

Lots of excellent tutorials here. A good blend of technology and aesthetics.

(luminous-landscape.com): “Often photographers bemoan their lack time or other resources needed to travel to exotic places to do their photography. But there are wonderful photographic images to be found everywhere, from your hometown to your living room. You just have to look, and more importantly you have to see.”

And other funny ads from computer history (OLD-COMPUTERS.COM).

Playing with the text/background colors on this page made me think about the basis for my decisions; it seems I’m always gravitating toward green text on a black background. Turns out, that was the standard color for the monochrome CRT of my* first computer (PET / CBM 40xx). This was/is the standard color for a lot of terminals (and amber, which I hated). Later, when I had an AppleIIGS, I set the screen colors to green/black. So, anyway, I wonder how much web color decisions are based on one’s personal computer history. Mac people remember black bitmapped text on white backgrounds, for example.

*(I say, “mine,” but it belonged officially to my junior high; I took it home every weekend, though, because I was the only one interested in this stuff at the time. I learned a little BASIC this way, and that no matter what Led Zeppelin tape you tried to LOAD, there just weren’t any interesting secret data to be found. . . )