More About My Interests
If you're interested in finding out more about me and/or my school related
information you have to check out my about me
page. I separated them from my list of interests because the list was
getting too long. This should let you load the pages faster and hopefully
find things more quickly.
If you want to go directly to one of the two sections, you can jump straight
to my biography and description or my
school and work information. Or, if you
haven't yet seen my main index page you can check
that out.
For this year (2009), I'd like to highlight the
International Year of Astronomy
(IYA) marking the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical
telescope by Galileo Galilei. A few highlights:
365 Days of Astronomy producing
a new astronomy podcast episode for every day of 2009 and
Galileoscope telescope kits
are now on sale if you want to pick up your own high-quality telescope for
a low cost ($15, and you'd be hard-pressed to find something better than
the Galileoscope at that price). Some past highlights:
100 Hours of Astronomy on
April 2-5 and
You Decide Hubble's Next Discovery. For additional information, you can try
the international IYA site above or the
US Node's IYA Site. There are many
activities all around the globe all year long, and everyone should find
something of interest to help them rediscover their place in the universe
and realize the impact of astronomy and basic science on our daily lives,
so I encourage you to participate in whatever way you can.
Here are some of my hobbies, interests, etc. I've tried to order the list
(roughly) with things I'm doing more often or just want to promote more closer
to the top and other things further down. I've got lots of interests though
and some come and go, so it's pretty hard to have any type of order be accurate
for any length of time. Just keep that in mind and expect changes now and
then. I've decided to add in a set of quick links to the different interest
categories below, mainly because it's kind of big and it will save some
scrolling up and down the page. So here they are:
lists,
parakeets/budgies,
ballroom dancing,
music,
science,
learning,
cartoons/anime,
sumo,
professional wrestling,
martial arts,
computers etc.,
Australian rules football,
role playing games,
interactive fiction,
gamebooks,
collectible card games,
shortwave radio,
radio scanning,
old time radio,
calligraphy,
MST3K,
British comedies,
science fiction,
Sherlock Holmes,
tea,
wine,
high IQ societies,
numbers,
games/puzzles,
warlording,
miscellaneous.
- Keeper of Lists -- The Canonical
Smiley
(extra info about it, also an
award winner),
Abbreviation/Acronym
(award winner), and
Astronomical Abbrev/Acro lists (recognized as
canonical by the Wrecked Humor Collection, site gone), as well as a list of
professor quotes and 50
Fun Things to Do to Annoy Your Physics Professor. (P.S. -- These are all
also listed on my index page.) I have also put up a
page containing links to some astronomy programs
that I've written, as well as a few other amusing programs thrown in for fun.
For more things along the lines of my smiley list, check out pages on
ASCII art.
I know this isn't an exact fit, but I also enjoy reading for fun when I have
time (which usually isn't as often as I'd like) and one of the best places to
get plain text copies of no longer copyrighted works on the web is
Project Gutenberg.
I also like and use DailyLit to read
books, mostly older classics. They e-mail you books and stories in small
parts that only take about 5 minutes to read, so it's a pretty convenient
way to get some fun reading in. You can see a little bit of what I'm up to
on their site via
my DailyLit profile.
Warning: Some files (Smileys and Abbrev/Acro in particular) may
contain material that is inappropriate for some readers (particularly
younger ones) -- caution and discretion is advised!
- Parakeets/Budgies --
My family had a parakeet when I was a child, and now I have two of my own that
I got from my brother. His two parakeets had two clutches of babies, and he
offered me one from each clutch. I got a cute, hand-raised, sky blue budgie
with a yellow face that I named Ruffles from the first clutch, and a
light green (with yellow) budgie from the second clutch named Sprite --
they're brothers. :) For a bit more about them, take a look at
Ruffles' profile and/or
Sprite's profile on BirdChannel.com.
I've been reading up on these birds to help me prepare for having
my own pet again. A more accurate name for them is budgies, from budgerigar,
but whatever you call them, they're cute animals and generally easy to care
for. A few web sites that I thought had good information are
Parakeet Training and
Care,
The Budgie and Parakeet Place,
TheParakeetPlace,
and my favorite place for chat, the
Talk Budgies Forum.
Registering
for Talk Budgies is free and will remove that nag block at the top of
every page, so I'd recommend doing it. You can also try
BirdChannel.com's Forum for chat
about birds in general, not just budgies.
- Ballroom Dancing --
I've decided to create my own web page with info and stuff about this, the one
style of dancing that I really enjoy. So I've taken out the info from here
and put it all on My Ballroom Dancing Page. I'll
keep the link to the Ballroom
At Maryland club here though, because I use it a lot. :)
- Music --
very important to me. I play
trombone and used to
play for all the school bands at Villanova (concert, marching/scramble, pep,
jazz), but I'm out of practice now. Check out the
Bass Wailage
home page for low brass fun! Now I mainly play
piano
for fun at home, real or electronic/digital, depending on what's available.
For Christmas 2008, my wife bought me the
Yamaha YPG-635
to replace my old
Yamaha PSR150,
which I bought somewhere around 1995 for a college music theory class.
The new YPG-635 is far more advanced than the PSR150 and I expect it
to serve me well for at least as long as my old model.
I've also tried learning to play the
harmonica,
basically to play blues, but haven't gotten very far. I love listening to
music of a variety of
genres,
preferably
jazz,
blues, or
big
band, and any ballroom dancing type music (like latin music), but I enjoy
some other styles, too, including Japanese anime music and popular music or
J-pop (I like the
Jpopmusic.com forums for chat
about this); modern/alternative rock;
electronic
styles like trance, dance, house, techno, etc., however they classify them
(Digitally Imported has a lot of streams).
And I can at least tolerate almost anything.
If you want song lyrics, try Lyrics.com,
A-Z Lyrics Universe, or
Music Song Lyrics;
they all seem pretty good. There are a lot of
artists that I
like in big band and jazz music, but my favorite artist has got to be
Harry Connick, Jr. (here's a
good fan site) --
I've got all his albums. :) I also write music for fun when I'm inspired
and have got a bunch of tunes put together and some phrases and things that I
like but haven't worked into full songs yet. Some of them used to be on
the Original Jazz Charts page,
but for some reason, they're no longer available there. If you're interested
in my music, let me know and we'll work out something. If anyone's
curious, I made a simple music CD wish list of
some of the more expensive CDs I'd like to get (mostly Japanese pop and anime
music). I also recently subscribed to
Sheet Music Magazine so that
I can get more songs, in generally better arrangements, than I have now.
- Science --
astronomy and
physics in particular,
since those are my major fields (more of that in my
school info section). But if you want a
nice page about the constellations with maps, basic descriptions, mythology,
and history, try
The Constellations.
I'm sure you can find lots of other pages if you look, but this seems to be
one of the best all-around pages for basic info. I've also used the
Peterson Field Guide:
Stars and Planets for years; a great general information book with lots
of star charts and stuff. Another good site, Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy page is
devoted to "airing out myths and misconceptions in astronomy and related
topics". It's a good place to get the facts and the truth about sometimes
misunderstood topics (e.g., balancing eggs at vernal equinox, Apollo Moon
landings, other Moon topics, some movies). Another interesting site is
Galaxy Zoo, now in its second major
phase where you can help classify galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
You might also like to check out
the Intellectual Icebergs
podcast for some interesting science and geek-oriented material.
Here's something else that's interesting -- the
Clear Sky Clock
for U. Maryland Observatory which can help you tell when the skies will
be clear enough for astronomical observing. Many cities/locations have one,
so check out the site for one near you if you like it. If you'd like to get
a green laser pointer for pointing to stars and such, try
Wicked Lasers --
I have their 5mW CORE model (which I recommend, BTW) because it satisfies my
needs, but they also sell more powerful lasers than that. Also check out
Sam's Laser FAQ for
a lot of good information on laser safety, types, etc. The
Annals of Improbable Research have some
interesting items that, according to their slogan, "makes people LAUGH and
then THINK".
- Learning -- While science, technology, computers,
and the like are some of my primary areas of interest, I enjoy learning in
general. I tend to prefer colloquia/seminars over more complete courses
(e.g., college classes), but here are some sites of both types I found that
seem like good places to learn new things:
MIT's OpenCourseWare,
UC Berkeley web casts,
Open Yale courses,
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design),
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics,
Gresham College, and
Annenberg Media's
teacher resources (looks like a free account is required). A few sites
have compiled places with online learning material, including
Internet Educational Resources,
Free Academic Podcasts,
Directory of E-Learning Tools,
Free Science and Video Lectures,
Online Libraries,
Academic Earth, and
YouTube EDU.
Related, I now read BBC Knowledge Magazine,
which covers science, history, and nature as its main subject areas. I've
also created a page with the resource sites
from the issues published so far; more will be added after I get new issues.
- Cartoons and Anime --
Like most people, I watched cartoons as a kid while growing up. I still enjoy
watching them now and I still watch Saturday morning cartoons, just taped for
later viewing. :) My favorite Saturday morning shows are on
Kids' WB, but
4Kids TV (previously FOX Box) has a few
good ones I try to catch (if I'm awake early enough). Of course
I also watch Cartoon Network (CN)
for a variety of other shows including more Japanese animated shows, often
just called anime here. Their
Toonami programs often
have some anime shows, but it was their
Adult Swim action shows that sparked
my interest in the subject. It pointed out that cartoons don't all have to
have children as the main target audience and cartoons aimed towards adults can
be quite interesting.
AdultSwim Video has
some anime you can watch online, but most of it is non-anime comedy. Still,
free streaming anime is a good deal, but with the death of Toonami Jetstream
there isn't enough of it (as far as I can tell). They also have
Cartoon Network Videos with a
bunch of other cartoons, but only Naruto for anime.
G4 TV also has an anime block,
Anime Unleashed,
but they don't send me e-mail newsletters like I asked them to, so I have no
idea of what they're showing, if anything, anymore.
I also started buying some anime and if anyone's interested, here's a simple
sort of combined anime inventory and wish list file.
I also bought and built some small G Gundam models
if you'd like to take a look at them.
I also found a nice web board for anime discussions at
AnimeBoards.com;
many shows have their own individual forums.
Toon Zone
also has a nice set of forums.
You can use Anime on TV to help you
find out when and where anime shows are airing in the US and Canada.
BTW, when I want to find brief episode guides for shows
I've seen, epguides.com usually has them
and Anime Lyrics is a good place to
find anime song lyrics.
Anime Web Turnpike is a pretty good
portal providing links to many sites on all sorts of topics and
AnimeOnDVD.com has a lot of useful
information as well. The
Anime News Network is a pretty
good site for all sorts of anime related news (and has a
video section, too),
and AnimeNfo.Com is a pretty good place
to look up basic information on various titles. And be sure to check out the
Pirate Anime FAQ
for details about how to spot illegal anime merchandise of all types. It's
way too common, so please support the creators of the shows you like by buying
the official releases. I'll also toss in a quick note that I enjoy reading
manga,
too, and subscribe to Shonen Jump
(the US version). Pocky seems to be a rather popular
snack among anime fans.
- Sumo --
the traditional Japanese style of wrestling. The competitors tend to be very
heavy since there's no weight limit. Though the matches are usually over in a
matter of seconds, they can still be quite exciting to watch. The
Nihon Sumo Kyokai hosts the
official grand sumo home page. Some nice tournament reports can be found at
SumoNow.net, a good news site is
Da Kine Sumo E-zine,
and if you want to see some actual matches from the Japanese tournaments, visit
the movie pages at Banzuke.com.
Here's another
Sumo Page with a few movies.
Here is the newest version of the
Sumo FAQ; I even
helped make some of the updates. The archives of the Sumo Mailing List among
other things is at Banzuke.com and a
list of sumo related games can be found at
BenchSumo.net. An alternative to the
mailing list is the web board at
SumoForum.net.
Stats and results from the highest two divisions, makuuchi or makunouchi and
juryo, along with other related info are available at many web sites including
Stefan Gelow's Sumo Page,
Masumiriki's Sumo Site,
Sumo Information (including
customizable results and search page for *all* divisions),
Bandey's Sumo Site, and
Toshiharu's Sumo
Page, and a site with the full third division,
makushita results in English
for those interested (here's that site's main
page), and
detailed results of the basho which
contains all the results for all divisions.
- Professional Wrestling --
My brother got me into this some years ago when he started getting into it.
And yes, I know the basic deal behind it, but it's still entertaining which
is why I watch it. It's also popular in Japan and Mexico in somewhat different
forms/styles, but I don't know all that much about it in either place. I do
have a few tapes of foreign events and would like to get some more; here a
simple wrestling tape inventory and wish list file.
The biggest US federation is
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE),
previously known as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), but the
National Wrestling Alliance (NWA)
now has their
Total Nonstop Action Impact
program on SpikeTV (which also
carries some UFC related programming). The WWE has also brought back
Extreme Championship Wrestling
(ECW), which focuses on hardcore wrestling.
I'm sure there are some other smaller, more independent groups. Some good
sites for news, information, show reports, etc. include
A1 Wrestling with links to headlines
at a number of other sites,
Pro Wrestling Torch,
411mania.com Wrestling, and the
Wrestling
Information Archive. Some other nice sites include
The Big, Big, Book
of Wrestling Moves and I like this site for
Pro-Wrestling Title
Histories. Here's Yahoo's link to
amateur
wrestling if you prefer that.
- Martial Arts --
I have a sort of general interest in martial arts, but never really studied
any until recently. Until my school/work load dramatically increased, I was
taking a class in northern
Shaolin
long fist
kung fu
with the
Chinese Martial Arts Club
on campus. I also learned some
tai chi
now, a Yang style long form. I tried learning some on my own, after doing the
same with
yoga
first, but I'm glad I am now getting real instruction from a good teacher.
Some of the websites I've found with good information include
Cloud Hands: Taijiquan and
Qigong,
TheTaiChiSite with its wealth of
links,
Erle Montaigue's Taijiworld has
good information and a number of
free downloads (on another site now),
Reinhard's Tai Chi
Collection and the
Tai Chi Archives at
Key Arts Media
both contain some good articles.
Taiji.de (in
English) has a bunch of forms in
videos and pictures, and
Inside Wudang has some videos as well. For something cute, take a look at the
Yang form as ASCII art.
A nice, general message board is
MartialTalk.com
and one specifically for kung fu is
Kung Fu Magazine's
board. The CyberKwoon.com board
isn't bad either. I also copied out a
lot of various tai chi forms from the books I own
with a little bit of information about each. If you're looking for a list of
posture names for a form, take a look and see if I have it in one of my books.
On a related note, MMA has some TV coverage now including the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)
on SpikeTV,
World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) and the
striking-only
World Combat League (WCL)
created by Chuck Norris on Versus, and
the International Fight League (IFL) on
MyNetworkTV.
- Computers and the Internet --
I recently ordered a Dell Inspiron E1505
notebook to replace my Inspiron 8000 notebook. I've previously owned both a
desktop and a notebook by Compaq (merged
into Hewlett-Packard). When I was a kid I had a Commodore 64, possibly one of
the best computers of the '80s, and you can still play all those classic games
available at sites like C64.com,
C64 Internet Archive,
C64 Unlimited, and
Lemon 64 thanks to emulators (check those
sites for links). I think my family still has that old C64 and accessories
(remember tape drives?), but I kind of doubt it actually works anymore. I was
surprised to find that the Commodore company lasted until 1994, for 40 years --
here's a sort of
obituary with notes
about all their innovations in the computer industry, mostly forgotten now
which is why I linked it up. The Commodore was cool. :)
My current handheld computer or
Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) is
a smartphone by Palm, the
Centro using
Sprint as the wireless provider. It's a
great device and can do just about everything -- phone, PDA organizing, photos, videos, music, e-mail, web browsing, instant messaging, text messaging, etc.
The monthly plan I have is a bit expensive compared to a landline phone, but
it also provides far more features, so it kind of balances out.
I also have a Palm
Zire 72
which is actually under the name "palmOne", which is now serving as my backup
device. I used to own a PDA by
HandEra, the
HandEra 330,
which had quite a few features that IMO made it really stand out. Some of
those features are just now starting to appear in newer models, years after
HandEra introduced them, and at least one feature (two industry standard
expansion slots -- CF and SD/MMC) has yet to appear on another model.
A couple of nice Palm web sites include
FreewarePalm.com and
Freeware PalmOS.
On a somewhat related topic, here's where to find the latest
version of the Jargon File which
contains lots of definitions of terms and slang used in the computing world.
Also of interest might be
The Abandonware Ring for
links to sites with older computer games that have basically been abandoned by
the companies that made them. Home of
the Underdogs is a great site and used to have some gamebooks (it seems
they're no longer on the site since it changed domains). Make sure you
read a FAQ on abandonware first though so you know how it works. I'm also
tossing in a link to the Myst Worlds
site because I really like this set of games. Myst, Riven, Exile, Revelation,
and End of Ages are the main line, but there are also realMYST (original
Myst remade in full 3D) and Uru which takes place off the main line of the
others. Here's a pretty good
Myst discussion board.
A general computer note -- you should always protect your system with
antivirus software (pick your favorite), but beware of hoaxes. Make sure a
virus is real by checking sites like
Vmyths.com,
HoaxBusters.org (or the
HoaxBusters.org FAQ), or
Symantec's List of Hoaxes
before e-mailing everyone you know about it. Semi-related,
check out snopes.com and/or
TruthOrFiction.com
for the truth behind some of the urban legends and other tales being spread
around the internet.
- Role
Playing Games -- Specifically
Dungeons & Dragons,
a game I started playing way back in grade school and that has fascinated me
for quite a long time since then. I really enjoy it and unfortunately I
haven't played in a long time, but I still like it all the same. My favorite
world is probably
DragonLance even though I haven't played it, because I've read some of the
novels based on the DragonLance world and really enjoyed them. At one point
I was looking into play by e-mail
games but the action was too slow and I couldn't follow it. If you like
paper and pencil RPGs, there lists of free RPGs at
John Kim's Free RPGs on the Web
and The Free RPG Compendium.
Playing on
MUDs
falls into this category as well, so I have to mention my favorite MUD --
Realms of Despair; you can find
me as Dronak there (and anywhere else a nickname is used, but watch out for
imposters; some people managed to register that name at some places before I
could). I usually only visit now and then to read notes and see what's
happening. I contributed a number of pages to the
Official Guild Of Mages web site.
If you're looking for other MUDs, try
Top MUD Sites for rankings of
the most popular MUDs. There's also a set of games refered to as
Rogue-like games
after the original game of this style. These are sort of a single player, roam
the dungeon type RPG, normally in a text or low-graphics interface. They're
kind of fun, so you might like to check these out, too.
Angband and
NetHack are two of the most popular
games. Here's a great
List of
NetHack Spoilers because you pretty much have to read spoilers to
survive. I also kind of like ADOM (Ancient
Domains Of Mystery) because it's not all dungeon; here's a rather comprehensive
ADOM Guidebook (includes
spoilers). For fun, here's a link to
ComicHack, a comic based on Nethack.
Recently, I found out about
persistent browser-based games (PBBGs),
which seem to be like RPGs played in your web browser with a memory to store
the state of your game. I'm trying out
Sryth right now since
it was mentioned as an RPG/gamebook cross on a gamebook mailing list I'm on,
but there are plenty of others listed on the PBBG site above. If you join
Sryth's Adventurers Guild like I did, please say that Dronak referred you.
Thanks.
-
Interactive Fiction (IF) also known as text adventures -- those classic
games where everything is text and you have to use your imagination to
visualize the world you're in while going around trying to solve the game and
overcoming all the obstacles and other puzzles that stand in your way. I think
these can be a lot of fun and the community is still alive with plenty of new
free games being produced all the time. Interested, but don't know where to
start? Try this
Beginner's Guide to Playing IF
which is sort of a quick-start guide going from "what is IF?" to helping you
download games and the software needed to play them. For more general
information and news, try
Brass Lantern.
The biggest site for downloading games is the
Interactive Fiction Archive with its
FTP-like interface or
Baf's Guide to the Interactive
Fiction Archive which gives reviews, etc. and provides links to the games
at the archive site.
This
Recommended Playing
List organizes games by especially notable features and the
IF Rating Stats
page is a great source for getting ratings and rankings of lots of games.
If you want to play some games on line, try the
iFiction site.
One of the biggest companies to produce interactive fiction was Infocom, now
owned by Activision.
Peter Scheyen's Infocom page is a
great starting point (download the classic Zork trilogy for free),
somes scans of the original materials are on
The Infocom Gallery, and
The Infocom Documentation Project is
trying to collect copies of all the original docs. Info about Scott Adams'
games can be found at
Scott Adams Grand Adventures
and IF-Legends.Org hosts a number of
other nice sites.
You might also like to check out the newsletters
from the Society for the Promotion
of Adventure Games (SPAG) or
XYZZYnews, both of which contain game
reviews, or the Usenet newsgroup
rec.games.int-fiction for general discussion. BTW, the readers of that newsgroup have sponsored an
annual IF competition each fall since
1995; it's practically the focus of the IF community now, when many new games
are released and lots of discussion and feedback is offered (something the
authors love to see/get). I also have my own page of
IF mini-reviews with some of my thoughts and notes
on some games I've played.
Some older games came with "feelies", small items such as a
coin, flyer, picture, etc. that related to the game and were nice souvenirs.
This practice isn't completely dead though as
feelies.org sells items for some of
the games you can download from the IF Archive.
- Gamebooks --
These were basically single player, RPG type games much like IF but in book
form, popular mainly around the 1980s. The story is broken up into
small pieces, numbered paragraphs, and at some you get to make a choice that
takes you to another numbered paragraph elsewhere in the book. You keep
reading and flipping pages like this until you reach an endpoint, good or bad.
Not all series were heavy on the RPG aspects though; some like the Choose
Your Own Adventure (CYOA) series were more like interactive stories where
you simply made decisions, no battles, equipment, inventory, etc. I believe
the rise of computer games kind of pushed gamebooks out of the market which
is too bad because they're different things, both enjoyable for what they are,
and computer gamers do still read, don't they? Anyway, until fairly recently
I had forgotten how many books and series I read and enjoyed over the years.
I've also added some more titles to my little collection of gamebooks and will
keep an eye out for others I might like to own. If anyone's interested, here's
a simple sort of combined gamebook inventory and wish
list file. A few of my favorite series are
Be An
Interplanetary Spy (various authors), Sorcery! by Steve Jackson
(some reviews and
walkthroughs) which is set in the
same world as the
Fighting Fantasy
series, and
Lone Wolf
by Joe Dever.
Project Aon is producing
full, legal copies of the Lone Wolf books and
FabledLands.com should do the same
for the Fabled Lands series (eventually). One good site with FF information
is
Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.
These books are now being reprinted and I'm buying them from the UK and Canada
because the US printings are slow in coming (shipping costs a bit, but oh
well). If you want to know some more about gamebooks,
Demian's Gamebook Web Page is a
very comprehensive source of information on the subject with a huge checklist
and lots of book/series reviews, and thus an excellent place to start. While
smaller, Aaron Thorne's
Gamebook Page is another good place to visit. BTW, if you want a taste of
what some books are like, maybe to see if you'd be interested in getting them,
I typed up some back of the book blurbs from
the Lone Wolf books, World of Lone Wolf books, Fighting Fantasy reprints,
scans I found of the Fabled Lands covers, Be an Interplanetary Spy, and
Cretan Chronicles.
I might add more later.
- Collectible Card Games --
Magic: The Gathering (MTG) by
Wizards of the Coast is the original
collectible/trading card game (CCG or TCG) in case you didn't already know.
Its introduction in 1993 started the whole genre of games where you collect
cards of different types and rarities to create your own unique deck to
play with. I started playing about a year after it came out and I've been
following it ever since, mostly on a casual level.
Here's my inventory of Magic cards for anyone
interested, possibly for trading purposes.
Anyway, it's a great game of both strategy and luck with lots of different
sets of cards, a number of stand-alone sets that can be played without the
basic set, many ways to play, interesting game mechanics, and so much more
that I won't try to talk about it all here. You can find more information
on the links at
Yahoo's Magic page and can discuss it at the
Wizards.COMmunity Board for Magic.
You can find news and rumors about the game at
MTGNews.com and more good information
like rules and card rulings at
Crystal Keep.
One of the semi-standard price lists for Magic cards can be found at
MagicTraders.com;
it's essentially the old Cloister lists but the original
manager retired and someone else took over. A few other games I've tried
include Pokemon,
WWE Raw Deal,
Yu-Gi-Oh!,
and a Monty Python game,
but none of them really hooked me like Magic did, so I've basically quit on
them. I have thought about buying starters of various other CCGs/TCGs,
just to test them out and see what they're like, but haven't really pursued
that yet.
P.S. -- I finally got the Magic pin I've
always wanted, one with the pentagon of colors; using mana symbols was a bonus.
- Old Time Radio -- Many years
ago the radio reigned supreme in home entertainment and there were some
really great programs broadcast back then. There were tons, just like TV now,
but a few of my favorites include
Suspense,
Escape,
X Minus One,
Dimension X,
Quiet Please
(see also QuietPlease.org),
The Whistler,
The Mysterious Traveler,
Lights Out,
and other mystery/drama type shows.
There were great comedy shows, too, but they're not my first choice.
Many shows have entries at the
Wikipedia's list of OTR programs.
To get a feel for the kinds of stories OTR told, try
OTR Plot Spot's
plot archives
(mainly sci-fi, horror, and adventure) or
OTR Plot Summaries
(mainly "Detectives, Mystery, Vigilantes, and Westerns").
A variety of sites have programs, but most don't have very many shows online.
However, the OTR.Network Library looks
like a good place to hear a number of shows and episodes online. Some
OTR stations can be found on Live365
and ShoutCast; for example,
OTRNow and
Yesterday USA. My favorite place to
buy OTR is OTRcat which has many series
for sale in MP3 format on CDs for a great price. Most aren't complete, but
if you don't count lost episodes some are as complete as you can get. Here's
a little OTR inventory and wish list file if you're
curious to see what I have and would still like to get. Oh, and they track
references now so if you decide to order after hearing about the site from
me, please say that James Marshall from College Park recommended you. Thanks.
The Old Time Radio Vault
also has a good selection of shows available for purchase; you can get
custom made CDs from them, but I prefer OTRcat's premade CDs for series.
If you're looking for program logs,
Vintage Radio Logs has tons of
them available.
Naturally, you can use the links provided at these sites to get you to all
sorts of other similar places, many of which will probably have more programs
for you to listen to. :)
Old time radio programs aren't only found on the web. There are a lot of
radio stations
rebroadcasting old time radio programs. Check out this list and you might
find some you can listen to. WRVO is one that
has programs every evening and can be heard on line.
-
Shortwave Radio -- I bought a shortwave radio back in 1999 so that I could
listen to radio broadcasts from all around the world. It's interesting to hear
what's happening in other areas of the world and sometimes you'll get a new
perspective on the same news you get on the TV and radio. I selected the
Radio Shack DX-398 a.k.a. Sangean ATS-909 and I'm quite happy with it. Here's
a FAQ
about this radio and there's a
Yahoo group for it, too.
It has pages of memory that allow you to store up to 261 shortwave frequencies
in memory (if you're curious, here are
my memory presets; I haven't changed them in a long
time) and it's also able to receive
Radio Data System (RDS)
signals/information. RDS is a very cool system if used to its fullest
extent, but it hasn't caught on here in the US like it has in Europe. More
FM stations in the US should use it. :) A few good sites with lots of
various information about amateur and shortwave radio include:
DXing.com, a great
radio review list
by Radio Netherlands, and AC6V.com.
For program listings there are a number of things out there like
The WWW Shortwave Listening
Guide (the web version of the book), but probably the best way to get this info is to buy a book
like the Passport to World Band Radio
or the World Radio TV Handbook. If you
want links to web sites for many of the international shortwave broadcasters,
try this Shortwave stations page; the
government page would be a
good place to start. Other interesting pages include
WHAMLOG with files for both
AM/MW and FM, the
DX-midAMerica
pages, and
Prime Time Shortwave.
One little note for anyone interested -- the BBC has pulled direct
shortwave service to North America and the Pacific as of July 1, 2001 thus
abandoning over 1.2 million listeners. They basically set the standard for
all news type broadcasts and this is a big setback. For more info take a
look at SaveBBC.org.
- Radio
Scanning -- After realizing that I was still missing out on a lot of radio
action by not covering the frequencies above shortwave, I decided to purchase
a scanner. In 2000 (I think) I chose to go with the Sony ICF-SC1 Wavehawk
because it was discontinued and I got it on sale at nearly 75% off. Here's a
pretty good
review
of this scanner. Here is the
Yahoo group
for it; there were two, but they merged into this one. This now lets me check
out a large variety of local radio broadcasts including police, aircraft, fire,
EMS, weather, marine, military, government, FM radio, TV audio, utility
companies, schools, colleges, stores, malls, hotels, trains, taxis, and
probably more. Even cooler, it's possible to get (semi-weak) coverage of
shortwave frequencies via a specific keypress sequence detailed in the group
above.
It's also got nearly continuous coverage; lots of scanners drop some frequency
bands, mainly TV and military air, but I don't like holes in my coverage.
It doesn't cover the cellular phone region because the US government made it
illegal to listen to that and no new scanners made here have those bands.
I won't get into the arguments against this, not like I care *that* much
(though my feeling is they're right, all this legislating is the wrong way
to do things), but you should be able to find a bit of discussion about it at
the NF2G's Scannist Pages (click the
Laws & Regs link).
Here are a few sites I found helpful:
Scanning Reference
and the
Links to Scanning-Related
Pages
can get you to a lot of useful information.
Strong Signals has some good
info, too, and cityfreq lists
frequencies by city (not always huge lists, but still not bad).
Stupid Scanner Tricks looks
like it has some fun stuff.
There are some federal and state laws regarding scanners, so I'd
suggest you start reading up on the topic at this page about
scanner laws in the US.
- Australian Rules Football --
personally, I enjoy this more than American football (aka gridiron).
There's a lot more action because the rules of the game are designed
to keep play going; there are no time outs or huddles or anything like that.
It's very athletic and pretty exciting with the occasional spectacular play.
Despite its sometimes chaotic appearance, there are indeed rules :) and the
basic concept of the game isn't all that hard to understand. To paraphrase
an older commercial, it's got a little bit of basketball, football, soccer,
and a whole lot of action. ;) They have a section called
AFL Explained with some interesting information, as well as the full
laws of the game from 2008.
You might prefer to read this
FAQ on the game
instead though. Oh yeah, AFL = Australian Football League here. Aussie rules
is also catching on in other countries and good sources of information on it
in the US are the
Australian Football Association of North
America (AFANA) and the
United States Australian Football League
(USAFL) web sites; my local area club is the
Baltimore Washington Eagles.
A few other web sites I found useful include
William's AFL Footy Page,
Dag's Footy Site,
RealFooty, and
Footy Forecaster.
You can find some interesting information and tipping comps at
Monash University's
Probabilistic Footy Tipping Competition web site.
If you're into tipping competitions, they're pretty easy to find. Try
looking at some of the links on the pages above, or join the AFL site's
competition (I do every year, but I never do that great). Here's the
full fixture for 2009 that I use to track my tipping
results (minor updates made March 31 to match AFL's sheet). At 59 lines of
80 characters max, it prints out nicely on one page (8.5"x11" letter) for me
which is why I like it. I think it used to print better in DOS though.
Why not send me an e-mail if you like my version and use it? I'd like to
know if others find it helpful. Thanks. Here's the
AFL's one-page version
of the full 2009 season fixture.
Here in the US it's hard to get footy on TV. I used to see it on local
public TV stations
WNVC and WNVT
until Comcast moved them to digital-only, which I currently don't have. :(
- Calligraphy
-- the art of beautiful writing. This is something I do occasionally, usually
for fun or to make something look a little more special. Calligraphied poems
make nice gifts for special friends. I normally only use a Gothic style
alphabet, but I can write just about any style if I have a copy of the alphabet
in question in front of me. Semi-related is my interest in fountain pens.
They're not as common now as they once were, but you do get a different feel
writing with real liquid ink which tends to be more expressive and I like it.
I currently own four fountain pens, in the order I got them --
a red fine point
Waterman Phileas with the old color pattern,
an original model blue medium point
Namiki Vanishing Point,
a silver/chrome medium point
Pelikan Pharo,
and a black with gold trim medium(?) point
Cartier Diablo which my
parents bought and engraved for me as a PhD graduation gift (which came with
a matching ballpoint, also engraved, and two two-pen cases, wood and leather).
I don't write enough to keep the ink in all of the pens flowing though, so
I generally just use one (instead of rotating, the other option). That's
the Cartier Diablo because it writes the best of the ones I have.
For a little more information, here are some
pen
retailers and the Levenger
web site, the store I've bought my pens from. Also recommended to me were
Fountain Pen Hospital and
Airline International's pens and
here's a nice
general discussion board
from Penlovers.com. Some limited
edition pens are way too expensive, but a lot of them sure are pretty.
-
Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- or MST3K for short. It used to be on
Comedy Central for a quite a while, but then found a new home on the Sci-Fi
Channel and was shown there until it got cancelled after about ten seasons
total. While not airing (AFAIK), you can get copies
of almost all of the shows, except for commercial releases and such, from
Access MST3K. You can also buy
RiffTrax, MP3 audio files that sync up
with DVDs to give you that MST3K experience with more recent movies. If you've
never seen this show, the basic idea is that a guy and his robot buddies are
trapped in a spaceship and forced to watch bad movies so their reactions can
be monitored. The guys respond by continually mocking the movie and making
fun of it to help maintain their sanity and that's what makes the whole thing
funny. They get their jokes from tons of sources including other movies,
classic literature, music, and much more. The range of joke
references is tremendous. A great index page for MST3K things is
Deus Ex Machina
There's also an Internet version of the show, referred to as
Mystery Usenet Theater 3000 (or MUT3K), where people make fun of Usenet
postings in the style of MST3K. For info on this, check out
Web Site #9. I'm a member of
the fan club, too, MiSTie #71573. The club's newsletter is called the
Satellite News and has lots of info.
- British comedies --
Some of my favorites include:
'Allo 'Allo,
Are You Being Served?,
Black Adder,
Chef!,
Fawlty Towers,
Monty Python
(I'm a member of
The Spam Club, too),
Mr. Bean,
Red Dwarf,
and Whose
Line is it Anyway?. Another good place to look at is the
HumorLinks.com British Comedy
section which can connect you to info on lots of great shows.
Other good sites for Monty Python stuff are
PythOnline and
Pythonland.
- Science fiction --
Some of my favorites here include
Doctor Who
and the aforementioned Red Dwarf. Also good is
The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, often abbreviated as HHGTTG or HHGG.
Check out Project Galactic Guide
for a real life version of the famous guide.
I have a scarf like the one Tom Baker wore during his time as The Doctor that
my mother knit for me (thanks, Mom!). OK, so the colors aren't *exactly* right,
but it's easily recognizable to anyone who's seen the show. ;) I chose one
of the patterns that I liked the best (one with 7 colors) out of this list of
many scarf patterns and then did my best at
finding the right colors. It's about 12 feet long which is on the short side
considering that The Doctor has worn scarves up to 24 feet long, but it's
long enough for me. :) More patterns and details can be found at
Dr. Who Scarf
which says it shows "how to create an exact replica".
If you want a Doctor Who scarf but don't want to (or can't) knit one yourself,
you can buy one from
Custom Knitted Scarves.
They have a variety of color patterns and sizes to choose from and the prices
seem reasonable considering how long of a scarf you're getting. Bill Rudloff
has put together a very nice
unofficial
scarf history with photos and lots of details about the changes to Tom
Baker's scarf over the seasons. He also provided me with a
brief scarf history if you just want the basics.
Some good places to start looking for information are the
Doctor Who Home
Page and its
Link Page.
- Sherlock Holmes --
the greatest detective ever. The link is actually for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
but like all the links are for Holmes. :) Two of the best places to start are
Sherlockian.Net by Chris Redmond and
Sherlock Holmes
International. If you're looking for the stories and novels online, try
221B Baker Street
(missing the Case Book, but has some other neat things) or
Sherlock Holmes Resources.
The
Hounds of
the Internet is a good mailing list for discussing Sherlockian topics.
They generally discuss one canonical story a week, but anything Sherlockian
is welcome. The Sherlock Holmes
Shoppe has some interesting items and
Sherlocktron
contains lots of info and links.
- Tea --
I greatly prefer tea over coffee, only very rarely (i.e., almost never)
drinking the latter. You may also want to check out
The Tea Page or
Tea and Sympathy
(which has a FAQ) as starting places for more information.
Some good tea retailers, in alphabetical order, include
Adagio Teas who offers $5 gift
certificates to new customers (ask me for one or fill in this simple page
with a
gift certificate request form)
and let you make your own blends
(here are my blends,
also listed on the gift certificate form page);
Bigelow,
Celestial Seasonings,
Golden Moon Tea,
Lipton,
Republic of Tea,
Special Teas,
Stash Tea,
The Tea Table,
TeaFrog,
Twinings,
Upton Tea Imports;
some will have better selections or rarer teas than others, so look around
to find exactly what you want. I've either tried teas from these companies
or personally know someone who has, and they're all pretty good.
As a tea fan, I also enjoy trying variations on the basic theme.
Chai tea, or more accurately, masala
chai, has become a favorite of mine -- of Indian origin, it consists primarily
of black tea (though others could be used), milk, and sugar or other sweetener,
and a variety of spices (cardamom being a common one). The spices are the main
characteristic of this tea, the exact blend playing an important role in
creating the final flavor. I usually get the chocolate caramel chai or
original chai blends by Celestial Seasonings or Twining's Indian Spice tea.
Many companies like the ones above have a chai tea blend and some companies like
Oregon Chai,
Pacific Chai, and
Yogic Chai basically specialize
in chai.
Bubble tea
which goes by many other names including pearl tea, boba tea, and tapioca tea,
is my latest find. Of Taiwanese origin, it's basically a strong tea, flavored
and sweetened, with small balls (pearls) of tapioca added. The tapioca is
the unique ingredient here, the soft, but chewy balls (like gummy candies)
providing something to eat between sips. A straw wide enough to suck up the
tapioca balls is used to drink the tea. It's pretty good, almost a drink and
snack together. :) I normally get my bubble tea from the
Ten Ren's Tea Time store near me, but
there are a few other places I get it from. One I like because it really
specializes in bubble tea is
Bubble Tea Cafe
(Yelp's review) -- I discovered pop boba there, and while that isn't a big
favorite of mine, I like how it's an option I haven't seen elsewhere.
I've also had some Thai tea
at restaurants, and found it to be another tasty variety of tea.
- Wine --
I don't drink very much alcohol, and when I do, it's almost always wine.
I'm far from an expert, but I'm trying to learn more. I'm sure that I'm
missing a lot without having a trained nose, and I'm probably also missing
out on taste components without much experience and knowledge of wines.
But I do enjoy tasting different wines when I feel like it (and have the
money), and I tend to prefer whites over reds just because that's what I'm
used to drinking; beaujolais is a pretty good red though. While I've
generally liked everything I've had, one of my favorite producers is
Louis Jadot.
- High IQ Societies --
The most famous high IQ society is probably
Mensa, and they accept people who place
in the top 2% of the population. There are also a number of other societies,
and you can find some information about them at this
Polymath Systems page and the
IQ World Review, which also links to tests.
Many of the less exclusive societies will accept ACT, SAT, and
GRE scores, which is rather convenient. Here is a sample of some of the
societies that are free to join if you qualify for them:
High Potentials Society,
Mysterium, and the apparently
forum-only at the moment
SocratIQ
(98 percentile = top 2%),
Colloquy (99.5 percentile = top
0.5%),
Infinity International Society (99.63 percentile = top 0.37%),
ePiq (99.8 percentile = top 0.2%),
ISI-Society (99.93 percentile = top 0.07% for full membership).
You can use the title link to Wikipedia's article to find out about more
societies. There's also a
World Intelligence Network (WIN),
a society of high IQ societies.
If you enjoy solving problems, you might find the
Uncommonly Difficult IQ Tests
page interesting; it has links to society web pages, too. And no, I haven't
taken the tests they list. BTW, I don't care a lot about any of this because
I can't do much about my own scores and there will always be better and worse
people than myself. Besides, what you do with what you've got is more
important than how well you score on some test. I do think it's nice to know
at least roughly where I rank though, and taking tests and such can be good
mental exercise and stimulation, so I list this stuff mainly as references for
satisfying my own curiosity.
-
Numbers -- A few
specific numbers such as
pi which I had memorized to 150 decimal places and thus earned a place in
the Pi 100 Club (site gone). I don't practice it, so I'm not sure how many
decimal places I remember any more.
There's also a
Pi World Ranking List,
but I don't intend to join that (one, 100 or so digits won't place me very
high, and two, the rules are semi-strict).
Don't forget to celebrate Pi Day (March 14 at 1:59) and/or Pi Approximation Day
(July 22 = 22 July) and remember that 3:14 is pi-time! ;) Oh, for some
interesting reading, I suggest you check out the
Cadaeic Cadenza,
it's really cool. I find it amusing to see pi appear in everyday life, and
a recent one of those discoveries is in the
Givenchy Pi Neo
men's fragrance and the original
Givenchy Pi men's fragrance. The number
e
is also interesting, but doesn't seem to have the same kind of following pi
does. One number does seem to have a strong following though, as well as a
mailing list for it; check out
The 47 Society for more
information including some stuff about all the 47s in Star Trek shows.
And who can forget that famous number that is the Answer to the Great Question
of Life, the Universe and Everything -- 42. This is, of course, from Douglas
Adams' popular and famous Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and you can find
a little more information about 42 on
Deep Thought and 42.
- Games/Puzzles --
Since people may not be familiar with some of these games, I'm linking a
bunch of these to their Wikipedia
entries since these will explain the games/puzzles and provide links to more
info. These aren't always big on my list of things to do, but once in a while,
I do enjoy playing or doing them. I tend to prefer games with strategy and
puzzles with logic. One of the first strategy board games I learned was
chess
but I rarely play so I'm not very good. There are also some interesting
chess variants like
shogi (Japanese chess;
also check out Shogi.net),
xiangqi (Chinese chess;
this looks like a good
tutorial on
tactics and such), and
janggi (Korean chess, derived
from Xiangqi). These three have entries at the
ChessVariants.org site, where you
can find even more variations. If you already know chess I'd suggest starting
with this
intro to shogi and this
intro to xiangqi
for info on those games. I haven't really learned any of these variants,
but they are interesting, so maybe I'll learn the basics eventually.
For fun, I have to mention
Taikyoku shogi.
The sheer size of this game is truly awesome -- each player gets 402 pieces of
208 different types and the board is 36x36. :)
BTW, along the lines of taikyoku shogi being a huge version of shogi, check
out this RPS-25, a version of the
classic rock-paper-scissors game with 25 different gestures and 300 outcomes.
For more about the classic version, try the
World RPS Society.
I started looking into
go (also
called igo, weiqi, or baduk) after starting to read the Hikaru no Go manga
where this game is a focus of the story;
Sensei's Library is a good place to
get more information on the game and
GoBase.org looks good, too. For puzzles,
sometimes I enjoy doing various types of mathematical or logic puzzles such as
logic puzzles of the
Zebra puzzle type
(I think we called them mindbenders in grade school), and many of the
Japanese pencil puzzles like
Nikoli's puzzles, which includes the very popular
sudoku or number place.
A number of web sites have games to play online (or print), with the number of
games available varying by site. For some sites you can submit a free
registration to get access to more games, but others require you to pay for
a subscription to get more games. Here are some sites I found that looked
interesting:
Nikoli's Everbody's Page,
Griddlers.net,
Java and Puzzle World,
Conceptis Logic Puzzles,
Puzzle Laboratory
(in Japanese; try the
honkaku page or the
honkaku graphical index),
http://indi.s58.xrea.com/ (also in Japanese).
A few other places that seem interesting are
PuzzLinks.com which covers all sorts of
puzzles,
Zotmeister's blog posts with a "puzzle" tag, and
Grant Fikes' puzzle blog, who also
owns glmathgrant's blog on LiveJournal, but no longer posts there (this link will get you
the first 100 puzzle-tagged posts there). I now have a total of 17 books from
Nikoli that contain a variety
of different puzzles, and these should keep me busy for a long time. The
Nikoli Wikipedia article is
also a good place to get information about the types of puzzles they create.
If anyone reading this knows Japanese and could translate or explain the rules
of some games to me, please let me know. Most books I have don't include
English explanations, and I could use the help in figuring out how to solve the
puzzles in them. Thanks. To help others, I've started to create my own page
of Nikoli puzzle rules in English with brief
descriptions of how to play some of Nikoli's puzzles. I hope this is helpful,
and please let me know if anything is unclear or incorrect so that I can fix
it. Also, I created a puzzle book inventory and
wish list for anyone who's interested.
- Warlording --
Along lines similar to MUT3K, there are people who do almost the exact same
thing to people's sigs. When they find a sig that is too long, meaning more
than 4 x 80 (the McQuary or McQ limit), usually with characteristics that
make it worth making fun of, they do just that, make fun of it and reduce it
down to size, a process called warlording. Their work resides in the
Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.warlord.
I've seen some of the warlords by people who've been doing it for a while,
including members of
The
Inner Circle, and thought they were pretty funny. (The site seems to go
up and down for some reason.) I've even tried my hand
at it now and I've done a few warlords myself. If you want to see them, you
can check them out on my warlords page. If you
can find the FAQ, you'll get
all the important information you need to need to know regarding sigs, like
the asterisk shortage, why you shouldn't put ASCII snails into your sigs, what
does and doesn't belong in a sig, and all sorts of other useful information.
- Miscellaneous -- Here are some links to things that I
didn't feel deserve their own section anymore, but I also didn't want to
delete them completely: a huge list of various versions of
Murphy's Laws;
a general
paper
plane link because I enjoy making and flying them sometimes, and
Ken Blackburn's Home Page (he holds
the world record for time aloft with a paper airplane at 27.6 seconds);
origami paper folding is fun, too, and models can be found at places like
Origami.com,
paperfolding.com (many links
within), and
Money Origami for a
few models that can be made from dollar bills;
flexagons
are essentially polygons created by folding up paper in such a way that they
can be "flexed", or basically turned inside-out, to reveal additional hidden
faces, which are interesting mathematically as well as fun to play with,
Flexagon Portal has templates and a forum,
Scott Sherman's Flexagon site
has templates for edge and point flexagons as well as a few interesting
flexagon mazes, and here are some
flexagon papers;
here's a site with information about the
theory of tie knots,
the author developed a mathematical model to calculate and classify 85 tie
knots, including four commonly used knots plus nine new aesthetic ones;
the slide rule was the
primary science/engineering calculator from the 1950s until the early 1970s
when electronic scientific calculators took over (check out the links in this
Wikipedia article for more information), I purchased a Pickett N600-ES
new in box with case, manual, and guarantee card -- it's a 6"
pocket sized model that was apparently used by astronauts on Apollo missions,
here's a
virtual
Pickett N600-ES if you're interested in seeing what I have;
a nice juggling site, and
contact juggling includes pen spinning (or pencil spinning) which I've seen
people do and have been trying to learn (see sites like
Pentrix, an updated version of
Pentix, or
PenstudioZ for
info);
Parkour or free running is a kind of
sport/art of moving in the most efficient and uninterrupted way possible,
some moves have a gymnastics-like aspect to them, like vaults over obstacles;
here's a link to the Jelly Belly
site which makes great tasting jelly beans and M&M style chocolate candies
(I have my own little Jelly Belly page now, too,
mainly a collection of all the recipes I could find);
links for fan pages about Iron Chef and
Good Eats, two of my favorite
Food Network shows;
the W3C HTML Validation Service will
make sure your HTML code meets standard specifications;
there's some funny stuff at
HomestarRunner.com (be sure to
check out the
Strong Bad e-mails) and the
Homestar Runner Wiki
has all sorts of info about Homestar and pals;
my sister told me about this free virtual pet web site called
Neopets which
is pretty fun (it has lots of games);
Yeti Sports has a few fun games to
play;
Flash Flash Revolution (FFR)
is based on the Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) game and is essentially a sort of
reflex/timing game, registering is optional, but it's free and lets you track
your scores (here's
FFR's main page and a link
to the
FFR forum); for more games, I think all Flash, check out
AddictingGames.com,
Miniclip.com,
2DPlay, or
Armor Games (there are probably a lot
more sites like these); here's a very large list of
Free Online Games;
here's the Mountain Dew web site,
home of my favorite soda; I feel like I should have a link to
Slashdot.org, the "news for nerds" page;
I also like Digg.com which allows users to
submit and rate news items to determine the order in which they appear;
Lifehacker.com has some interesting
articles and information on the computer/tech side of things and general
productivity; Art of Manliness,
"a blog dedicated to uncovering the lost art of being a man", has a lot of
interesting topics and suggestions, to help men be better husbands, fathers,
and men in general;
links to the official sites of a few of my favorite comic strips probably in
the order I found out about them --
Calvin and Hobbes,
Dilbert,
Sluggy Freelance,
Piled Higher and Deeper (go straight
to the comics, their
grad community forum,
or see a preview of recent comics),
Sinfest (warning! mature/adult themes),
El Goonish Shive (semi-adult,
mainly sexual preferences),
User Friendly,
xkcd,
and for lots of other strips, try
Comics.com or
UComics.com
- And probably bunches of other things that I can't think of right now.
I like a lot of stuff and this list will probably change a little over time
just to reflect current interests. Things I do more often will go in, things
I don't do as much anymore will come off. That doesn't mean I don't like
the things I've removed, just that my interests are placed elsewhere at the
moment.
Closing Notes
Well, I think that's plenty of information for now. If you really need to
know more, then you're going to have to e-mail me (see below) and ask for
specific information. But for now, go on back to
my main/index page or my about me page
if you want to know more about me.
James Marshall
dronak@yahoo.com
(plain ASCII text only, please,
here's why)
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