43 Folders

43 Folders is Merlin Mann’s site about personal productivity, life hacks, and simple ways to make your life a little better. Check out http://www.43folders.com

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Petals Around the Rose

The name of the game is Petals Around the Rose. The name of the game is important. The computer will roll five dice and ask you to guess the score for the roll. The score will always be zero or an even number. Your mission is to work out how the computer calculates the score and become a Potentate of the Rose. Check out how Bill Gates did it in 1977! http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-j.htm

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Kostnice Ossuary

The Kostnice Ossuary (Church of Bones) in the Czech Republic is where 40,000 dead form morbidly fascinating sculptures and artwork. Legend has it that in the late 13th century a handful of earth from Christ's grave was brought to Sedlec and scattered over the graveyard, thus turning it into a pilgrimage site for people from all over Central Europe. The medieval plague epidemic saw thousands of people being buried there, far too many for the graveyard to cope with. The first attempt at doing something creative with the bones (some 40,000 people "contributed" to the decoration of the ossuary) was in 1511, when a half-blind monk arranged them in pyramids. Much later, in 1870, the Schwarzenberg family, who bought Sedlec Monastery and the ossuary, hired a woodcarver by the name of Frantisek Rint to create the remaining decorations - which include monstrances, pinnacles, urns, the Schwarzenberg coat of arms, Rint's own signature, and an extraordinary chandelier that apparently features every single bone in the human body. You can find out more from the official site at http://www.kostnice.cz/ and see photos at http://www.artgraphica.net/art-shop/prague-kutna-hora-bone-church.htm

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William Shatner - Has Been

William Shatner (Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame) recorded a couple of spoken-word tracks in his 1968 album "Transformed Man" - including Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds - which are so awful they've gone down in history for their awfulness. You can listen to examples at http://www.pathcom.com/~boby/lsd.htm and http://www.filmcement.org/rummage/archives/000037.html
Now Shatner's back all the same with an intriguing, introspective collection of mostly spoken-word tracks that are all the more compelling when it becomes clear that Has Been is, in fact, no joke. Ben Folds played on and produced the record, creating rich, melodic, and varied pop musical backgrounds to Shatner's world-weary, boozy-suave yet thoroughly impassioned delivery. The album is called "Has Been" and the official site is at http://www.shatnerhasbeen.com/

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The Montauk Experiment

The Philadelphia Experiment, otherwise known as Project Rainbow, has been a subject of long controversy and debate. It was an attempt by the Navy to create a ship that could not be detected by magnetic mines and/or radar, a movie of the same name was spawned from the story. The experiment supposedly went horribly wrong and the results included time travel and madness... A man named Preston Nichols was interviewed in the late 80s and information from that interview is now available at http://www.crystalinks.com/montauk.html. It's a fascinating read, regardless of whether or not you believe it

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UFO Reporting Center

The National UFO Reporting Center in the United States is dedicated to the collection and dissemination of objective UFO data... check it out at http://www.nuforc.org/

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Karl Pilkington

Karl Pilkington is a friend of the famous comedian Ricky Gervais from The Office. Ricky loves giving Karl a hard time, and asking him questions, because his answers are almost always insane. The thing to realise about Karl is that he is a real guy, not an actor or a character created by Ricky. Karl thinks there's too much science in the world, and cant understand why scientists would want to grow a human ear on the back of a mouse. He's fascinated by deformity and carries around a magazine full of two-headed men and bearded ladies. He has trouble sleeping if he watches too much TV and starts thinking, his first words one morning were "Have they found a way to make time go backwards?". You can check out the web site devoted to Karl at http://www.freewebs.com/the_k_man/ and download mp3 files of the XFM radio show starring Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington at http://www.xfm.co.uk/sectional.asp?id=4604 (very funny and well worth the download)

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Generate light... in your bathtub

The LTT Illuminated bathtub is just one of the cool developments in contemporary lighting from Generate. Check out http://www.gnr8.biz/index.html

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Turning the pages

Turning the Pages is the award-winning interactive program that allows museums and libraries to give members of the public access to precious books while keeping the originals safely under glass. Initially developed by and for the British Library, it is now available as a service for institutions and private collectors around the world. The site uses Shockwave Flash to presetn such classics as Leonardo Da Vinci's sketches and some of Jane Austen's early work. Check out http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html

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Taranaki - A region like no other

The new Taranaki "Building your Future" site at http://www.taranakijobsnz.com/ replaces the old Taranaki Jobs site and provides not only employer and recruitment agency listings but a job seeker search system. As a job seeker you can register on the site and optionally choose to hide your personal details from potential employers. If you're looking for information on working and living in taranaki, the site contains a growing collections of resources and maps.

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The Long Now Foundation

Jared Diamond, author of Collapse, delivered a talk recently about how past civilisations have wiped themselves out due to a lack of foresight and a full comprehension of their actions. Due to religious differences, resource plundering and war, these civilisations often found it difficult to pull themselves back from the precipice of extinction. He warned that our lack of vision meant that we too are headed down the same path. His warning very much mirrors the thinking of an organisation called the Long Now Foundation. The Foundation’s modus operandi could perhaps be described as ‘slow food’ for culture, rather than cooking. They’re determined to talk people down from the frenetic pace of contemporary life by rewarding patience, responsibility and, above all, by facilitating the acquisition of the “long view”. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a counterpoint to todays "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. It hopes to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years. Check out http://www.longnow.org/

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Creepy plant movie

1st Ave Machine is a New York based CG VFX/Animation production company. They've developed a very weird and somewhat creepy animation of "unnatural" plants with blinking eyes and moving tentacles... the site is at http://www.1st-ave-machine.com and the video (in Quicktime format) is at http://www.1st-ave-machine.com/video/anime_final.htm

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Google Video

Google Video ( http://video.google.com/ ) is a sub-site of Google search that lets you upload, search for and watch movies and movie clips. For example, check out my entry in this year’s 48 Hour Film Project by searching for “La Banane Parfaite”

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TV Ark

The TV Ark is a museum for title sequences, adverts, public information films and more nostalgia. Watch the opening sequence of Worzel Gummidge or Follyfoot and relive the 70s and 80s at http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/

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Knots

Knot lovers will understand that the distinctions between knot tying, knot theory and knot art are artificial. For example, a good practical knot is both a nugget of hard-won technology and a thing of beauty. Decorative knotting can be useful, and in any case requires uncommon dexterity and practical tying ability. Software developed to help mathematical knot theorists has produced some of the most beautiful knot images ever seen. So check out Knots On The Web at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/knotlink.htm. You might become happily entangled.

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Pandora's Box

Time for a little Greek Mythology! Check the entire story of Prometheus and Pandora’s Box at http://www.physics.hku.hk/~tboyce/ss/topics/prometheus.html

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Reverse Speech

If human speech is recorded and played backwards, mixed amongst the gibberish at regular intervals can be heard very clear statements. These statements usually appear in short sentence form and are nearly always related to the forward speech. It appears constantly throughout language, so much so in fact, that it is believed to be a natural part of our speech processes. It initially gained worldwide fame in the early 80s as those strange backward messages in rock and roll. Since that time, research has progressed significantly and it is now known to exist in all forms of human speech. Learn more and listen to examples at http://www.reversespeech.com/

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100 photos that changed the world

Check out the 100 photos that LIFE magazine believe changed the world at
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm01.html

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AIBO

AIBO, the famous robot dog from Sony, has been updated. The new AIBO ERS-7M3 comes with Mind 3 software that improves Aibo’s communication with the outside world by upping its vocabulary, adds performance improvements to its learning capabilities, and bundles in some Photo Diary software with web access. Find out more at http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news_10320.html

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We are not alone

There are a number of UFO-related conspiracy sites on the web, but Majestic Documents is a little different. Majestic Documents.com is a groundbreaking look at the United States UFO program called Majestic and the top secret government documents that tell the story of presidential and military action, authorisation, and cover-up regarding UFOs and their alien occupants. A remarkable work of investigative journalism, this website is the first to authenticate top secret UFO documents that tell a detailed story of the crashed discs, alien bodies, presidential briefings, and superb secrecy. Special attention is paid to the forensic authentication issues of content, provenance, type, style and chronology. The story the documents tell leaves the reader with little doubt that the cover-up is real, shocking, and at times unethical. Check out http://www.majesticdocuments.com/index.php, especially the document “Twinings White Hot Report” at http://www.majesticdocuments.com/documents/pre1948.php

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