Jake of the Web

This was mentioned in conversation of a previous 'Jake of the Web' segment, but nobody could remeber the name. It is an archive of the entire web, over time – look up your favorite sites to see (more or less) how they looked back in the day!

Internet Archive

A recut trailer for 'The Ten Commandments' that makes it look like a teen romantic comedy. Moses is the new kid in school who decides to stand up to Rameses, the big man on campus. Excellent use of music, voice over acting, and movie-trailer speak. Extra points for casting Samuel L. Jackson as 'Principal Firebush'.

WARNING: Principal Firebush uses a four-letter expletive that starts with the letter 'F'.

http://stuffgodhates.wordpress.com/
Recommended by Atropos

God's 'just blowing off some steam' blog. God hates:

Gargoyles
Cats
Science
all of Asia
Hillary Clinton
The Popemobile

And he goes into details as to why, sometimes using Olde English, profanity, or both to express Himself.

This is a strange stop-motion film following illustrations on walls. Although it is not 'tagger style', this film is the pinnacle of graffiti art. The animator would spray paint an object on a wall, film it, then cover up the previous object with white paint and create the next image in his animation. Very organic, which makes it all the more brilliant. It is very strange, showing humanoid creatures with 6 legs, or new creatures growing out of a spine on the ground.


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

The origins of phrases, such as:

'Drop-dead Gorgeous' (1985 Time article about Michelle Pheiffer).
'Not for all the tea in China'
'Heavens to Murgatroid'
'Horse Feathers'
Or the specifics behind 'Elvis has left the building'

Phrase Meanings

Recommended by Courtney

I have been looking for this for years, and only recently have I seen it around. It is a crazy rabbit who thinks your cursor is a carrot!

He will follow your cursor across the screen and watch it wherever it may be. If he gets close enough, he will grab onto your cursor and won't let go unless you shake the mouse vigorously. My words fail to adequately praise this little wabbit.

Wabbit
Wabbit Again

The coolest Mario level ever. Someone has modified the code from Super Mario World (SNES) and created an 11 minute 'Automatic Mario' level – all Mario does is enter the level, and he is bounced around the board like a perfect game of pinball, never needing a player to touch the controller, and never dying. 'Automatic Mario' has been done for a while, but this one goes one step further and utilizes the in-game sounds to mimic the background music the creator has chosen.

At the very least, you can appreciate how people in Japan have way too much time on their hands: it took this guy six months to create this.

Recommended by 'Juice Man'

http://www.madeinusa.com/

Search for a particular product and find U.S. companies that produce those goods here in the U.S.

Clearly, 'Made in the U.S.A.' is a complicated claim, so the top results of any search go to companies that are U.S.-owned companies that manufacture all their goods in the U.S. and are then rated by the percentage of their materials are from the U.S.

http://www.madeinusa.com/search.shtml

searchable by state



http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/

Another tool in the arsenal to find a U.S. company.

A Dachshund with narcolepsy. If you laugh, you go to Hell.

http://www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com/

Recommended by Atropos and Jessica McClintic

So, what are some things younger than John McCain?

Bugs Bunny
Mount Rushmore
The Hindenburg
Scrabble
The Lincoln Tunnel

Peeling paint web cam. As much fun as watching paint dry. Or, at least peel.

Peeling Paint

Cats that look like Wilford Brimley
Bonus: Do an image search for 'Diabeetus'.


Wilford Brimley Cats

Recommended by Atropos

Rates the walkability of your neighborhood – the proximity to vitals like stores, schools , parks and libraries. It lists all of the nearest in each category. My neighborhood in Taylorville only gets 28 out of 100, while my parents in Sugarhouse get 77 out of 100. The best use of this site is to point out how many amenities are within walking distance from your home – and hopefully you are encouraged to walk or bike to them rather than drive.


A major intersection in Sugarhouse gets a very high Walk Score of 95 out of 100.

Whereas a major intersection in Sandy only gets 62 out of 100.
WalkScore.com

Call your own phone when it's lost without having another phone around. Also, set a phone call time to interrupt a meeting or date you expect will suck.

PhoneMyPhone.com

A cute vid of a dachshund playing with a brilliant invention: the dog places a ball in the machine, and it will throw the ball automatically. As any dog owner knows, this is a brilliant invention – plus it's fun to watch the dog having such a good time.

http://www.diet.com/mobile/

Diet.com has a great service: by texting 'DIET1' (34381) with a restaurant name and menu item, you can get the specific nutrition information for that item. The results are very fast, and accurate.

NBC and News Corporation (Fox) have joined forces to bring the world Hulu.com - an unlikely name to stir such feelings of appreciation.
Strange name or no, the site is getting it right. The main shows I use it for are The Office and 30 Rock - all of the new episodes are available the day after they originally air (which happens to work better for my schedule, anyway).
Quality shows, when I want them, for free. The two main things that has taken me away from regular broadcast TV are the strict timeframe and the commercials. Hulu has regular TV beat on both fronts. I don't mind commercials, per se, but the current overabundance of commercials on TV are squeezing out the entertainment like so many weeds choking out my lawn (that last metaphor is all too close to home, sadly). Granted, there is a little bit of advertisement on Hulu, but it is manageable - it almost makes me want to give the advertisers my business.

So, I'm still trying to find my niche here. Trying to figure out what this blog should be about: right now it's about whatever the hell I find interesting.
I have become a fan of MarketWatch.com lately, which seems to be the right mix of 'I already know this, thanks for the reinforcement' and 'Wow, now I get it'-type articles. It challenges me without putting me to sleep.
This article explains how "yeah, the stock market sucks right now. People are losing money. But guess what? That's what you signed up for with the stock market."
The question is: can you afford not to take the risk? More risk equals more return. Without that greater return, you are likely just losing ground to inflation. The number of dollars may stay the same; but what you can buy with that money is slowly whittled away.

http://redruth.greenbean.org/~ben/4CR/smb_super_synth.swf

Or search 'mario brothers synthesizer'

A good looking, fun sound board that contains every song and sound from the original Super Mario Bros. It really took me back.

http://www.4colorrebellion.com/archives/2006/01/28/super-mario-bros-super-synth/

A downloadable version is also available, so you don't always need to be online.

Joyce emailed me to ask about options she had for anti-virus and anti-spyware software since the ones that came with her computer had expired. Fortunately, some of the best ones are also free:

AVG Anti-Virus

http://free.grisoft.com/

Ad-Aware

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/single/trialpay.php

and Spybot

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

(Disclaimer: I have used these free applications for years without issue. However, if you somehow jack up your computer, it's your own damn fault: don't come crying to me.)

http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigmiaow.pl

Recommended by Atropos for Kerry

Hitler Cats!

http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigboardbest.pl?8:1

The number one 'Kitler', as they call them, is amazing! He even has the same haircut as Hitler.

(Disclaimer: We don't like Hitler – he was a total ass-hat. A good way to show our disdain is by comparing him to animals.)

http://www.truckspills.com/

The name is pretty self-explanatory. I figured we should mention this site in honor of our trax/truck collision yesterday.

Favorite truck spills: Beer, Idaho potatoes (extra points for using a snowplow to get them off the road), any number of spoiled foods (hot dogs, Sunny D, various animal parts) and probably the best of all: cocaine! Utah gets honorable mention for the Spanish Fork canyon explosion from '05.
The one about the goats was pretty sad, though.

AdBlock plus kicks!
I disabled AdBlock plus for a screenshot I needed, and was astounded at web sites that never had ads were suddenly ugly, overwrought sites.
This is only one of many reasons why FireFox is superior to all comers - AdBlock plus makes the web a prettier place.

I stumbled across this article and was really astounded. The specifics are probably not that realistic for most people:

Bottom line: at the age of 26, if you max out your contributions to your 401k & IRA accounts and walk away, you will have $1 Million by retirement age. The caveat? Maxing out your contributions would cost you just over $20,000. That is not realistic for most people, and it assumes a 10% return - the average annual stock market return.

So the specifics are not all that do-able for most people, but the facts of compound interest are undeniable. they can work for you or against you.

Skreemr.com can find just about any song you are looking for: quickly, reliably, and for free. You can play the track before downloading it, or just play songs without downloading at all.

There are also additonal links that will automatically search for related lyrics, Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos, concert dates or pictures on Flickr:

At times when I am wanting to hear something in particular, I will do a Skreemr search (as opposed to Pandora, which is a great way to find new music).

We're creatures of habit. Everybody has a certain order they like their application buttons to be in on their taskbar. But what happens if an application crashes or times out? I've known more that one person (yours truly included) who is willing to close out 10 apps only to reopen them again in the preferred order - all so the taskbar buttons are where you want them to be.

Taskbar Shuffle allows you to drag and drop any taskbar button within the taskbar area:


With Taskbar Shuffle, I was finally able to get the monkey off my back. I can re-order individual windows or groups of similar windows as I choose:


You can also rearrange system tray items if you so desire, although that functionality has yet to find its way in to my daily routine.

Taskbar Shuffle is free, small (only 630k), and brilliantly simple. Best of all, it quickly proves itself indispensable.