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The Cool Tricks and Trinkets Newsletter #152 7/26/01 |
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Welcome to the 152nd issue of the Cool Tricks and Trinkets
Newsletter offering weekly insights into new, cool, useful, fun, unusual
and interesting sites on the Internet. Grab your best pair of coconuts and follow Daphne the "All-Nude Tour Guide" through PythOnline, the site that is the Holy Grail for legions of Monty Python fans. New Stuff offers the latest tidbits about the 2001 re-release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Spam Club lets visitors sign up for Abuse, "the most offensive Insult Your Friend at Home Service ever invented" -- and no one slurs or maligns better than these chaps. Chit Chat offers forums where fans can gossip about their favorite Python geezer in Gilliamland, the Cleese Shop, Chapmania and the Pallindrome. The online store is full of Python goodies, videos, even Monty Python toilet paper, "recommended by the Man with Three Buttocks." http://www.pythonline.com click here Shareware's Greatest Hits PC World, the magazine of PC computing, has just released its ever-helpful "The Best of …" issue, and on the web site version, visitors can download some of the best shareware and freeware available today, all of them 2001 Shareware Industry Awards nominees. (Shareware is software that you can try out and, if you like it, purchase, usually for a nominal fee.) There's Darn Passwords, which remedies the annoying problem of remembering all the passwords you think up on the fly - and promptly forget - when you enter a password-protected site. Space Hound 32 will "sniff out" wasted space on a hard disk. Visitors can also click over to the August 2000 Best Shareware list and download last year's cool programs. http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/article/0,aid,54828,00.asp click here The Peoples Court Battle it out - with a messy roommate, a cheating lover, a faithless friend - in this imaginary court room, complete with real jurors. While the web site, I'm Right, You're Wrong, is not legally binding, visitors do get a chance to tell their side of the story, if they feel someone's done them wrong. File a suit on the site and you and the accused get to post your versions of the story for the online jury to decide who's right. Or just serve as a juror and vote on cases. "Litigants" may create a character to represent them, choosing a hairstyle, clothes and a face for their online alter ego before taking it to the jury in Lovers Court, Friends Court, Roommate Court, Ex-Court and Family Court. http://www.imright.com click here SHORT TAKES: Photos, video clips and links to news items track the hi-jinx of Jenna and Barb Bush, the nation's First Twins. On this unofficial site, visitors can chat and speculate about the twins, rate them on a "hot" scale, or buy First Twins mugs and tee-shirts. http://thefirsttwins.com click
here Next time you get bumped from a flight, get even and buy your own 727. You can do it at Aircraft Shopper Online.... whether you want a Learjet for under $1 million or a Boeing 727 for $82 million. Serious shoppers will find aircraft from large transports to amphibians; the rest of us can fantasize about avoiding the commute in a 1964 Brantly B2B helicopter ($38,900). http://www.aso.com click here
FatLane pokes fun at our cultural obsession with the ultra-thin, using photos of celebrities like Britney Spears and Cindy Margolis that have been digitally "upscaled," and equally creative interviews with the celebs about their new plus-sized bodies. The site also features swimwear models modified into heavyweights, a custom gallery where visitors can have photos of their friends bulked-up, and a section that tells how it's all done, photo-by-photo. http://www.fatlaneonline.com click
here Herbs and Ethnobotany Those who know nothing about St. John's Wort -- or any one of 30,000 other herbs -- and don't want to seem unhip can look it up at the incredibly comprehensive HerbWeb, an ambitious inventory of herbs and plant species. Straightforward and easy to use, the database offers alphabetical searches by common or Latin name, then delivers the herb's claimed attributes, historical uses by cultures throughout the world, ailments, body area and range of use. How reliable is it? Site sources are the "three largest U.S. Government ethnobotany databases, the U.S. National Park Service NPFlora plant inventory lists, and 18 leading works on the subject." A bookmark special! http://www.herbweb.com/herbage click here Around The World in 80 Clicks Photographer Alain Schneuwly has shared his marvelous photographs from around the world at Photographic Memories. The site is beautifully designed with stunning views from some of the world's most exotic destinations: the world's highest mountains and fabulous monastery sights in Tibet, the people and mysteries of the Moroccan desert, "postcards" of a coastal journey through Norway, plus Portugal, Hanoi and even the Paris/Marrakech wedding album of a couple named Gege and Dave celebrating with family and friends. http://www.schneuwly.com click here Nerissa Explains It All Personal web sites can be either creepy or charming, and everything in between. This one is a charmer: Nerissa is a student at the Emily Carr School of Design in Vancouver, BC, by way of the Phillipines, and she's off to a great career start with this pretty site celebrating summer - and Nerissa. The items on her lists of "favorites," from music to food, are linked to other sites so visitors can drill deeper if they'd like to know more about, for example, her favorite magazine, Sleazenation. Like summer, the site is a visual pleasure. http://nerissa.org click here The Land of Prisons 'Debt To Society' is Mother Jones' special report on "the real price of prisons." Noting that since 1980 the US inmate population has more than quadrupled to two million, the investigative magazine and web site investigate and expose the cost: from the children left behind unattended while their parents are behind bars, to the moral cost of mass incarceration. Funded by the Foundation for National Progress, the report includes an Incarceration Atlas that lets visitors click on any state to see who's getting locked up where, or join a discussion group on criminal justice to hash out their reactions to the profoundly disturbing numbers, like the rate of HIV in prison populations -- 10 times that of the general population -- or the fact that tuberculosis infects 1 in 4 people in some prisons. http://www.motherjones.com/prisons click here Fruit Portal The "Mark" of Mark's Fruit Crops is a professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia and a Master Gardener - clearly a man who loves his fruit. The site describes the world's major fruit crops, from almonds to gooseberries, telling about the taxonomy, origin and history of cultivation, folklore, medicinal and non-food uses, production statistics, botanical description, general culture, harvesting and post-harvest handling and food uses. Also offered: a list of grower catalogues for those who want to buy fruit trees, a surprisingly long list of other fruit-related sites and a chance to ask Professor Mark a question. http://www.uga.edu/hortcrop/rieger click
here ~ Make Free Donations - Tis' better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. click here ~ Black Powder Rifle Accuracy System - For those who prefer doing things the old way. click here ~Stop the advertising 'Lead In'
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