Wizards Of Winter Video on Metacafe

Metacafe has a video of this amazing Christmas light display in Mason, OH. It is synchronized to the music of Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizard in Winter".

Snopes.com says "This display was the work of Carson Williams, a Mason, Ohio, electrical engineer who spent about three hours sequencing the 88 Light-O-Rama channels that controlled the 16,000 Christmas lights in his annual holiday lighting spectacular (from Christmas 2004). His 2005 display includes over 25,000 lights that he spent nearly two months hooking up."

Click here to view.

BostonHerald.com - Local / Regional News: Reading mom charged with hosting underage beer bash

"A Reading mother, apparently trying to help her son make friends, is accused of throwing a rowdy keg party where she sold teens beer.
Police say Kim Caufield, 39, now faces charges of distributing alcohol to a minor and delinquency of a minor.
Caufield and her family reportedly moved to Reading about two months ago from Florida. Students speculate she threw the beer bash — complete with a keg — to help her 14-year-old son make friends. "

Brightridge - panoramic photography by Edward Huff

Skating Rink at Kennedy Plaza, Providence RI

Brightridge: "Brightridge is the site of the panoramic photography of Edward Huff. The images are presented using QuickTimeVR. This allows you to navigate the image by dragging your mouse left and right and up and down."

Borders Gifts - Best of 2005

"The Borders Best of 2005 spans a variety of categories, from fiction and history to romance and cooking, from pop music to jazz, from one-disc movie DVDs to TV series box sets. We invite you to sample our selections, revel in them, even disagree with them. After all, a significant portion of the pleasure that comes from books, music, and movies can be found in the act of talking about them, arguing about them, and sharing them"

Pictures With Funny Captions

I once caught a fish this big


Everbody put your hands in the air and say yeah!


Man, that burrito was good!

LibraryLookup

"Jon Udell, Lead Analyst at InfoWorld's test center, didn't set out to rock the world of library technology. He just wanted to check his local library's catalog while simultaneously browsing through Amazon.com. He soon developed LibraryLookup, a bookmarklet that can be installed on a browser's tool bar.

LibraryLookup is a bookmarklet written in JavaScript code that extracts the ISBN from the URL on a bookseller's page, then goes to a library catalogue and searches by ISBN. If the library owns the book, the record pops up. It works with any site that uses an ISBN in its URL, including booksellers such as Barnes & Noble and Powell's, and any library vendor that allows searching by ISBN. Not all integrated library systems (ILS) use the ISBN, but many do. Udell's weblog includes lists of hundreds of bookmarklets already created for libraries that use Innovative Interfaces, Endeavor's Voyager, epixtech's iPac, DRA, and Talis. Users just need to drag the bookmarklet to their toolbar."

Here is the bookmarklet for public libraries in Rhode Island:
RI LibraryLookup
Jon Udell: LibraryLookup homepage

Reading, Watching, Listening, March 16 2005

Reading The Big Year A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik
Reading Time magazine, March 21, 2005
Reading Blender Magazine, April 2005
Reading Men's Journal magazine, April 2005

Watching The Amazing Race, CBS
Watching Survivor Palau, CBS
Watching The Grudge (DVD)
Watching Showtime (DVD)

Listening to Buffalo Nickel-Longplay 33 1/3
Listening to John Hiatt-The Tikki Bar Is Open

iCalShare - Share Your iCalendars!

This site contains more than 1900 calendars to use in programs like iCal and Mozilla Calendar.
Mozilla Calendar is a project of the Mozilla Organization. This is the group that also produces the Firefox browser. Apple Computer is the developer of iCal. The calendars available at icalshare.com can be used with other programs that support the ical(.ics) file format.

Calendars can be imported or, depending on the program, you can subscribe to calendars. A subscription means that the calendar can be updated by the calendar owner and the changes will appear in your calendar.

For example I subscribed to the 2005 Boston Red Sox baseball schedule and the owner updates the calendar daily with game results.

iCalShare - Share Your iCalendars!

Shopping Bargains

The internet is great for finding bargains. I use the following sites:

Slickdeals describes itself as "The most frequently updated and complete deal site on the web". It usually list four or five deals a day. It also has a very active forum and offers online coupons. I've used this site to get free subscriptions to Men's Journal, Blender, Sporting News, TV Guide, Computer Shopper, and PC Magazine.

Techbargains, as its name suggests, offers bargains on computers and and electronics. I used this site today to buy a Viking 256MB CompactFlash card for $6 (after rebate) and a Viking 256MB Secure Digital card for $7 (after rebate).

DealCatcher offers daily deals and also has links to the Sundays ads to all of the major retailers. It also has a forum and a price comparison section.

FreeAfterRebate as the name states offers free merchandise (after rebate of course). Most of the deals are computer and electronic related. They usually offer up lots of deals on free software. The site tagline is "The best things in life are free (after 6 to 8 weeks)"

Dealcase is yet another site offering great deals on the internet. It is mostly bargains on computer and electronic related items. But also has deals for clothes, houseware, books, DVDs and other merchandise.

DealofDay offers internet bargains, a forum, and coupons and price comparisons. This site does not display correctly in the Firefox browser. But is okay in Internet Explorer.

Cheap Stingy Bastard is a personal blog with post for cheap stuff the author has found on the internet. It offers a e-mail newsletter and links to popular copons.

MOTHER of all DEALS is "a database of deals from many of the most popular deals sites. So instead of having to check 5 or 6 deals sites, You can now just check one! " It lists deals from Slickdeals, BensBargains, TechBargains, GotApex, XPBargains, and FatWallet. This is a straight forward and ad-free site

All of these sites offer RSS feeds. Keeping track of them is easy using you favorite feed reader.

Netflix

Netflix is "the world's largest online DVD movie rental service offering more than two million members access to more than 35,000 titles."

For $17.99 a month members rent as many DVDs as they want and keep them as long as they want, with three movies out at a time. I have the original membership offer (from 1999) that allows for four movies out at a time.

"Members enjoy free and fast delivery. Through a nationwide network of distribution centers they are able to provide most members with delivery of their DVDs in about one business day, and they provide free, pre-paid return envelopes. With no commitments, members can cancel anytime. Netflix's 'no late fees, no due dates' program has eliminated the hassle involved in choosing, renting and returning movies."

Their selection "helps ensure members find everything from the latest big Hollywood releases to hard-to-locate documentaries and independent films."

"Netflix makes it easier for members to find and discover movies they will enjoy. When members rate movies, Netflix customizes its site based on a member's movie tastes, which makes their 35,000 movie titles more relevant and accessible to each member."

"Netflix launched its movie rental service in 1999 with the goal of using the DVD format and the Internet to make it easier for people to find and get movies they will enjoy. As a result, our members can reliably discover and enjoy lesser-known titles."

Google News

"Google News presents information culled from approximately 4,500 news sources worldwide and automatically arranged to present the most relevant news first. Topics are updated continuously throughout the day, so you will see new stories each time you check the page. Google has developed an automated grouping process for Google News that pulls together related headlines and photos from thousands of sources worldwide -- enabling you to see how different news organizations are reporting the same story. You pick the item that interests you, then go directly to the site which published the account you wish to read.

Google News is highly unusual in that it offers a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without human intervention. While the sources of the news vary in perspective and editorial approach, their selection for inclusion is done without regard to political viewpoint or ideology. While this may lead to some occasionally unusual and contradictory groupings, it is exactly this variety that makes Google News a valuable source of information on the important issues of the day.

You can trace the history of a developing issue by clicking the "sort by date" function on the page containing all reports on a given topic. This will arrange the stories in chronological order, with the most recent report placed first. " Source: About Google News

Google News