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Return to Frequently used bookmarks 2/8/00 I made an extensively revised version of the page publicly available today. It is still a work in progress, but since I am now using in preference to the old page, it is more convenient to offer it up as the default. I added two rows to the page. The battle between the need for additional links and the desire to keep the page relatively small and managable continues. Clearly the two additional rows are a big burden both in terms of speed and comprehensibility. I am trying to compensate for this somewhat by once again reducing the number of links in each category. This should make the page smaller and hopefully more scannable. I've decided having more than 20 items in a list makes the category uglier and too unwieldy. This policy has of course necessitated the dropping of a large number of links. Some of these are links that I do use occasionally, or I at least believe they could be very useful under the right circumstances or to the right person. The loss of these items is unfortunate. I am also managing to do a fair amount of house-cleaning and I've discovered a fair number of dead links, some of which are links lost in more than the 404 sense. I can't even remember what they originally pointed to in terms of content. Clearly, these are not much of a loss. Here are the links that I have deleted so far. They are in no particular order. Some may return to the page. Most will probably not.
2/2/00 Hooray! Free topological maps are now available at Topozone. I stuck the link in Maps and dropped the link to time zones. The link is broken. I think I should have a link to some sort of time zone info. I'll find a good link sometime and add it then. 1/30/00 I added Bibliomania to the Books section because it offers a nice search service over their library of fiction and non-fiction titles. I dropped the link to Authors. It seems to have disappeared. and I can't remember exactly what the link was anyway. 1/29/00 E! Movie Reminder is apparently working again. I put it in Movies and once again dropped the link to Grand Illusion. Although I like including them, and maybe giving them some attention, I just don't have room for a link containing information that is so prominantly displayed on Bird on a Wire anyway. 1/24/00 I dropped Netsurfer. It was a long lasting favorite, but now that I read weblogs every day, it seems about a week behind the news. I replaced it with the weblog monitor so I can check the freshest blogs easily. I've never used the OperaGlass, but I think I could occasionaly use the Internet Theater Database, despite its somewhat scanty coverage. 1/23/00 Computer Shopper is readily accessible from ZDNet, so I'm dropping it in favor of the much more unusual Street Tech. Bjorn's Guide to Philosphy is no longer updated. It was pretty much just filler for the Thought and Faith category anyway, so I dropped it in favor of BeliefNet which is a pretty slick looking site that swings wide in its coverage of things spiritual. I movied a bunch of clip art links from Art to Design. To accomdate them I've dropped a couple of things - TypeRight Ethics Guide and ITC fonts I also dropped Taglines galore. It's cute, but of little utility. The History category is filled with many not very good links. I'm dropping one of the broken ones. It was a personal page linking historicla societies. It was a dead link and not really worth seeking out. In its place I put Talking History, a weekly radio program devoted to history. Lots of fun RealAudio. 1/18/00 I dropped Design&Pub because they see to at least temporarily be out of commission. As a replacement I added to the Design category a link about Interface Design (these folks run the oft quoted Interface Hall of Shame). The DTP Internet Jumplist was an excellent resource, but it has vanaished and its unclear whether or not it will ever resurface. I added a link to epinions under Reference for want of a better location and I moved Murphy's Laws to Dictionaries and dropped a link to Style Guides (what this was, I don't remember and the link was very, very dead). Y! Headlines for Seattle is now just a rehash of the Seattle Times -- utterly useless. I'm dropping it. I replaced NetMind with Spyonit. They are similar services, but Spyonit seems to have a better interface and I think I will use it more. I eliminated Burpee from shopping. It's a nice site, but I don't have a yard or anywhere I can grow stuff, so its not much use to me. I'll probably make a shopping back page for infrequently used shopping sites. Burpee will go there. I stuck in a link to Priceline instead. I'm sort of surprised I don't already have a link to them. I moved Mighty Big TV to the TV back page. It's a nice looking site and a nifty idea (they summarize the latest developments in your favorite tv shows), but since I don't watch any of the shows they cover, it's not much use to me. I thought it was better to move Broadcasting & Cable back out to the main page. I do like to read their industry news from time to time. Radio Digest gives you the latest industry news. I put it in the Radio category, of course. 1/16/00 I dropped PhotoNewsNet. I don't think it was ever useful. I replaced it with Share your World. 1/15/00 I decided to add Leisuretown to the Cartoon category. I dropped a link to South Park and, sadly, also dropped the random Jim's Journal Generator since it hasn't worked in months. I dropped Chindogu from Undercurrent. It seems to be broken, and I wanted to put in the far more useful link to Current Netlore. It's kind of dumb but I wanted to add a list of Murphy-like laws to Reference. So I dumped Remember It. It looks like it offers the same stuff as When, and I never use either, so what the hell. I also dropped the link to the . It seems like it would be really useful if I were to go clamming, but when has that ever happened? Instead I'm putting in a link to eHow, which will tell you how to play Gin Rummy, something I have been known to do from time to time. The Macintosh File Types reference has gone AWOL. I've never used it . I don't think I'll hunt it down; I'll just delete it. I'm adding Macintouch and Mac OS Rumors to Apple and moving Sun Remarketing to the apple back page. I've never actually bought anything from them afterall. I continue to look for ways to add stuff to the Amusements category. Most of my links used to be classic but unchanging web humor sites. I hate to drop them, but there are other sites with continually updating content that would probably be more useful. I moved Driveways out of Amusements and into Entertainment. It seemed like it was good to pair it with Fametracker. I also dropped the links to Seattle Center events calendar (pretty useful actually, maybe I should find a place for it somewhere else) and the Puyallup Fair (which is only of seasonal interest if that even). I added Brunching Shuttlecocks to Amusements. 1/14/00 I rearranged the humor section, mainly to add a bunch of new mean-spirited humor sites, including Fugly, Losers.org and Rotten.com. I also added another news parody Subbrilliant News. To make room, I moved Net Thingys to the Net category and I dropped Dr. Science, since I offer it up fresh on Bird on a Wire and Troops (of course, I'd like to find an opening for this to put it back on the page if possible -- but where?) I also moved Lycos 50 to the Wide Search category. I'm not entirely happy with this, but I don't know where else to put it. I dropped the Finger gateway from the Net category. Kinda of neat, but really pretty useless. NetBaby was added to the Games section. I stuck DVDFile in Movies. It seems to be the best DVD news and review site I can find. And I dropped the link to the Little Theater. I'm sorry about that, but I'm figuring I can get to the site relatively easily from the Grand Illusion. I also dropped Official Search from the Wide Search category. It's supposed to help you find the offical web page for organizations and the like, but it never works, and I can't imagine it will really improve. Besides Google works just fine for this sort of thing. 12/30/99 I added CultureJammer ®TMark to Undercurrent and dropped entirely Dog Eat Dog since it was largely filler anyway. I moved Greatest Films toa back page, quite regrettably, since I like the page a lot. I needed space for BargainFlix. I expect to use this reasource to trakc down the cheapest DVD's quite frequently. Many changes in the page have gone unlogged. I've started doubling up resources in some categories by putting more than one link on a line. I'm not sure whether this is a mistake or not. Part of the point of the structure of the page is that it forces me to make choices and not expand the number of links without bounds. This breaks that discipline. But I found I wanted to add some pages that are a pain to find and that are useful and not too distinguished one from the other -- for example, the tv network news pages and radio station pages. Anyway, the doubling up has allowed me to add a lot of good or fun resources. Here are some of the highlights.
12/12/99 All-in-one Biblical Resources is a greatnew search site. I'm replacing the Bible Gateway with it, since it includes access to the Bible Gateway along with a host of other resources. I also rearranged the resources under Magazines and added Getting It. 12/11/99 Is the video/audio search engine Whoopie any good? I've never seen it come to any use. I took it off my page and replaced it with a link to archives of Prairie Home Companion archives. 12/10/99 I've made some rearrangements in the TV section. Broadcasting & Cable got pushed to the tv overflow page since I never read it and much of its content is for subscribers only. I added TV Lust instead. Hopefully this will remind me to watch the scrappy, little public access program. I also included Ad Critic which archives tv ads and KIRO TV which I found missing when I was looking for WTO coverage last week. I couldn't fit Channel 28 under TV so it is under Seattle since it is the Seattle government channel. I also dropped Center for the Easily Amused. I can't remember why I ever linked to it. It's not amusing at all, and the page suffers under a dreadful design, devoid of focus or readily comprehensible navigation. After shuffling things around a bit I was then able to add a tribute to Jim's Journal which includes actual strips. 12/9/99 I'm, dropping Live Concerts from the Music category. It's sponsored by Real.com, so likely I can get the same info from their own site and I need the room for more useful links. I'm replacing it with MP3.com. I also added Ship of Fools. to the Thought&Faith cateogry. I haven't really read enough of this "Magazine of Christian Unrest", but it does look lively and interesting, so I'm trying it out. 12/4/99 I added a link to the Cambridge online dictionaries under Dictionaries. Their phrase dictionary is particularly good. I moved PhoneSpell to Directories to make room for the Cambridge link. Mozilla.org was added to Linux for want of a better catagory. I can't wait till they come out with a stable browser! The Progress Project seems really good. They bring folks to Seattle for policy related speeches and debates. Tickets are free or very affordable. They also make their events available in RealVideo. I added them to Local Politics. 12/3/99 Amusements and Netcast have gotten revised. I dropped the link to Real Audio figuring a link to Real.com was enough. I also lost the link to videoseeker since I already have a number of video search serives listed and somewhere along the way videoseeker became just a portal to NBC products - so who cares about it. I moved American Memory movie collection to the movie back page I added a link to Free Speech Internet TV instead. They've been offering some good coverage of the WTO protests in town. I also moved Police scanner from Amusements to Netcast, though I may drop it. It's just a part of Broadcast.com now and I never really use it. Stick Figure Theater was moved from Amusememts to Cartoons. I then added two satirical sites to Amusements The Chaser and Landover Baptist Church. 12/14/99 Better Whois is added under Directories, it searches all the current domain name registration services. I added some blogs. World NY and Unpopular are stylishly unique, Memepool and Robot Wisdom are useful, Metascene is unendly clever, and Eaton Web and Camworld are very bloggy (though other than giving a general sense of what's going on with blogs neither is very notable, if I find something that really is distictive I'll replace them.) I added Ars Technica to PCs. I dropped a bunch of broken and not so useful links. I liked AFI's online theater during the brief time that it was operating, but It's been months and months since they ran a film. Y! Weekly always seemed like it should be more useful and amusing that it was. I've replaced it with links to blogs that do the job Y! Weekly promises but fails to do. I dropped links to winsite and webtechs (I've already lost the links). I never used winsite and webtechs was a great HTML validator that seems to have disappeared. I also dropped Jenny's Cybrary Librarian's Site du Jour. It was a great site for a long time, but Jenny doesn't have the time to maintian it anymore. I dropped the UNIX reference desk because it seemed to disappaear, but now it seems back online. Maybe I'll add it again. 11/4/99 Since I'm looking for easier ways to agglomerate links to the content I might want seek out, I have a new found appreciation for XML. Two new XML links have been added to Web Design - XMLTree which links you to the XML offerings of various websites and XML.com which offers XML news and info. 11/1/99 Now that I know Scarecrow has a searchable catalog online I've added it to the movies section and moved Mr. Cranky to the hidden film links. I llike Mr Cranky, but he is an amusement rather than a resource. I added a search field for Scarecorw and Cellophane Sqare as well. 9/30/99 I've been wanting to put Lycos 50 on the page for some time now, but it's been hard to find a place for it. I finally decided to move The Straight Dope to Undercurrent in order to get some proximity to the Urban Legends Cecil so frequently addresses. The Lycos 50 then goes in its place under Amusements. Now I can easily keep track of all those wacky pop culture references. 9/29/99 I dropped Net Newsies. It was a fun site, but the server is unreachable and it seems the last time I visited the site the owner had decided to cease maintenance. Although we probably don't need more crime news in the world, I linked to APB News as part of my quest to find more specialized news wires. It can be found under News. I also added a link to Wired News. At some point Wired annoyed me so much I dropped them from my page. Lately, however, it seems like people are pointing me to the site for breaking tech news, so I might as well get it straight from the source. They are under Computing. 9/26/99 Surfing the aether has been missing for a long time. I wish I could figure out if it is still out there in some new location, but until that day, I'm dropping it from the Radio category. I'm adding the far more useful Radio Scout which searches NPR show summaries and provides links to the appropriate show. 9/25/99 I'm dropping the WWW Music Database. It's been a good resource for finding out info about albums and artists, but CDDB is the resource that everyone uses and, consequently, it offers a more robust site and a broader base of user built content. I've moved Live Concerts from Netcast to Music. I've never used the page. Most likely I will drop it someday. Right now I need to make room for The Sync which looks super slick, offering a host of webcasted videos, geek oriented shows, and classic movies. 9/24/99 I've been pretty well absorbed in creating a new home page which focuses on the information I want rather than the links to the information I want. I know I'll always need Frequently Used Bookmarks however. I made a few corrections. Fixed some broken or misdirected links. I dropped CyberTimes Navigator to make more space for Bird on a Wire. I like to check the Navigator from time to time for new links, and it is always hard to find from the New York Times front page, but it isn't something I use constantly, so it goes for now. 9/19/99 I dropped the link to Sky and Telescope's What's up in the sky. It seems like a nifty page with useful info - if you own a telescope. Since I don't, I've decided to drop it in favor of a page I might use. Instead I've linked the Bubble Chamber which digs up interesting science sites and news online. I also fixed the link to the ever useful Merck Manual. I added a UniSci search option to the news field at the top and a link to the site under News. I also added a search option for E! Online. I could use some better search choices under news, but it's such a pain to compose a get command for most news sites that my half-hearted interest prevents me from pursuing it. I can't even get the search option for The Daily to work. How sad! And mysterious... if I type a get request into my browser it works just fine, but if I try to pass it through the local cgi, a slightly but vitally different URL loads. hmmmmmmmm. Sports Illustrated and Sporting News are now options under the news category search field. Nerve.com is now linked under magazines (for want of a better category). Do I want to list Clark Humphrey's Misc Media? I can't really decide. Maybe if I list it here, I'll check it enough to see if it's really worth the effort. I certainly could use something to replace the Y! Headlines in the Local news category, since it runs nothing but incidental rehash from the Times. 9/17/99 I'm trying out some major rennovations to the page. I've been want to squeeze it down from its 95K bloat. It's now down to about 60K. Since the page is entirely text, the only way to to speed it up is to trim down the number of characters. I've created a perl script that strips out the url's from the original page and replaces them with a call to a local cgi that bounces the user off to the url. This has given the bulk of the size savings; it doesn't seem to be more cumbersome to go through the local script, and I get the added benefit of logging which links I use most frequently. This should help in deciding which to keep and which to drop in the future. It's fun to spy on the visitors to the page too. The compression script also strips tabs out of the original file. I may have it all the useless characters (including returns). It would be pretty ugly for anyone trying to browse the source, but it could well trim another substantial hunk off the file size. I also removed a lot of the links that were hidden in comments on the page. I tend to comment out links that I am ambivalent about, or tha go missing and I hope will soon return to service. These links can be found on a limbo page. Most are still hidden in comments, however. 9/16/99 I added Deal-Mac to the computer search field (on the far right at the top). Deal-Mac has proven itself to be a great source of info for the best deal on Macintosh computer parts and software. I have shuffled Google to the top of the Wide Search category, since I, like many people, seem to be using it to the exlusion of all other search services these days. Loopy.net has retired. Online-sweepstakes.com now occupies its slot in Games. 9/15/99 I added a link to Yahooligans for my school teacher mother. It's ight at the top, so it'll be easy to find. I managed to add On this day to the History category. On the whole, I'm not very fond of the "what happened today" genre of webpages, but since this gives you full text of old New York Times articles, it's won me over. 9/14/99 I found a fairly comprehensive book review metapage and have added it to the Books category. I consequently dropped the link to the local literary calendar. It hasn't been updated in over a year. I added a link to Metropolis Magazine in Design. All the other links in this category focus on graphic design and typography. Metropolis covers a wider range of issues. I'm unsure whether it's worthwhile, since design isn't my field. It does have plenty of full article content, however, so I'll try it out. Fametracker looks frivolous, but amusing -- making it an excellent addition to the Entertainment category. Informant will periodically perform searches of your own design and email the results to you. I wish I could think of some use for it. It's listed under the Net category. Until a couple of weeks ago I would have used it to check for Old Navy, but now they've got a foothold on the web. Old Navy, with its limited range of heavily promoted merchandise, seems like it was born to be an online business. I'm looking forward to buying my cheap cotton clothing online rather than hauling myself all the way downtown. Return to Frequently used bookmarks |