Just “a few” of my favorite links from the past year, mostly from the old, broken down version of this blog. The Website at the End of the Universe – You gotta love that title. Tatjana van Vark – weird inventions. Strange Maps – a blog featuring fictional and antique maps. Zyra – a links [...]

Very cool bike A Smile in the Sky The Q-tip was originally given a name that would be embarrassing in our time. Automata by Dug North and Automata/Automaton Blog. Clarence Grad 72 – nice blog found via my comments Mikimojo – Mick Brady‘s other blog (great photo)

Life is not always rosy, and it’s not always black. Mostly it’s featureless gray with rare splashes of absurd color. — here Personally I think that the best cure for environmental catastrophe is to be very rich. — there Remember, Michael: even Brady Satan’s ACL isn’t made of steel! — here This is like being [...]

Helloooooo…? Anyone out there? It’s been sort of lonely around here since I’ve been back in action. (Well, not all that much action; maybe that’s the problem.) Anyway, here are a few sites I bookmarked before the power failure. Most – but not all – are blogs. Anglo-Saxon Riddles from the Exeter Book Manuscript – [...]

Top 100 Living Geniuses, according to a survey of 4,000 Britons. A rather odd list. Via JulieVW

California Impressionists – a brief introduction and a few examples. And a silly question. Artsy people can be so amusing, getting all worked up over the question of whether a work of art is actually good according to some vague, elite and ever-changing definition of quality.

. . The weather event itself wasn’t what most people would call a “storm”. It was just rain. But it happened to fall at a time when the temperature was at, and later just below, the freezing point of water. The rain froze as it hit tree limbs and power lines, growing increasingly thick and [...]

9 interesting doors Mysteriez game. Find the numbers. Weird, but much better than the dogs barking Jingle Bells. 2008 hardware ad calendar from Russia. Funny.

A most awesome pizza! There are just a couple of things I might change. I might use a different kind of pepper; maybe banana peppers. They’re not as green but that many bell peppers don’t appeal to me. And is that broccoli I see? That definitely has to go. Okay so it needs some work [...]

I’ve been tagged by the House of Eratosthenes. I’m a little late getting around to this so I won’t tag anyone else. 1. Wrapping or gift bags? – Both. Mostly wrapping but I use some gift bags too. 2. Real or artificial tree? – Artificial. I like real trees. I like the scent of a [...]

Lateral Science – Victorian science articles. (Bifurcated Rivets) Really bad pun. (AMCGLTD) Steampunk green man. Weird art. Astronomy Pictures of the Year. Beautiful! (Dark Roasted Blend) – I’ve got a lot of catching up to do there.) Searches answered Soviet aerospace Christmas cards (Neatorama)

We have electricity! Finally! It’s been so long I hardly know what to do with it. I was planning to write a long post about the ice storm and power failure as soon as the electricity came back on but now it’s only a few days until Christmas and I have a few Christmasy things [...]

Electricity that is. Haven’t had it since sometime in the wee hours of Monday morning. But we are luckier than some people. We have heat and we don’t have a hole in our roof. I’ll tell you all about our adventures in the dark later when the power comes back on sometime next week. (I [...]

I took this photo the day before Thanksgiving. There were also several promising buds that day but soon after this the weather started turning cold, near or below freezing, so this was the last fully open rose of the year.

BMovies.com. You probably wouldn’t pay to see these but (if you have a broadband connection) you don’t have to. Horror, sci-fi, kung fu and westerns you can watch online for free. Via In4mador!

Very cool antique mechanical solar system models. At least some of them are antiques; some are modern but it was the older ones that attracted me. Via Dark Roasted Blend

Oh my! This is too funny!. That is so…. wrong. (No disrespect intended, of course.)

Do you trust weather forecasts? I think I do, maybe too much. Yesterday I thought about going shopping but it was cold and windy so I looked at the weather forecast for today and it was supposed to be a little warmer and sunny so I decided to wait until today. Well, today it’s colder [...]

Astrona – a space art journal. (thanks, Scott) Marketing oops. Can you imagine the uproar if they had advertised that particular item for Ramadan? Unphotographable – a “photoblog” without photos. (via Extra Extra) Blogging the Russian election – translations from Russian Livejournals. Carnival Culture 2: the Folksinger Bacon flowchart. (via Ectoplasmosis) Cabinet of Wonders – [...]

Calories are strange, annoying little units. Most of us don’t really understand calories. We just think of them as a measurement of how fattening something is but, on the other hand, we instinctively think in terms of volume and calories simply refuse to match up with volume. How can that itty bitty candy bar have [...]

‘Toons ordered to the witness stand: In what lawyers believe was a clerical error worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a court in Naples sent a summons to the characters ordering them to appear Friday in a trial in the southern Italian city, officials said. They were summoned as damaged parties in the criminal trial [...]

Real life is not like CSI: Real life does not have intensely focused brilliant people who seem to only have one case to solve and computers that would have made the 1950′s Batman jealous of their computational ability. Real life has fairly bright people who want to care, but are overwhelmed with the number of [...]

A great collection of wreck diving photos. Almost makes me want to learn to dive. Almost. Thanks, Scott.

The Diplomat Knows, a great list. Just a sample: Nothing is trivial. Great loves have been won or lost with the slightest gesture or intonation. It may take more than 20 years to determine who really won a dispute. If you are truly powerful you don’t need to raise your voice. Very hard messages can [...]

H. P. Kolb Gallery – Digital fantasy art. Nudes. Fascinating. Great scenic photos of Turkey. Photos of an odd-looking… something in the Russian forest. Some kind of electrical equipment, I think, but it looks sort of artistic in a retro-future kind of way. Mural Mosaics. Very nice. (via Neurastenia) Honeycomb sculptures. Weird. (via Phantasmaphile)