Lego lands
Calling all Lego MindStorms robot fanatics and other digital tinkerers - MIT's New Media Lab is hosting MindFest, "a festival of designing, inventing and learning" for inventors of all ages, on October 23 and 24 in Boston. Go if you're a kid, an educator, a hobbyist or a researcher, and they're looking for people interested in leading or organising informal sessions. More information is available at www.media.mit.edu/mindfest/ . Even if you can't make it, the site has a fascinating set of links for "playful inventors.
Blue for girls
PowerPCs for boys; iBooks for girls? US columnist John Dvorak created an entertaining uproar when he suggested that Apple's iBook is too "girly". Janelle Brown of Salon took him on.. Dave Winer replied in a column at elderlyWhiteMalePundits.
Take a tour
If you're new to the web or an old timer who likes advice on where to surf, subscribe to the free twice-weekly internet Tourbus at www.tourbus.com. You'll need to scroll past a few advertisements but this email list fills you in on odd, useful and interesting sites, updates you on the latest annoying Net hoaxes and rumours, and offers tips on using the Net effectively. Past editions of the Tourbus are archived on the site so you can check to see if this mélange of information suits your taste before you subscribe.
Trilo bite me
The problem with creatures that became extinct millions of years ago is that we will never know what they tasted like. For example, trilobites "may or may not have tasted like chicken", says Professor George Hart, but it doesn't matter because you can make his trilobite cookies instead. Detailed, illustrated instructions, www.li.net/~george/trilobites/trilobite.html, will guide you and he says, once made, they'll soon become extinct once more.
Dirty work
There are people who collect dirt, and to prove it, there's a gathering of samples for your pleasure at the Museum of Dirt, www.planet.com/dirtweb/dirt.html . You can examine soil from Alcatraz Prison, Buddhist shrines, the Liberace Museum, film director John Waters's back lawn in Baltimore, Juliet's balcony in Verona (above), OJ Simpson's house, and a host of other thrilling places - even the bungalow where the writers of The Simpsons meet to hash out scripts. Search the site for samples sorted by colour, texture, elevation, contents and region. Trouble is, all those vials look pretty much the same.
Free sheet
Geeks all over the Net will sigh with pleasure to find that Dan Bricklin, creator of VisiCalc, a spreadsheet that pioneered the early home computer software market, has put the original app - all 27 kilobytes of it! - online at www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm. Still works.
Sorry affair
So what do you regret? Air yours or read what others are sorry they did or didn't do at www.regretsonly.com . The site is part of a writer's project to publish a book of regrets, and he promises not to reveal yours until the book comes out. He features some historical names on regret, as well. Try Oscar Wilde: "Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping, common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
Bomb 'em
Maybe the service was appalling at a restaurant in Memphis or you endured a grumpy cab driver in St Louis. If there's an American city you really don't like, you can detonate a one megaton hydrogen bomb there then view the damage online at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/amex/bomb/sfeature/mapablast.html (The effect on New York is shown below) . It's a chillingly educational site, but the suggestion that "You may want to select a large city or some other possible target near your home" seems a bit too chirpily helpful, given the subject.
Losers.com
For those who have heard just one too many stories about youthful internet millionaires and who feel the whole galaxy suddenly seems to end in dot com, Forbes magazine takes a wry look at the companies that didn't end up splashed all over the news. The article "Bomb.com", www.forbes.com/Forbes/99/0809/6403072a.htm , examines how not to go about setting up a web business by offering some excruciating examples of net stupidity.
Microsoft shock
If you like your technopundits unpredictable, have a look at a piece by meisterprogrammer Eric Raymond in Linux Today, in which he argues that - gasp - Microsoft is right, in the messaging battle raging with AOL.
Hammered
The problem with auction site eBay - well, one of the problems - is that you know perfectly well that all sorts of bizarre items are on offer at any given moment but you don't know how to find them. Now the eBay Weirdness Mailing List will bring them straight to your desktop every week, complete with links in case you want to bid. Sign up at www.grrl.com/ebay.html and view some of the oddities one eBay fan has purchased.
