Digital Spring Cleaning
Jan. 28th, 2004 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotnik2004I read a Douglas Rushkoff piece today about the inefficiency of clinging to digital "possessions" like files, MP3s, and the like. The practice of bookmarking hundreds of URLs for hypothetical future use was singled out for particular ridicule, since web search engines are generally much more efficient than the preposterous bookmark management interfaces in the major browsers. Thus chastened, I have just deleted about three years worth of "oh, I might want to look at that again" bookmarks.
Except... about half way through, that neurotic packrat instinct took hold, and I couldn't quite bring myself to delete them all. So instead I'm unloading a random selection on you, or on the LiveJournal servers to be precise.
Usually when someone posts a list of links in their weblog, they are encouraging you to visit said pages. I assure you that this is not the case here. Don't go visiting these. I list them here only so you can see the pathological depths of my bookmarking addiction. I am a troubled, troubled man.
Adland: Anytime there's a TV commercial with any buzz around it, you can find it here.
American Elf: James Kochalka's online sketchbook diary.
American Rhetoric: Archived audio of great American speeches.
Antique Telephone History: Every now and then I end up corresponding with an antique telephone collector.
Authentic History Center: More archived crap.
Bookslut: Used to follow this. Now I don't.
Book of Ratings does D&D Monsters: I wish Seanbaby had been a gamer. This is the next best thing, I guess.
Canuxploitation: Canadian B-Movies.
Charles Babbage Institute: Center for the History of Information Technology.
Chank.com: Rock and roll fontographer.
Cheapass Games: Makers of Kill Doctor Lucky and other fun stuff.
Ronald Coase Biography: What it says.
Dissecting Leah Mclaren: Alas, the site devoted to trashing Canada's most annoying "journalist" is defunct, while Leah unaccountably lives on.
D&D Review: Review of Dungeons and Dragons from a wargame magazine waaaay back in the day.
DJ BeauxVinyl: Downtempo ambient alternative country honky skronk trip hop from Japan.
Ignatius Donnelly and the End of the World.
The East is Red: Chinese Communist propaganda posters.
The ElectriClerk: I want it.
Fanspeak: How Geeks Talk. In case I ever have occasion to talk with one. Not to be confused with Talk Like A Gamer and Gamer Jargon.
Found Magazine: They find stuff.
Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks: "Cool."
Gazebo: The (long defunct) journal of geek culture.
Giant Robot Online.
Girls are Pretty Day: If this had an RSS feed, I'd probably keep reading it. It's fun. I would also keep reading Mr. Pants. But I'm all about the RSS aggregator these days.
Golden Words Online. My old stomping grounds.
Malcolm Gladwell: New Yorker columnist, author of The Tipping Point.
Guy Who Makes Robots: See all those wires, Homer? That's why your robot never worked.
Harlow's Nature of Love: Classic psychology article involving Cloth Mother and Wire Mother. I like the monkeys.
History of Video Games.
House of Con Games
IF: If I ever decide RPGs aren't geeky and obsessive enough for me, I'll probably get into Interactive Fiction (aka text based computer games).
Infiltration: The zine of going places you're not supposed to go, largely in Toronto.
Insects from Shaggy: The last testament of Daphne Pickman.
Intelligent Humor: A very surreal, very funny comic strip that ran in the University of Waterloo's campus paper while I was in college.
Jazz Age Slang: Tell it to Sweeney.
Robert Johnson
Kids Review Old Video Games
Klockwerks
Ladies of Star Trek TOS: Aw, yeah.
Mandy Moore's Telecom Equipment Page: News flash: telephone geeks are weird.
Metal Maker: Instant metal band.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology
The Museum of Unworkable Devices
Mutated Television
Online Sketchbuk: Before he was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
calamityjon. Or possibly simultaneously.
Persecuting Pee-Wee: Why do I bookmark this crap?
Places To Go, People To Be: Apparently defunct gaming e-zine. I think I bookmarked this for their history of RPGs.
People's Phone: A goofy photo I'd like to use for the cover of my book.
Pow-Wow, or the Long Lost Friend: Inspiration for the Book of Good Roads.
Ragnarok: Fun story/RPG idea from R. Seanbaby Borgstrom
Savant: A review of the comic Sky Ape which turned out to be much more entertaining than the comic itself.
Search for Order Reconsidered: Robyn Muncy on Robert Wiebe
Schroedinger's Cat and Krishnamurti's Dog: Again, why do I bookmark these?
Scientific American article on Parallel Universes
Select Smart: That presidential candidate quiz everyone is linking to, aka, who knew I was such a Sharpton fan?
Sifl & Olly Pictures: Rock.
Shadows in the Fog: Nice Jack the Ripper / Occult Victoriana RPG in progress by a fellow Boston academic / gamer I'd love to game with some time.
Shoggoth on the Roof: Your basic Lovecraftian Musical with MP3s and Quicktime Video.
Stare Down Sally: There was a time when the main thing people used the Web for was stuff like this.
Statistical Data on the Historical Profession: In case I ever need to depress myself.
Strange Enthusiasms: Who's this loser? What Isis article?
Telephone Exchange Name Project: Dedicated to preserving not old phones but old phone numbers. Now that's meta.
Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies: This is like the archetypal site I bookmark then never visit again: briefly interesting, pretty geeky, quickly forgotten.
Toshi Station: Remember this guy?
Taste Tribes: In case I ever have to taste any.
Thought News: Possible future project of mine -- something about the mysterious Franklin Ford.
TV Horror Host Gallery: A-woooh man. See also the Hilarious House of Frightenstein.
Uchronia: Big alternate history site. Strangely uninteresting.
The Unh! Project: Aaargh.
U.S. Census Historical Data Browser: What it sounds like.
The Valedictorian's Death: The RPG you play with old yearbooks instead of dice.
Victorian Robots: Boilerplate & Co.
Visual History: What historiography needs is more pictures.
Weird Japanese So-Called Erotica: Bet you'd forgotten about this.
Wellman and the Cthulhu Mythos: Manley Wade Wellman is like the Country-Fried H.P. Lovecraft
What Song Was #1 The Day You Were Born? A: Get It On by T.Rex
Why Was Patty Hearst Kidnapped? You have to know these things when you're a king.
Wizard of Oz and the Illuminati Mind Control: I deleted about 100 Unknown USA links, but I figured I'd save just one for old time's sake.
Ziggy Stardust: Elaborate Flash site. Must viewing for Starchildren prep. This site isn't nearly as fancy but has lots of info too.
Now my Favorites list is lean and mean, with only the dozen or so sites I actually visit on a regular basis. I have an RSS Aggregator and LiveJournal to bring me my brainless weblog content, and Google for everything else. I feel virtuous and clean.
Except... about half way through, that neurotic packrat instinct took hold, and I couldn't quite bring myself to delete them all. So instead I'm unloading a random selection on you, or on the LiveJournal servers to be precise.
Usually when someone posts a list of links in their weblog, they are encouraging you to visit said pages. I assure you that this is not the case here. Don't go visiting these. I list them here only so you can see the pathological depths of my bookmarking addiction. I am a troubled, troubled man.
Adland: Anytime there's a TV commercial with any buzz around it, you can find it here.
American Elf: James Kochalka's online sketchbook diary.
American Rhetoric: Archived audio of great American speeches.
Antique Telephone History: Every now and then I end up corresponding with an antique telephone collector.
Authentic History Center: More archived crap.
Bookslut: Used to follow this. Now I don't.
Book of Ratings does D&D Monsters: I wish Seanbaby had been a gamer. This is the next best thing, I guess.
Canuxploitation: Canadian B-Movies.
Charles Babbage Institute: Center for the History of Information Technology.
Chank.com: Rock and roll fontographer.
Cheapass Games: Makers of Kill Doctor Lucky and other fun stuff.
Ronald Coase Biography: What it says.
Dissecting Leah Mclaren: Alas, the site devoted to trashing Canada's most annoying "journalist" is defunct, while Leah unaccountably lives on.
D&D Review: Review of Dungeons and Dragons from a wargame magazine waaaay back in the day.
DJ BeauxVinyl: Downtempo ambient alternative country honky skronk trip hop from Japan.
Ignatius Donnelly and the End of the World.
The East is Red: Chinese Communist propaganda posters.
The ElectriClerk: I want it.
Fanspeak: How Geeks Talk. In case I ever have occasion to talk with one. Not to be confused with Talk Like A Gamer and Gamer Jargon.
Found Magazine: They find stuff.
Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks: "Cool."
Gazebo: The (long defunct) journal of geek culture.
Giant Robot Online.
Girls are Pretty Day: If this had an RSS feed, I'd probably keep reading it. It's fun. I would also keep reading Mr. Pants. But I'm all about the RSS aggregator these days.
Golden Words Online. My old stomping grounds.
Malcolm Gladwell: New Yorker columnist, author of The Tipping Point.
Guy Who Makes Robots: See all those wires, Homer? That's why your robot never worked.
Harlow's Nature of Love: Classic psychology article involving Cloth Mother and Wire Mother. I like the monkeys.
History of Video Games.
House of Con Games
IF: If I ever decide RPGs aren't geeky and obsessive enough for me, I'll probably get into Interactive Fiction (aka text based computer games).
Infiltration: The zine of going places you're not supposed to go, largely in Toronto.
Insects from Shaggy: The last testament of Daphne Pickman.
Intelligent Humor: A very surreal, very funny comic strip that ran in the University of Waterloo's campus paper while I was in college.
Jazz Age Slang: Tell it to Sweeney.
Robert Johnson
Kids Review Old Video Games
Klockwerks
Ladies of Star Trek TOS: Aw, yeah.
Mandy Moore's Telecom Equipment Page: News flash: telephone geeks are weird.
Metal Maker: Instant metal band.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology
The Museum of Unworkable Devices
Mutated Television
Online Sketchbuk: Before he was
calamityjon. Or possibly simultaneously.Persecuting Pee-Wee: Why do I bookmark this crap?
Places To Go, People To Be: Apparently defunct gaming e-zine. I think I bookmarked this for their history of RPGs.
People's Phone: A goofy photo I'd like to use for the cover of my book.
Pow-Wow, or the Long Lost Friend: Inspiration for the Book of Good Roads.
Ragnarok: Fun story/RPG idea from R. Seanbaby Borgstrom
Savant: A review of the comic Sky Ape which turned out to be much more entertaining than the comic itself.
Search for Order Reconsidered: Robyn Muncy on Robert Wiebe
Schroedinger's Cat and Krishnamurti's Dog: Again, why do I bookmark these?
Scientific American article on Parallel Universes
Select Smart: That presidential candidate quiz everyone is linking to, aka, who knew I was such a Sharpton fan?
Sifl & Olly Pictures: Rock.
Shadows in the Fog: Nice Jack the Ripper / Occult Victoriana RPG in progress by a fellow Boston academic / gamer I'd love to game with some time.
Shoggoth on the Roof: Your basic Lovecraftian Musical with MP3s and Quicktime Video.
Stare Down Sally: There was a time when the main thing people used the Web for was stuff like this.
Statistical Data on the Historical Profession: In case I ever need to depress myself.
Strange Enthusiasms: Who's this loser? What Isis article?
Telephone Exchange Name Project: Dedicated to preserving not old phones but old phone numbers. Now that's meta.
Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies: This is like the archetypal site I bookmark then never visit again: briefly interesting, pretty geeky, quickly forgotten.
Toshi Station: Remember this guy?
Taste Tribes: In case I ever have to taste any.
Thought News: Possible future project of mine -- something about the mysterious Franklin Ford.
TV Horror Host Gallery: A-woooh man. See also the Hilarious House of Frightenstein.
Uchronia: Big alternate history site. Strangely uninteresting.
The Unh! Project: Aaargh.
U.S. Census Historical Data Browser: What it sounds like.
The Valedictorian's Death: The RPG you play with old yearbooks instead of dice.
Victorian Robots: Boilerplate & Co.
Visual History: What historiography needs is more pictures.
Weird Japanese So-Called Erotica: Bet you'd forgotten about this.
Wellman and the Cthulhu Mythos: Manley Wade Wellman is like the Country-Fried H.P. Lovecraft
What Song Was #1 The Day You Were Born? A: Get It On by T.Rex
Why Was Patty Hearst Kidnapped? You have to know these things when you're a king.
Wizard of Oz and the Illuminati Mind Control: I deleted about 100 Unknown USA links, but I figured I'd save just one for old time's sake.
Ziggy Stardust: Elaborate Flash site. Must viewing for Starchildren prep. This site isn't nearly as fancy but has lots of info too.
Now my Favorites list is lean and mean, with only the dozen or so sites I actually visit on a regular basis. I have an RSS Aggregator and LiveJournal to bring me my brainless weblog content, and Google for everything else. I feel virtuous and clean.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 07:22 pm (UTC)Was this some previous life of yours, before you found the love of telephones? Or just a coincidence?
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 07:49 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's me. I've actually written a fair bit on 19th century pseudoscience, even though the Isis article mentioned there (Isis = leading journal for the History of Science) never did get published. I still hold out hope of completing my popular audience book on MIT's Archives of Useless Research.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-28 07:57 pm (UTC)Nice.
Date: 2004-01-29 07:24 am (UTC)I also think that the gallery of misused quotes is a work of genius. That is something that I've gotten kind of ranty about in the past. It's good to know that someone else has it covered. Now there's one more tiny piece of my brain that I can use for something else.