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prior listings

 

• Tricky3 6/24/03 
  Description: On Tour 2003 - a travel journal
  Comments: In March, Rick started in Bangkok and by mid-month, was in Cambodia.  Heat.  Internet cafes.  Thailand's oldest rainforests.  Border tensions.  Moped tours through "flat countryside."  April finds him in spots throughout Vietnam.  Hotels.  "Moto" drivers.  "Funny trains."  Dog bites.  Almost took the wrong bus.  Back to Bangkok towards the end of the month, then more of Vietnam.  May 18th: "I knew I'd like Australia."  It looks like Rick is still there.  An engaging and informative travel journal...
   
• Phoons from Around the World 6/22/03 
  Description: The still pose is called a "Phoon." People from around the world send in Phoon pictures from their home towns and their travels.
  Comments: When I first heard the word, I imagined Inspector Clouseau saying "pick up the Phoon" and hearing in response, "you said phoon."  "I know what I said!" exclaims Clouseau in classic form.  But that was just my warped imagination because Phoon has nothing to do with phone, thank you.  Rather, the word came from a guy named John who, back in 1980, used it to nickname a "particular pose" he "sneaked" into a family photo.  Almost 20 years later, he saw something that reminded him of his "Phoon photos" and a website was born.  Now there's almost 1,000 such pictures, sent in from people around the world.  Silly?  I'd say so.  Amusing?  More than you might think because the photos have a lot more in 'em than just the phoon pose (which is amusing all by itself).  Cool?  I'll stick my neck out on this one because whatever cool really means, I'm certain that fun has something to do with it.  Phoon?  Fun?  I know what I said... 
   
• Documented Life 6/21/03 
  Description: an autodocumentary by Miles Hochstein
  Comments: "I don't have a specific agenda that I'm aware of, other than a belief that the facts of each and every life are interesting and important."  Miles' life may have been ordinary before but he "messed that up by documenting it so thoroughly" on his site.  Imagine.  A main page consisting of photos of Miles for every year since 1959, when he was born, each linked to page with more photos and details.  "This site may very well be the single most complete (by some standard) visual representation of one person's life available anywhere online."  That may very well be true.  Amazing...
   
• Flak Magazine 6/20/03 (#1) 
  Description: a noncomprehensive guide to everything
• Shaking Through.net 6/20/03 (#2) 
  Description: humorous & insightful commentary regarding matters of pop cultural relevance
  Comments: Culture, baby!  Music.  Books.  Movies.  Comics.  Both of today's picks are well-designed online mags with deep content and no big commercial distractions.  One says it has "an overwhelming, bulletproof love for high-quality content" while the other says it would "like to be your online authority for cultural criticism."  Both deliver quite well, thank you...
   
• channelping 6/19/03 
  Description: a mixed bag for higher primates
  Comments: Lower primates are sure to be confused by the dingbat icons.  And the side menu, which mixes together internal and external links, arranged by line length, sure looks cool but just might leave usability experts laughing (and lower primates groaning) in the aisles.  Then there's the question:  "Does this site have a purpose?"  Lower primates thrive on such curiosities, and will probably want to know who created this scattered collection of useless crap.  Higher primates, on the other hand, will want to learn about chairs and they're hungry for data to put on their PDAs.  They won't care about the side menu 'cause they love the little icons, and things like the prose clock and phrases like "all your base are belong us" knock their socks off.  I've run out of hands, but need to mention yet another kind of primate - your average, run-of-the-mill human kind, like me.  I'm scattered and somewhat random and easily amused.  More important than that, I'm curious and like to explore.  That's why I think today's pick is simply golden (sorry, it's an inside joke).  Seriously though, it's the creativity that attracts me the most...
   
• the noodle incident 6/18/03 
  Description: personal webspace featuring CSS-related resources and tutorials
  Comments: "We could finally write standards compliant code.  Almost."  What Owen just said there is a key reason for my choosing as today's pick.  If you're into tableless design, you'll find his resources and tutorials useful.  [Little Boxes offers a number of layouts, complete with commented stylesheets and the CSS Panic Guide is an excellent list of related resources.  And if CSS bores you, perhaps the designomatic or his weblog will be more your thing.  What does noodles have to do with it?  Hell if I know... ;~))
   
• Word Chowder 6/16/03 
  Description: a little collection of light verse
  Comments: Though the site's design is a little plain, it is clean and easy to navigate.  Plain is sometimes a good thing.  Today's pick features the enjoyable "light verse" of Scott Emmons in a number of categories plus works from a "guest poet."  It's the lightheartedness of Scott's writing that grabs me, I guess, and the illustrations by Chris Harding do enhance the reader's experience...

  For one flat fee I'll get to see
  The sluts of Old New York.
  My brain is in an e-mail haze.
  Good God, I miss those simple days
  When Spam was jellied pork!

  I hear ya Scott.  Thanks for letting me know about your "little collection."  ;~)
   
• Lilia.com 6/15/03 
  Description: Personal site of Lilia Ahner featuring photography and digital art.
  Comments: Here's a personal site that's been on the web since '97, featuring the "photographic tomfoolery & miscellaneous ramblings" of a freelancer in San Francisco.  If you like pictures of people at costume parties, Lilia serves up a number of different sets.  There's also 3 different sets of cemetary pics and digital art plus other people/party pics.  I like the neat and clean, easy-to-navigate popup presentation of photos and the site's colorful design.  Some interesting art and pop-culture related posts, too.  It's got personality...
   
• Austin Bloggers 6/13/03 
  Description: aggregating articles about Austin, blogged by its members
  Comments: I first learned about the site at jumpingfish, a personal weblog/journal I read daily, mainly because its author, David Hasan, writes so well (thanks David!).  Today's pick is a unique meta-blog that's a perfect example of an online/offline community in action, in my opinion.  The aggregated content of the weblog comes from a number of Austin, Texas bloggers who utilize a "trackback-enabled blogging tool" or, in cases where they're not using such a tool, the site provides a manual form for pinging the trackback URL (learn more). It's real information about the Austin community, for the Austin community, and the members also get together monthly... offline.  Great idea...
   
• www.momentscaptured.com 6/11/03 
  Description: a collection of photographs
  Comments: My outwardly normal friend Julius (see 8/4/01) recently mentioned an offline "photography exhibition you should know about" in his weblog.  Julius is quite a photographer himself, who also exhibits his work offline now and then, so I tend to follow his leads and explore sites he mentions.  Bingo!  Today's pick is a small but impressive collection of photos from London-based photographer Claudine Sinnett.  She captures both city scenes and people shots in an extraordinary way and I'm guessing the larger, hand-printed Urban Angels pieces are really something to see when viewed in person.  Thanks Julius!
   
• kill the robots 6/9/03 
  Description: indie electronic noise
  Comments: Back in '97 when I started coolstop, the site's tagline was "clearing new roads to cool creativity."  It had something to do with big portals leading to nowhere (in my mind, anyway) and trying to provide some sort of alternative for the websurfer looking for something different.  A different path, if you will.  The web is all about paths if you stop to think about it.  Anyway, back in February in my weblog, I linked to a cool piece I remembered by a guy named Alex Pleasant (see 1/18/02).  Early this morning, my weblog referrers log showed evidence that Alex must have picked up on the link in his own logs.  An old path became the starting point for a new path this morning, bringing me back to enjoying his site all over again.  Before I left, I checked out his "links" (naturally, the next point on the path in my quest to find today's pick) and end up on a band's web site.  Not a big name band with record deals, expensive cars, and bling-bling out the ying-yang.  Not at all.  It's a local band in San Francisco with character that apparently hits the audience in a special way with its indie "space rock."  So, their website is sweet and simple.  It lets you know where they'll be next, offers some free live stuff in the form of .mp3s, and the chance to subscribe to their newsletter.  You'll have to click on a robot (or should I say blow him up) to get to the content.  Download a few tunes and read the news, then look back and you'll see that level 2 of the game has loaded.  Before you know it, you've reached level 4 and the fun is really heating up as you continue to kill the robots, listening to their music in the background.  What fun!  There's one more cool thing I found out along this morning's path.  Alex is in the band.  It's a wrap.
   
• css Zen Garden 6/6/03 
  Description: a demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design
  Comments: CSS is hardly a new thing and though there's a number of excellent resources out there, Dave Shea says "most examples of neat tricks and hacks have been demonstrated by structurists and coders."  He says CSS needs "to be taken seriously by graphic artists" and the purpose of the site is to "excite, inspire, and encourage" graphic artists to take a shot at designing their own masterpiece through modifying its stylesheet and adding their own graphics.  There's already a total of 19 official designs.  "This is a learning exercise as well as a demonstration."  Indeed.  [Antipixel < Simon Willison
   
• haumovie 6/2/03 
  Description: photos and words...it's just safe.
  Comments: "Lack of time and motifs has created this stillness."  Feeling what we all feel, that need to add content, Christian said that "Saturday will be the day."  Content takes time, especially when quality is a concern, but Saturday comes, "so this is the day," and as promised, Christian delivers.  photosdigitalwordslyrical.  "Let's do this."
   
• kepek.creart.hu 6/1/03 
  Description: royalty-free images
  Comments: You gotta love the web.  Where else can one take a quick trip to Argentina, only to find a cool site in Hungary in less time than it takes to drink one's first cup of coffee?  There's hundreds of big tasty images.  Nature.  Animal.  Architecture.  Object.  Other.  And the way I see it, you've got 2 ways to enjoy today's pick.  You can browse.  You can download.  They're royalty-free.  Any questions?