The Globe and Mail: "The FBI is warning police across the U.S. to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning."

Every time the FBI sends out a press release, my bookshelf becomes more subversive.

THE ICEHOUSE HANDBOOK ONLINE: Table of Contents:"It may seem odd to you that the rules for the game known as Icehouse are not included in the Icehouse game set currently offered for sale."

Another site chock full o' gaming and weirdness and gaming weirdness.

Zarf's Redundant Site Map has heaps of neat stuff.

Neverwinter Vault - Reviews - Of Kings and Desperate Men: " Players will also want to keep in mind that the mod expects you to have a good gauge on your PC's moral center."

In my neverending quest for good depth of gaming experience, I have recently been put back on the track of Neverwinter Nights. I enjoyed this game initially, but my interest petered out as the module packaged with the box didn't hold my interest. I've been told that the user created materials are much superior. The hard part has been choosing and adventure to play. The reveiws are encouraging, as they show there's a good mix of "hack and slash" and roleplay heavy mods. Best of all, a bunch of classics have been modded, including "Tomb of Horros" and my all-time favorite (don't laugh) Keep on the Borderlands.

While you're at it, dont' forget to read kottke.

The Map Room: A Weblog About Maps

Really, really great stuff. This is being added to my weekly reads. Link gleaned form Doc Menlo

Currently reading: The Lair of the Evil DM, a great gamer blog with some good links to boot.

12/25/2003 - Movie Review: The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King - Happenings - Chattanoogan.com: "Now we come to strange matters. For this is not the first shadow of The Goonies that has crept into this rendering."

Web designs and project offices - Kay Initiatives Ltd: "This is a method for documenting business processes, based on the design elements of the London Underground diagram. We have used this technique in place of standard flowcharts, for all kinds of process-related documents including quality systems, to give a fresh and user-friendly look to what can be rather boring material. If you want to give your company processes a new lease of life and get staff using them regularly, this really will help."

The Sun Newspaper Online - UK's biggest selling newspaper: "A SPOOKY apparition caught on security cameras at Hampton Court Palace could be the ghost of notorious King Henry VIII, experts said last night."

Letters of Marque: Sauron: Offer and acceptance: "On the other hand, there's a little problem with the Ring. See, Sauron can use it to enslave everybody. And courts don't like specific performance in cases which smack of personal servitude. The problem is, though, this is a case of first impression. Normally they eschew specific performance in the case of, say, employment contracts, where the proximate result of the contract is that someone is forced to do work they don't want to. We've never had a case of supernatural exchange, where you're forced to give over something that would enslave all the Free Peoples of the earth. Some courts might understandably balk at this result."

Linnk thanks to #!/usr/bin/girl

Make-a-Flake - A snowflake maker by Lookandfeel new media

Link thanks to ringrest.

Stupid Evil Bastard: What NOT to do during "Return of the King.": "After the movie, say 'Lucas could have done it better.'"

Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates: Home

It's got pirates! It's got puzzles! What more do you want? ARRRRRH!

Cockeyed.com: Always bring your camera is still one of the coolest sites in the world. Check out the Jenga costume.

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column: "The 2002-2003 budget for Elections Canada is just over $57 million U.S. dollars, or $1.81 per Canadian citizen. It is extremely hard to get an equivalent per-citizen figure for U.S. elections, but trust me, it is a LOT higher. This week, San Francisco held a runoff mayoral election that cost $2.5 million, or $3.27 per citizen of the city. And this was for just one election, not a whole year of them.
We are spending $3.9 billion or $10 per citizen for new voting machines. Canada just prints ballots."

BrikWars!

How is it that this was going on and I didn't know about it?

Trogdor!: "Next, we'll build a more different 'S'."

Link thanks to Philos.

The Seattle Times: Opinion: Think Canada's the place to be? Think again: "One difference between Canadians and Seattlelites is coffee. A Canadian would never choose Starbucks over Tim Horton's. That's one of the few things the Canadian government can't control."

This is a bit of a tirade, but it does show something that a lot of people don't know. Not everyone in Canada is as happy to be Canadian as you might think. I'm an ex-pat Canadian, though not because I have any beef with Canada. Nevertheless, Canada is a country where what would pass for relatively moderate conservative in the US is quite far to the right wing.

On the other hand, I'm reminded of someone I went to grad school with. A staunch conservative and a Canadian, he loudly declared that he would happily abandon Canada and become an American. Tired of his badmouhting of Canada, an American retorted "If you're such a lousy citizen of Candada, what makes you think you'd be a good citizen here."

Miserable Failure
My contribution to Google Bombing.

Salon.com Technology | Nevada decides on new voting machines: "Secretary of State Dean Heller said Wednesday that Nevada has become the first state to demand a voter-verifiable receipt printer on new touch-screen voting machines being purchased for the 2004 elections."

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column: "You can read in many other places about the trials of Diebold as it attempted to build its touch screen voting system. I'm not here to write about FTP sites or whether voting machines can or can't be messed with over the Internet. We're looking at this as an IT project, remember? This isn't politics (at least not in this particular column) it's engineering. And one thing engineers of great big IT systems know is that they are never on time, never on budget, and sometimes don't work at all."

Mars Mission’s Invisible Enemy: Radiation

"On a trip to Mars and back, probably every cell in the body would be hit by an ionized particle or a proton, researchers say, and they have very little idea what that would do. 'If every neuron in your brain gets hit, do you come back being a blithering idiot, or not?' asked Dr. Derek I. Lowenstein, the chairman of Brookhaven's collider accelerator department."

LotFinder®: "Several polyhedra in various materials with similar symbols are known from the Roman period. Modern scholarship has not yet established the game for which these dice were used. "

The ancient Romants played D&D! Link thanks to Philos.

Salon.com News | MoveOn moves up: "In five hours, they raised half a million dollars for the MoveOn voter fund."

Yeah, I know it's not just about the money, but it does show clout.

I knew that the red car wasn't ready for the SR520 on-ramp the minute we entered arboretum way. Not that I lacked sympathy. I'm a new driver myself. That's why I'm always so keen to spot the fools and the idiots before they spot me, and this one was dead giveaway. She/he was much to tentative on the curves. Again, on a windy road where everyone goes 10mph over the speed limit AT LEAST, this is understandable. But arboretum way ends in a highway on-ramp that even the experienced drivers I know consider somewhat dicey, so when red turned onto the freeway entrance ahead of me, I knew that I wasn't going to like it. Then, going into the on-ramp, red and the three cars ahead of her all showed their brake lights. When you're going 40mph onto a short ramp leading to a highway that's going 60+, this isn't a good sign.

Anyway, I was shortly to be caught up in my own life-and-death struggle (which I, for some reason, repeat two to three times a week), stomping on the accelerator, looking over my shoulder, trying to spot the hole I could slide into without getting flattened by a semi-rig, so I couldn't really pay much attention to the red car. Besides, I'd let him/her get onto the ramp well ahead of me, and there was a huge space in front of me for anyone to get into. So imaging my terror when, as I slide into the freeway lane and look forward, I see red's tail-lights. Having lost his/her nerve, red was braking to a panicked stop, nose into the lane, at the end of the on-ramp (note that since this all occurs on a bridge to boot, there's no shoulder to cry on).

Luckily, I had the foresight (self preservation instinct?) to swerve around and tear off down the highway. For all I know, red is still there, trapped in the on ramp until rush hour slows the traffic to a crawl so he/she can slink away, by no means the first to be defeated and disgraced by the arboretum way on-ramp.