A coffee table book about coffee tables? In this case, here's a Web museum that catalogs Web museums. This is a pretty good site if you're into the oddness that fuels humanity. Oh sure, Ansel Adams, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Smithsonian and other museum-worthy stuff is listed. But the real action is in Japanese manhole covers, LPs that won't be released on CD and the like. It's almost worth bookmarking and much better than working.

Clicking cross country

kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/onTheRoad/

Imagine driving across country and counting the miles. Then, when you hit the magic number of 36, envision reaching across the still-moving car and changing a roll of film . . . while steering with your knee. The results are great to view, but the manner in which they were collected makes me glad I walk whenever possible. This slice of Kodak's domain houses a fascinating mini-movie that takes you from sea to shining sea. As author Mark Leyner once wrote: "Corn, corn, corn, Stuckey's." That's his representation of Indiana, in case you haven't been.

Improve your social life

www.UselessFacts.net/

If you're a bore at dinner parties, here's a link to spice up your social standing. Well, if you're a bore in the first place, delivering useless facts in a monotone, humorless manner isn't going to do you much better. It's like putting lipstick on a pig and all that. But while you're stuck in your hovel eating cheap cereal while humanity parties the night away, consider this site. It's jammed with obscure, mostly accurate snippets that will have you wondering out loud about where humanity is heading (and why is it in this handbasket?).

Bottled up

www.MilkBottleOfTheWeek.com

I don't know about the United States, but the stereotypical milk delivery person back in the old country was a cheeky, witty chap who always had a joke for the kids, a smile and a wink for the lady of the house. He also would whistle a happy tune while clanking real glass bottles down on your doorstep. And I hated him. I hate anything that's animate before lunch time. If you can remember when milk lived in glass (not cardboard) and magically appeared on your doorstep every morning, this site is a trip down memory lane. It's slightly British in its slant and some of the ads on the bottles might not make sense to non-Anglophiles.

Utilities for the Mac

www.AladdinSys.com/secure_delete/

www.Dekorte.com/Software/OSX/Crypt/

Apple's OS 9 includes a utility that takes any file and encrypts it with relatively weak encryption. I thought this was missing from OS X, but it was hidden in the Disk Copy utility. Sneaky. Rather than encrypting file by file, you create a disk image and store your laptop goodies within. But if you want to zap a file on any other disk, just deleting it isn't going to make the file go away from prying eyes. It's still there and can be recovered with programs such as Norton Utilities. You'll need something like one of the utilities listed above to really get rid of it. The first is an easy to use, $25 commercial utility from the makers of compression utility StuffIt. Drag your files to it and they're overwritten with garbage before being deleted. The second is free, primarily encrypts files but has an option to overwrite the originals with rubbish. If somebody walks off with your Mac, you'll be glad you had these utilities to keep you safe.

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