Site Seeing

By JULES ALLEN
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 13, 2003

Feel free to browse

Yes, I am from Mars

www.BTinternet.com/~a.ghinn/heath.htm

www.Rube-Goldberg.com/html/gallery.htm

I'm not really from Mars. But during an occasional conversation I'll slip back into the mannerisms and reference popular culture of the Old Country. Those enjoying (or at least tolerating) my presence will look at me as if I dropped out of a spaceship. A good example is mentioning illustrator W. Heath Robinson. Like the geekier yet widely known American artist Rube Goldberg, Robinson was famous for weird and wacky contraptions and flights of fancy -- a visual P.G. Wodehouse, if you will, with more of a science bent. Those sites above are wonderful family entertainment of Robinson and Goldberg art and should get everybody's creative juices flowing.

Ring in the losses

www.CellForCash.com/

Bananas, computers and cell phones all have one thing in common: Their value deteriorates at a wicked pace. While a cell phone doesn't turn brown by the time you get it home from the store, its value plummets almost as fast as my tech stock picks from the late 1990s did. If you're ready to shed a cell phone and have no idea what it's worth, go ahead and plunge into a pit of despair with this site. You can pick popular models from many different manufacturers and get a surprisingly low resale value without leaving your chair. Chances are you'll get more with a private sale. But between this and eBay you'll have some idea of what to ask for.

Monochrome madness

www.TrevorVanMeter.com/flyguy/

I found this one a bit too late for the holidays, but I think you'll really enjoy it just the same. It's a holiday card that thinks it's sort of a game, and it has no other purpose than to entertain. In this wonderfully animated adventure you're a man waiting at a bus stop. Before you know it you're able to fly. Using the arrow keys you're up, up and away on your airborne journey. Before you get to the top, make sure you interact with the flying fish, photocopiers, robots, satellites and so forth, as each has an amusing animation to share. It's brilliant fun and requires a recent version of the Flash player.

Secrets in garbage

wWeek.com/flatfiles/News3485.lasso

www.Consumer.gov/idtheft/

You really are what you throw away. And anybody with an interest in your garbage knows this. The first link is scary and entertaining at the same time. It chronicles the tables turning on some Portland, Ore., bigwigs who had their garbage rifled through by some cheeky reporters who surely won't be nominated for any kind of mayoral award. Read it and be very afraid because the "I have nothing to hide" knee jerk response to external snooping does not apply. Just for good measure, the second link is a government-sponsored Web site that gives a C+ effort to helping you keep your identity safe from theft. It could be better but it's a good start.

Text processing chain saw

members.aol.com/LightWayText/

I like bossing text around, which is one of the reasons I became a programmer. Ordinary numbers have a certain banality about them, and spreadsheets just don't do it for me. Word wrangling is where the action is. If you're not in the mood for spending a great deal of money on a text editor for the Mac or Windows but want an insane amount of power, take more than a peek at LightWayText. It's an all-in-one genius of a utility that will put you in charge of words and spaces in a way that no regular word processor can. It's free to download and try; $25 if you want to keep it.

Personal Tech today