Site Seeing

Feel free to browse

Pinching pennies

www.Squished.com/

I wonder if it's actually legal to deface pennies in this manner. I'd call the Secret Service, since it polices this matter, but I'd rather not waste any of our tax dollars. This site is home to squished pennies and the people who love them. There are photos, stories and even some simplistic games (that aren't worth the effort).

Take an eye out

Koert.com/work/drift/play.php

I'm not sure what the objective of this exercise is. It's a slightly weird, slightly addictive interactive soundtrack that has a rhythmic electronica background. You're an eyeball on a chair, and it gets stranger from there. I don't have kids to test this on, but I'm going to guess they'll be intrigued even if the site is aimed at low IQ adults like me.

Inside Enron

Ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/wem/03-26-03-release.asp

If you feel your retirement was affected by the Enron debacle, you'll enjoy this site - a lot. According to estimates on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission site, 92 percent of Enron's e-mails are available online and you get to search them for free. You'll need to do it through a clunky Java applet but the results are worth the effort. Click on the Search iCONECT 24/7 in the middle of the page to get there. If you get nothing else from this page, you should think twice before sending anything personal through your company's e-mail system.

Video vault

www.Open-Video.org/

You might be familiar with Project Gutenberg, a sort of open source movement for bibliophiles. The idea is that as books go out of copyright they're placed in the public domain for free download. And that's what this site offers, but with video instead of text files. Some of what's here is monumentally useless to me but might be just what you're looking for to spice up your next PowerPoint presentation. They all appear to be in platform neutral MPEG format but given the size of the files they're certainly not modem friendly.

Out of this world

sun3.lib.uci.edu/~jsisson/john.htm

There's something magical about space images from the era before man actually made it into space. The deco-influenced rockets of that period are nothing short of wonderful. Seeing images of a biplane flying to the moon is naive enough to be quite charming. This site is packed with imagery like this and, like a good book, you won't be able to put it down.

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