screengrab from freshspotify.com
freshspotify is an alert service which will email you whenever music from your favourite bands are added to Spotify. Account creation/log-in is done via your Google account, and it will even suck in your favourite artists from last.fm and add alerts for them. Super nifty or what?
A collection of links I’ve happened upon, or re-discovered during the past week.
Sarien.net
Sarien.net offers a lovely way to relive the fun of Sierra’s old adventure games directly in your browser. As a bonus, if you happen to be on the same screen as another player you can chat, making an oldskool singleplayer game into something more multiplayery.
Nest box with IR cam
I’ve always wanted to spy on a nest box, and adding a wireless IR cam made me want one of these a lot. Bit pricey though, for spying on well… eggs.
World of Goo Sheet Music
I love piano music, and as I’m particularly enamoured with game music played on pianos, discovering the World of Goo sheet music made me happy. It’s free too!
Sebastian Wolff’s Sheet Music
If the World of Goo sheet music is up your alley too, take the time to check Sebastian Wolff’s music page. Sheet music for a few movies and games, and most importantly for Still Alive (I’ll never get tired of that song).
Erfworld
An absolutely adorable web-comic. So cute!
YourFonts
A nice way to make your own font on-line. I don’t know how pretty the font ends up, but hey it’s fun.
D&D Test Drive
This makes me tingly, very tingly. WotC have made some D&D quick start rules and an adventure or two free to suck people in. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away… *DM muscle starts twitching*
Widgets to Cure Writer’s Block
Lots of cool writery/languagey/roleplayey stuff here, not just a way to cure writer’s block.
A collection of links I’ve happened upon, or re-discovered during the past week.
Anki
Anki is a nifty spaced repetition system (SRS), which is basically an advanced form of flash cards. The intelligent scheduling of the flashcards allows you to learn faster and better by making you practice what you don’t know well, rather than forcing you to wade through things you already know every time you practice. Great for learning kana and kanji.
The Regex Coach
An interactive way to experiment with regular expressions. Windows only.
HOTUD.org | HomeOfTheUnderdogs.net | Hotu.pratyeka.org
They are back! Well, more or less. Home of the Underdogs was one of the most important abandonware sites on the net, and a great resource for reading reviews of old games, learning about games you missed the first time around and, in some cases, the ability to download them. After the site went off-line in February 2009, I was saddened because I thought it would never be back. Happily I was wrong, and now there are even multiple iterations to browse through in order to get your old-school gaming nostalgia on.
The Problem with Ice-Planets
A wonderful how-to on making the ice-cream ball on a string frozen dessert from Firefly. I will have to try this some day, looks like fun to eat.
How to Make a Reusable Sandwich Wrap
A nice tutorial on how to sew a reusable sandwich wrap. Not only do they look nice, they are a greener option than paper or plastic, and I suspect may also do away with the sweaty cheese problem.
“Hey I’m Dead!”
A great story from NPR about zombie ants, and what the colony does about them.
BlogBooker
Easily turn your Wordpress or LiveJournal blog into a PDF book ready for printing!
Programming Tutorials
Links to more programming tutorials in various languages than you can shake a stick at.
Natalie Dee
An adorable comic every day. Perhaps not always laugh out loud funny, but the drawings are consistently super-cute!
Cooking Conversions Calculator
GourmetSleuth have a nifty conversion calculator that helps you convert recipes. What’s cool about this compared to using Google is the ability to convert for specific food items. It’s super-handy!
A collection of links I’ve happened upon, or re-discovered during the past week.
The Cook’s Thesaurus
Although it doesn’t really look like much (these days), The Cook’s Thesaurus is a really cool site. It’s basically a very useful cooking encyclopaedia with thousands of entries covering a wide range of foodstuffs and kitchen tools. Entries have lots of information including pictures and descriptions and two things I personally find extremely useful, synonyms and suggested substitutions for various ingredients.
Rouxbe
Once you’ve visited The Cook’s Thesaurus and have learnt all about various ingredients, you need to know how to use them. That’s where Rouxbe comes in. With tons of instructional videos, it can really help you learn to cook and improve your skills in the kitchen. Sadly apart from a 30 free trial it seems all content is accessible by premium members only, but depending on how much you can learn it could be worth the upgrade.
The Young Gallery | Nick Brandt
A collection of Nick Brandt’s stunning monochrome wildlife photography, definitely worth a look.
KnitPro
Ever wanted to knit/crochet/embroider something using a picture you already have but couldn’t stomach the thought of charting it? knitPro is for you! It’s a free web application that can take jpeg/gif/png images and turn them into digital graphs suitable for various fibre projects. It’s seriously cool.
Dungeonaday.com
Dungeonaday.com offers a new dungeon encounter for fantasy role-playing games using the Open Gaming License every weekday, with all the information, handouts and stuff necessary. It’s about $10 a month for membership, and provides an ever-growing dungeon adventure campaign. I’m starting to really miss playing :’(
Learn The Kana
Very useful site which helps you learn both hiragana and katakana on-line for free!
Origami Cherry/Sakura Blossoms
Nice tutorial on how to make some gorgeous origami cherry blossoms. It looks easy but… I think I shall merely sigh wistfully as I read this.
StrokeIt
I am totally dependent on mouse gestures in Firefox and spend a large part of my day flailing wildly in various Windows programs trying to do stuff with non-existent mouse gestures. Enter StrokeIt, a nifty and free app. I haven’t installed it yet, but it looks awesome. Of course if it works well, this just means I’ll really flail on computers that don’t have it installed *sigh*
Cute As Hell
Social networking for pets! Yeah, it sounds silly but I’m a sucker for cat pictures and think it’s a cute way to see more of them. Naturally both WhinyCat and BattleCat have their own profiles.
Greasemonkey Script Compiler
Creates a Firefox extension from a greasemonkey script, very handy!
A collection of links I’ve happened upon, or re-discovered during the past week.
AGDInteractive Studio
Lovely remakes of King’s Quest I, King’s Quest II and Quest for Glory II available for free! AGD Interactive also offer Al Emmo and The Lost Dutchman’s Mine, an adventure game in the spirit of the classics mentioned above, for 19.99 USD.
Unveiling the “Sixth Sense,” game-changing wearable tech
A fantastic TED talk by Pattie Maes featuring work done by Pranav Mistry which is just jaw-droppingly cool. If you like tech at all, and you only watch one TED talk, this is the one you should watch!
LCARS for iPhone 2
YouTube video showing how Andrew in Germany made his iPhone cool. I now want an iPhone!
UP
As one of the few people in the world that didn’t particularly like WALL-E, I’m excited about really liking the look of UP, the new Pixar film. The trailer is adorable, and the film looks fun.
BitNami
A collection of Open Source apps which install quickly and painlessly. After installing Apache, PHP, WordPress et al both the usual way and using BitNami, I know what I’m going to recommend. I ♥ BitNami.
Cramberry
A web-based flash card study aid which looks easy to use and pretty nifty.
Adobe Photoshop Cheat Sheets
A set of keyboard shortcut cheat sheets for various flavours of Adobe Photoshop.
eBook Price Info
Only a couple of bookshops so far, but somewhere to look up and compare ebook prices before you buy is great resource and I’m looking forward to its expansion.
Jalmus
Another study aid, this time an open source downloadable one for improving your sight reading skills. Very helpful for musicians, and Java based so it runs on Win/Mac/Linux. I definitely need to work on my sight reading, makes playing the piano so much easier.
FairShare
A service which enables you to keep track of the stuff you post to the web via RSS. If you need to keep track of whether licences are being adhered to or you just want to see what your work is used for, FairShare seems like an easy way to do so.
A collection of links I’ve happened upon, or re-discovered during the past week.
Lemmings!
A fantastically cool, pattern for making amigurumi lemmings. If you click on that link and *don’t* expect little green-haired dudes in blue dresses, don’t come running to me. You are obviously sorely lacking in basic 90’s gaming knowledge. I think my favourite is the floater, he is seriously cute with that umbrella.
Sagario’s Room Escape
A great room escape game that is visually lovely, and frustratingly clever. If you like room escape games and you haven’t tried this, go there now! If you haven’t tried room escape games before, go there now!
VISION
Another superbly excellent room escape game, this time by neutral. Again, visually lovely, and frustratingly clever. Go, play!
jayisgames
A great discussion of casual games of all types here, with links to the games themselves. I’m pretty sure there is something for everyone here.
Store norske leksikon
For when Wikipedia just isn’t enough… or not enough in Norwegian at least. After way too many years as something average users just couldn’t/wouldn’t pay for, Kunnskapsforlaget have made Norway’s biggest encyclopaedia available to all for free. Not useful if you don’t read Norwegian. As per usual on the ‘net, people are already complaining about various things that are “wrong” with it 
skuls.no
Some really cool heavy/black metal band t-shirts are available here. Very gothy/metally. Ja, jeg kan lese norsk, betyr ikke at jeg har tenkt å ødelegge for skuls da vet du.
Cheat sheets from Added Bytes
A great collection of cheat sheets for various languages, including php, python, css, html and reg ex… heh, there is even one for WOW.
FontForge
A font editor that lets you create fonts, edit fonts and even convert fonts. I like fonts 
Tee Junction
If you are a t-shirt junkie like me, you need this link. The master list of discount codes for places that sell t-shirts. yay!
A collection of links I’ve happened upon, or re-discovered during the past week.
Nerd Merit Badges
Only two badges so far (and only one which I qualify for *sigh*), but looks like a fun way to geek out in public. As I quit the girl scouts after almost slicing off a finger, this can be a way for me to show off my merit badges without having to be a scout!
OhMiBod
You like music? You have an iPod? You like *ahem* “alone time”? You may find the OhMiBod, a vibrator that plugs into your iPod and vibrates to the rhythm and beats, interesting. I like the look of it… not sure I have the right taste in music though. Hum, now that I think about it. I don’t think I’d have much fun with it after all, my iPod has nothing more than audio books on it 
Get Your Music Off of Your iPod
Speaking of iPods, Wired has a nifty guide to getting your music *off* an iPod.
Self-Adhesive Magnetic Tape
Considering how cool I think transparent duct tape is, you can imagine how awesome I think this is. Add a bit more awesome to that, there you go, exactly that awesome.
The Ultimate Guide to Modern Writers of Fantastic Literature: 1990-2009
This is seriously cool! Avi Abrams of DarkRoastedBlend has compiled a huge list of sci-fi/fantasy authors, so if you like speculative fiction and want to try something new, you could do a lot worse than have a look-see at that list.
Although the net is pretty much awash with ebooks, it can be frustratingly difficult to find what you want, particularly in a preferred format. Below is a short list of the sites I check when I want something new to read, and don’t have money to spend.
The mobileread forums are a fantastic resource for all things ebook. News about ebooks published, formats, readers and software is regularly posted, making it easy to keep abreast of what’s happening in the world of epublishing. One of my favourite sub-forums on the site is Deals, Freebies, and Resources where hot tips about sales, give-aways and special offers on ebooks, readers and software are posted. There are multiple sub-forums dealing with formats, and various readers and if you need help with anything ebooky, I’m pretty sure you can find someone who knows the answer at mobileread. They also offer a large selection of free ebooks painstakingly formatted by mobileread’s members in BBeB/LRF, MOBI/PRC, ePub, IMP, and other formats.
Because Feedbooks allows anyone to contribute books that are either in the public domain or original self-published works, they can offer thousands of free ebooks in many formats, including PDFs generated on the fly to fit a variety of dedicated readers. They also offer an easy way to convert RSS feeds into formats supported by a lot of readers. It isn’t just Project Gutenberg books on offer either, you can also find works by contemporary authors such as Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, Kelly Link, and Steven Brust.
Manybooks also offers thousands of free ebooks, in a large variety of formats. Most books are from Project Gutenberg, but you can find public domain books from other sources and also creative commons licensed works. Some works that aren’t available on Feedbooks (at least, as I write this they aren’t), can be found here, such as John Scalzi’s Agent To The Stars.
The Baen Free Library has, available for free, quite a few books by a good amount of authors, such as Lois McMaster Bujold, Andre Norton, Larry Niven, Mercedes Lackey, and Elizabeth Moon. Of course, it’s all part of a nefarious plot designed to suck you in with the first book or two in a series, ensnaring you with their magical words, and ensuring you’ll want to read the rest. Personally, I like that kind of plot, so I’m not complaining.
Now that I have a few chords down, I want to be able to practice them by playing a song or two. I can read music (played piano for a few years), but I still don’t understand how musical notation relates to guitar playing. In other words, right now, I want to learn how to read tabs.
There are hundreds of tab sites out there, but as a beginning guitar player who can’t read tab yet, they haven’t been much help to me. They don’t explain strumming or rhythm and I’m still a bit fuzzy on the details of reading them. Turns out there are a number of ways I can overcome those difficulties.
I’m a massive fan of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games, and after clattering on plastic Les Paul guitars for over a year, the urge to learn to play an actual fretted and stringed guitar was overwhelming. Luckily for me I already own not one, but two guitars. I have a classical guitar I bought as a teenager, and P bought himself a nice little acoustic number in London about nine years ago. However, neither of us can play. At all.
About a week ago, I concluded if I haven’t learnt to play the guitar at least passably by the end of the year, I’m getting rid of the instruments once and for all! OK, so I can’t get rid of his, but one guitar in a non-guitar-playing-household is enough.
As a means to learning I’ve been poking around on the ‘net and found a couple of nifty videos and sites that should help me get the guitar of my dreams. I promised myself one of those once I can play at an acceptable level, and I’m only half joking…
mental_floss: Anyone can play guitar
The first lessons I found were the mental_floss Anyone Can Play Guitar lessons. They start at choosing the right guitar, but I’m not sure where they will end up, because the series is at lesson 11 as of writing, and I don’t know how many lessons there will be in the series. The lessons are pretty cool, but they were too fast for me. After I managed to misunderstand the G chord and played it wrong for a while, I decided to take a break and try something that fit my pace better *sigh*. I’ll definitely take another look once I have some basic chords under my belt.
lesson 1 | lesson 2 | lesson 3 | lesson 4 | lesson 5 | lesson 6
lesson 7 | lesson 8 | lesson 9 | lesson 10 | lesson 11
guitarjamz.com
After not doing too well with the mental_floss lessons I found Marty Schwartz on YouTube who has a slew of guitar lessons spanning from beginner to advanced, many of them focusing on how to play songs. After bemusedly staring at the videos for a while, I decided that this was one I’d definitely return to once I can actually play a bit. There is supposedly even more stuff at guitarjamz.com, but I’m not ready for that yet.
justinguitar.com
The third site I found, and which I’m currently using, was Justin Sandercoe’s justinguitar.com which has a metric assload of free lessons, and videos. I’m currently working my way through his beginner’s course and it’s nicely explanatory. I’ve never really understood guitars, but reading through the lessons here has really helped me.
Right now, I’ve been playing for a few days and all I have to show for it so far are sore fingers and buzzy chords. I shall, however, persevere.
