In the interest of keeping my desktop relatively clean, here is a bunch of crap I’ve been collecting.

General Interest

PC Magazine’s Secrets of Selling on eBay.

Lifehacker has some real tips for saving time.

The future of TV is online.

Dear Reader is a book club via e-mail.

“How to Do What You Love“, another good essay from Paul Graham.

Click to donate at the Hunger site and their brethren.

Someone found pictures of a family that may have owned a liquor store and put them online. The site also has other, uh, unusal collections of photographs and whatnot.

Apparently Belgian children’s TV is filled with singing flatulent pigs.

Bloggity

Cliptip has a new music video every day. I’d love this if they weren’t in Quicktime, which I hate.

The Incredible Hulk has a blog. Who knew? Who knew he was so funny?

A different crazy hardware hack every day at hack-a-day.

Science-y Things

Fascinating article from The New York Times on “mirror neurons”. This explains why I love to watch soccer so much.

Scientific American’s report on preparing the for pandemic.

Budding scientists (like me) might be interested in the Internation Society for Computational Biology Student Council or the World Academy of Young Scientists.

Geek Stuff

Memory Alpha is a very thorough Star Trek wiki.

Nerdy Shirts.

Tired of Pedro? Get the Vote for Cthulhu t-shirt instead.

Internet radio goodness.

What is the Internet for? The Internet is for porn. It’s a muppet-esque music video featuring creatures from some video game. They’re singing and dancing—so this is worksafe, unless the word “porn” gets you in trouble. In that case, it’s too late.

Learn all about atomic rockets.

Rudy Rucker’s latest book looks pretty cool.

I loved the old X-Com computer game. It’s apparently still available, with a fix to get it to work on modern computers.

Super-Nerdy Items

Can’t wait for Windows Vista to slow down your computer with lots of useless visual flourishes? Want to Mac-ify your desktop? You need Konfabulator (aka Yahoo Widgets).

Try social bookmarking with del.icio.us or Outfoxed.

CNet has tips on speeding up boot time.

Subclipse is a plug-in for Eclipse to interface with a Subversion repository. I use it in my various programming projects.

Here’s an article on Subversion for CVS users.

Woot—Each day, they offer one tech or gadget item at a deep discount.
Q-Unit—Mash-up of Queen and 50 Cent. The cover art alone (”Fitty” as Freddy Mercury) is worth it.
Cthulhu Plush Toys—What every good little boy and girl needs for Christmas!
UFO Maps—See where flying saucers have been spotted near you.
NationStates—A nifty little online game.
List of CDs known to be infected with Sony’s rootkit “copy protection” software.

80s Commercials — Includes bizarre He-Man action figures and (indubitably) Crispy Critters cereal. This brings a tear of nostalgia to my eye.
Squirrel Fishing — A study
Will Ferrel’s Commencement Address at Harvard
Merchants of Cool — from PBS’s Frontline

More goodness, from me to you.

Consumers’ Rights, including tips on how to get a refund for stuff that don’t work.

Homemade Prison Wine from The Sneeze, home of “Steve, Don’t Eat It!” Hilarious.

The Daily Set—the old set of The Daily Show is going on tour, without Jon Stewart or any of those other fake news people.

Hacking Firefox—This time, it’s tabs and navigation.

Getting Orgnaized with Digital Photography

Worry-free DVD Burning—Reviews of the latest Sony DVD burners

DVD Flambé—Which brands of recordable DVDs give you the best value for the buck? More importantly, which survive being microwaved?

DVD Burners at PCWorld

Here’s a cool site that uses Google maps to show you where you can find cheap gasoline in your neighborhood. I have used it quite successfully. But don’t be surprised if you find long lines at the after using this site. I had to wait about 10 minutes, but I only paid $2.52 per gallon, so it’s a small price to pay.

I’ve been building a collection of interesting links on my desktop, so I thought I’d dispense them a single deluge. Enjoy!

Students for an Orwellian Society — Because 2005 is 21 years too late!

Find-A-Human — Offers steps for cutting through the automated phone trees to get to a real live person for a large number of major companies. But AT&T customers are screwed.

The Science in Science Fiction — Nothing I haven’t seen before, but nonetheless good coverage of space elevators, nanotechnology, and so on.

Firefox Hacks — Speed up your browser.

Writing Sensible E-mail — Tips for getting your e-mail read by people who probably have better things to do.

Millions of Games — Find fun web games.

Engrish.com — Me talk good. Very funny, especially the copious misuse of “fuck”.