The history of the Internet is filled with a variety of wild stories and crazy rumors. Heck, the Internet would be pretty much empty without rumor, mistruths, innuendo and vices that will go unnamed here.

But there is some good stuff to be found, if you know where to look. And that’s where I come in. I’m ready to lead you into the great ocean of the information age.

So strap yourselves in and avail yourselves of the free peanuts. We’re going to make three stops on this voyage:

Because I can’t remember much of anything any more, I can highly recommend Memorize Now, a website that can help you remember stuff. For example, I just learned all of the lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III. It wasn’t easy. But… now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York.

Five Minute Cake. A String Map. A Snuggie. You can learn to make all of these and so much more, thanks to the geeks of at Instructables.com. They’re snarky folks, but awfully smart. I liked the instructions on how to turn $15 into a pen like the ones that cost $200. Cool, huh?

Finally, Ted.com. I thought this was going to be Ted Danson’s personal site, filled with his snapshots and memories of Cheers. Snap! Wrong! Ted began life more than 25 years ago as a conference about Technology, Entertainment and Design. Now as website, you can watch recorded lectures and performances by a huge variety of people. I gotta bookmark this place and come back later to hear Natalie Merchant singing old poems.

I don’t make this stuff up folks: it comes to me in a box made out of mud and straw. So go out there and enjoy the internet. And make sure to report in any discoveries you make!

The history of the Internet is filled with a variety of wild stories and crazy rumors. Heck, the Internet would be pretty much empty without rumor, mistruths, innuendo and vices that will go unnamed here.

But there is some good stuff to be found, if you know where to look. And that’s where I come in. I’m ready to lead you into the great wilderness of the information age.

So strap yourselves in and avail yourselves of the free peanuts. We’re going to make three stops on this voyage:

Learn Something

First stop is Ted.com. I thought this was going to be Ted Danson’s personal site, filled with his snapshots and memories of Cheers. Snap! Wrong! Ted began life more than 25 years ago as a conference about Technology, Entertainment and Design. Now as website, you can watch recorded lectures and performances by a huge variety of people. I gotta bookmark this place and come back later to hear Natalie Merchant singing old poems.

Read Something

There’s a world of the world’s greatest books at Project Gutenberg. Something like 30,000 books are freely and legally available for download in a variety of formats. I just snagged a copy of Antonio Feliciano de Castilho’s A Chave do Enigma in the original Portuguese. Sweet!

Make Something

Five Minute Cake. A String Map. A Snuggie. You can learn to make all of these and so much more, thanks to the geeks of at Instructables.com. They’re snarky folks, but awfully smart. I liked the instructions on how to turn $15 into a pen like the ones that cost $200. Cool, huh?

I don’t make this stuff up folks: it comes to me in a box made out of mud and straw. So go out there and enjoy the internet. And make sure to report in any discoveries you make!

You can tell by the way I use my voice, I’m a … oh… wait, wrong blog. Today’s blog is about my hobby: Recreating the Historical Voyages of Internet Explorers. That’s right! Every Friday, I put on my best Commodore uniform… no, not The Commodores. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. You know, the Hero of Lake Erie? No, huh? Well, more on that in a minute.

As I said, on Fridays I like to re-enact the great voyages into the frontiers of the internet. It’s all been explored before of course. Craig Allen was the first one to get to the end and safely back in 2007.

Today, I headed out to discover something new, and I’ve come back with three things for you.

Why actually leave your house to buy greeting cards, when you can go to enGreet instead? This is a site where you can browse for, choose, sign and send a greeting card. No, I don’t mean by email, I mean by that old fashioned method where they stick stuff in a mailbox or through a door slot! Cool stuff!

If you are planning to get off the couch, maybe you should learn a language. Remedial English might be a good start. But, if you’re set on learning a foreign language, why not try Livemocha. The list of languages available is astounding. The only thing they seem to lack is Klingon!

And finally, for those of you who didn’t know that Oliver Hazard Perry was a Commodore before he was a great big Navy ship, I offer you WikiPedia. If you don’t know it, shame on you. It’s a huge repository of online information that anyone can add to, and everyone can edit. So while there are occasional information vandals, for the most part, you can learn just about anything from the site.

I don’t make this stuff up folks: it comes to me in a box made out of mud and straw. So go out there and enjoy the internet. And make sure to report in any discoveries you make!

As most of you know, I am an adventurer. I come from a long, long line of adventurous folks stretching back to my grandfather Charles who bought a farm in Missouri 75 years ago. Now that was adventure! Of course, there are only two frontiers left to us these days. I can’t afford a ticket to the space station, so I’m stuck exploring the furthest fringes of the internet.

Most of my journeys there are the stuff of legend, best saved for folks with stern constitutions and hearty dispositions.

But I can tell you about today’s exploration. We set sail from our home port shortly after sunrise, heading into calm, charted waters. There, off to the left, was the great Island of Facebook. And just on the horizon at 13 degrees to starboard were the lurking bulwarks of Google. Just before we arrived off the coast of Youtube, we turned hard to port into the part of the map that says “There Be Virii Here.”

Fortunately, no Virii attacked. But I did discover three things that might be of interest to you.

First port of call, Bubble.Us, where I was invited to create a map of my mind. Mind maps, as you know, are a brainstorming tool. You place and connect your ideas, and somehow that tells you what the winning lottery numbers will be. In the image below, a normal mind map is on the left. What I came up with is on the right. Brilliant!

Speaking of works of art, Jackson Pollock is a pretty famous art. He made pictures that look a lot like my mind map. Wanna see what it was like to be Jackson Pollock at work? Try this, the Jackson Pollock Simulator. Maybe you can be a master of the abstract form, without getting paint all over yourself!

And finally, because I can’t remember much of anything any more (because of all the paint fumes, I’m sure) I can highly recommend Memorize Now, a website that can help you remember stuff. For example, I just learned all of the lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III. It wasn’t easy. But… now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York.

I don’t make this stuff up folks: it comes to me in a box made out of mud and straw. So go out there and enjoy the internet. And make sure to report in any discoveries you make!

If you’ve watched the Discovery channel, you may have seen me out in the wilderness, exploring the far ends of the Internet to bring you back stories and useful tips. I’ve struggled through heavy over-coded jungles of HTML and battled javascript with my bare hands. If Discovery doesn’t have a show about my adventures, shame on them!

Anyway, without further ado, here are the Top Three Things I Discovered Today!

First stop… Microsoft. Yes, I know. I’ve heard it all before. But occasionally they do something right, like Windows 7 or the thing I discovered this morning: SkyDrive. It’s a service of Windows Live, so you do have to sign up for that. But SkyDrive gives you 25 gigabytes of free online storage!

I can’t help it, being a man, I forget stuff. Usually stuff my wife has told me to do, which leads to all sorts of trouble. I’ve tried writing notes to myself, but I lose most of them. Especially the ones about things my wife has told me to do. So, along comes Remember the Milk, a web services devoted to helping me remember my to do list. I can get reminders through email and on my cell phone. Which is the same way my wife reminds me of things!

Years ago, I used to fall asleep to music. Then I started buying CDs with an hour of recorded nature sounds: You know the ones, with the sound of the surf at the beach or a jungle at night. But during this morning’s voyages, I discovered Rainy Mood. The website streams a thirty-minute loop of a heavy rain storm. Just the thing to help me drift off to sleep or drown out the drone of the office when I’m on deadline!

I don’t make this stuff up folks: it comes to me in a box made out of mud and straw. So go out there and enjoy the internet. Just make sure your anti-virus is up to date and don’t fall for any spam, hoaxes or Trojan horses!

Before we get to the story itself, I thought I’d talk about how you can save some lives.

Chances are very good that at some time in your life, you (or someone you love) will need a transfusion of blood. In fact, according to the American Red Cross, every two seconds, someone in the United States needs blood to stay alive. It’s such a common thing in cases of accidents or surgery, and the need for blood donations has never been higher. One donation can save the lives of up to three people.

Here are three places in Albuquerque where you can donate blood or plasma:

• The American Red Cross at 142 Monroe Street Northeast.
• ZLB Plasma Services at 204 San Mateo Boulevard Southeast.
• United Blood Services on 1515 University Boulevard.

Now, the story of the Man with the Golden Arm:

Australian James Harrison is special. At age 74, he’s donated 984 times since he was 18 years old. And that alone is worthy of mention. But Harrison has a unique blood type that contains a rare antibody. It can be used to save infants born with Rhesus disease. And his donations have kept more than two million babies alive.

Two million!

I’m betting this is going to be one of the biggest shows of the year. Roger Waters is bringing The Wall Live to the Pepsi Center on November 23rd. If you’re even remotely aware of Pink Floyd, you’ll already know that The Wall was the group’s 1979 double album.

Waters conceived of the idea in 1977, after completing a tour of large stadiums that left him and the other band members feeling alienated from their audience. Thus the idea of building a wall on stage during the course of a concert.

That was exactly what happened when the band toured to support The Wall in 1980: A forty-foot high wall was built between the band and the audience. At the end, the wall collapses, once again revealing the band.

The show was reborn on July 21st, 1990 on ground that had been part of the Berlin Wall. More than 350,000 thousand people watched the concert in Berlin, and it was broadcast to 52 countries around the world.

On his website, Waters says he was quoted in 1988 talking about the themes of the Wall, asking: “Will the technologies of communication in our culture, serve to enlighten us and help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?” Waters says he still thinks the question is very relevant.

Tickets go on sale in May.

If you let it, your television will slowly rot your mind. Although there is no science to back up my claim, my theory is that if you sit in front of a television set 24/7 for the next ten years, you will be a zombie. A very dirty, smelly, emaciated zombie. And that’s really no life to lead, is it?

To avoid such a terrible fate, I suggest you could to the following five things instead of watching television:

Read a Book

You might be shocked to discover that books still exist. And there are a lot of really good ones to read. They still have libraries where you can check them out for free! Remember libraries? Here’s some bonus fun… read a book to children.

Learn to Play a Music Instrument

Some time ago, my brother decided he was going to learn to play guitar. I thought he was crazy: have you ever seen all the little strings you have to hold down to make it sound right? But he learned, and a few years later, I did too. I’m no Eddie Van Halen, but it’s a lot of fun.

Learn Another Language

Wow your friends and family with your knowledge of a language they can’t speak. Imagine the fun of going to a foreign country and actually being able to talk to the residents in their own language!

Get to Know Your Neighbors

You’ll be surprised how rewarding it can be just to get to know the people you live near. New friends are never a bad thing, especially when they might someday be able to walk your dog when you’re on vacation!

Talk a Walk

You can restore a little sanity to you life by taking a nice long walk in the evening. Look at the stars, walk your dog, stop and smell the flowers. Taking a walk is a wonderful way to wind down your day, not to mention burn off those calories from dessert!

If you didn’t have a television in front of you, how would you fill your time?

Science has all sorts of explanations for stuff. Like electricity. Gravity. American Idol. And spring allergies.

A scientist wearing a lab coat will tell you that spring allergies are usually triggered by tiny grains of pollen filling the air, trying to fertilize other plants. All of that is well and good. Plants are nice. But when those pollen grains get up your nose, well… that’s when you’re in trouble.

Your immune system, which is like your own personal Department of Homeland Defense, thinks the pollen is some terrible invader, and sends out its armies of antibodies. When the antibodies attack the pollen, the battle releases nasty chemicals called histamines. And the histamines are what cause the running nose, sneezing, wheezing, coughing, and itchy eyes.

There’s plenty you can do to help yourself. WebMD has guides here and here that are pretty good survival tools.

By the way, that illustration at the top of this post is in no way to be considered accurate or scientific. It just represents the way I feel these days!

I was so busy this past weekend that I didn’t remember to light a candle in memory of the Beatles. You see, it was forty years ago Saturday that Paul McCartney made his split with the band official with a press release about the release of his first solo album. By the spring of 1970, the union of musical genius and creative competition had collapsed into an ugly business feud and bitter differences.

Oddly, Paul was really the last one to quit. Ringo and George had quit previously, but returned to the band. John had announced he was leaving the band the previous September, but agreed not to say anything until various matters were settled. But, not Paul.

Lennon, McCartney and Harrison first began performing together in in Liverpool in 1957. And the Beatles were officially formed three years later. They took on their final form when Ringo Starr became the drummer in 1962. Their first single, “Love Me Do,” hit the charts later that year.

For the rest of the decade, the Beatles ruled music. Few can honestly disagree with the impact they had on their generation and those that followed. There have been many great bands in the years since the Beatles broke up, but I dare you to name any better than the Fab Four.