Whither Thinkquest?

So, I was looking through the Thinkquest site since my brother was thinking of participating, and I'm left wondering what happened to the poor thing. It's now run by Oracle, the big scholarship prizes are gone, and the whole thing seems to have a little more corporate feel to it than it used to.

On the other hand, it is nice to see that the library is well groomed, with nice descriptions of each entry. And it is good that the thing is still going on. I need to go back and clean out the vulgar comments put into the discussion boards we had in our entires. Teachers keep writing to complain that they can't link to the sites because of all of the crap people have written into them....I wish I had though to build more robust maintenance tools into it, but I always underestimate the number of stupid and immature people on the Internet.

I also took a look at the most recent grand prize winner, which actually has some fun little applets on it. The quiz says I'm 61% left brained and 57% visual.

Hehe, cute

just click

(and, from Sarah, this is even worse)

Amazon to the rescue

I swear I keep finding more interesting things on Amazon's guides and lists every time I look. This time, when Googling ideas for present ideas for an 11-year-old girl (who Suzie paired me with through Operation Santa), I found this and this. Fascinating. Maybe someday Amazon will just pick presents out automatically. I'd pay for that. ;-)

Random culture consumption update

I finally finished American Pastoral. It's a bit on the depressing side. Certainly makes one not want to have kids. (And it is nice to know I wasn't alone in thinking that certain parts dragged. ) I do love Roth, though. He's just so...right. Now to mentally answer the questions in this discussion guide....

Also saw the Matrix in IMAX at the Aquarium. It was better than I'd been lead to believe, although I imagine it would have made more sense if I had bothered to see Reloaded. The IMAXness was fun but not as mind-blowing as I'd hoped...the screen is big and ultra-clear and the sound is good.

Last weekend, saw Last Samurai, which was not as good as the reviews said, though entertaining.

I really need LoTR to come out...it's time for a quality movie.

Wow

For anybody who missed it (bad you!) Remail was on Slashdot. Pretty neat. The feedback is surprisingly heartening.

Awesome

Eyeglasses.com has the feature I've always wanted from glasses shopping....virtual trying-on! Actually, I've always thought a regular store could do the real thing with a digital camera and a screen, but virtually placing the frames is extra efficient.... Now to find a picture I can try this out with.

An early Christmas

I feel like I'm drowning in fun new stuff.

The headphones showed up today, and they have a very nice crisp sound, though they'll take some getting used to.

And I'm in love with Speakerboxx* (especially "The Way You Move," which I will forever associate with my first night at Toad's...). A guy in line for Toad's Friday (a night on which we were unable to get in...damn them) tried to convince me that The Love Below was the superior album, but I'm always partial to albums that make good running soundtracks.

Speaking of running, I finally went to Marathon Sports, which I should have done a long time ago. The nice man looked at my terribly pronating tendencies and hooked me up with a pair of compensatory Brooks. The difference is amazing.

To round things out, I checked out new books from the library (having finished Kavalier & Clay a while back) and went glasses shopping (I'm being pushed in a rectangular plastic direction) and got most of my hair shaved off.

In any case, I'm off to Columbus...where it is apparently consistently below freezing. I knew I should've gone to Florida.


* Follow this link...it's a pretty cool review aggregator!