August 2002

I was once a freelance computer consultant. I would go into folks' homes or offices and fix what was wrong with their computers. But I was a piker compared to the Special Agents of the Geek Squad. They don't just solve computer problems – they do it with style!

Movies are reviewed. So are restaurants. Why not a review of office toys? I've always wanted a crossbow that shoots rubber darts…

Impress your friends with one of these unbelievably cool custom covers for the Lord of the Rings DVD. I favor #5 myself.

The events of September 11 demonstrated the brutal power of hatred. But it's foolish to believe that only the "other guy" is capable of such hatred. The twentieth century was full of examples of supposedly "civilized" societies descending to the most bestial of practices in the service of hate. Ten Ways to Fight Hate provides some methods for counteracting this most destructive of human characteristics.

We all know the most fundamental of Murphy's Laws: "If anything can go wrong, it will". But are you familiar with the corollaries that apply to war, computers, teaching, real estate, and even sewing? Now you can be.

Web designers have to worry about more than print designers. The websites that they design will be presented by many different browsers, at many different sizes. Window Sizer allows the developer to resize the browser window to many different common sizes, giving a preview of how the site will look.

If you need to "sterilize" a hard drive before you sell it, you need Autoclave. Autoclave erases data from hard disks, filling the disks with zeroes instead. The only way to do a more thorough job of destroying your data would be to physically destroy the hard drive itself.

Bubbletown is the place to go to learn how to blow bubble – big, beautiful, amazing bubbles. Learn how to make a simple bubble-blowing tube, how to make a solution that enhances the lifetime of your bubble, and the skills that you need to make your bubbles the envy of all.

As a young man, I found Carl Sagan's Cosmos to be perhaps the most accessible explanation of the universe and man's place in it that I had encountered up to that time. A few years ago, Stephen Hawking took a shot at the same topics in the PBS series Stephen Hawking's Universe. Explore the insights of the man who may be the greatest scientific mind since Einstein.

HTML-Kit is a Windows HTML editor that looks to be fully the equal of any commerical product. The latest version, in fact, is a commercial product, but the last free version (HTML-Kit Build 290) is still available on the site. HTML-Kit handles (among others) HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSL, JavaScript, VBScript, ASP, PHP, JSP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, VB, C/C++/C#, Delphi/Pascal, Lisp, and SQL. Yikes.

Coolhomepages showcases the best in web design in several categories. From Personal to Corporate to Futuristic to Kids, it's all here. Don't miss the exhaustive listing of top design resources.

Each week, A List Apart "brings you a new feature story on the art of webmaking – from pixels to prose, coding to content". It's been going strong for years now, and shows no sign of slowing down.

If, for some insane reason, you find yourself possessed by an uncontrollable urge to bobard your surroundings with smoke rings, you must run (not walk!) to Zero Toys. You'll find that the Zero Blaster and Zero Launcher are just what you need.

Dumpster Diving is the fine art of retrieving garbage from various establishments. If one man's trash is indeed another's treasure, then these tips and techniques might just start you on the path to riches.

Ever wish you could use the web browser bookmarks from your home PC at work, or vice versa? One of these Web-Based Bookmark Managers should do the trick.