GroovyMojo.com

While Google may be indexing the world’s information, The Internet Archive (Archive.org) is archiving it. They’re archiving entire websites from different dates; they’re archiving films, audio, live music performances, books … you name it they’ve got it.

My friend Dan emailed me last night, telling me he was downloading The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary, a classic silent film. So I went to check the site out and realized I’d been there before. They have incredible stuff in their library, like rare old Superman cartoons where he battles the Japanese during World War II, and even 1920’s infomercials about why you should buy this newfangled thing called an “electric refrigerator.” What I especially found interesting is what Archive.org calls their “Wayback Machine” (ala Mr. Peabody’s time travel device) where you can go look at old versions of current websites, or even websites that don’t exist anymore (anyone remember www.writtenbyme.com? It’s there.)

This is a website where you could spend literally days exploring it, learning and enjoying, and still have only scratched the surface.

It’s official. The Internet Archive is hereby declared Groovy.

Thanks Dan

As I write this, giant lightning storms are marching across the area I live, and have been all day long. It’s a serious situation, and it reminds me of the time lighting struck our neighbor’s chain link fence which separated the two properties. The jolt blew out all the electronics at my neighbor’s house, but only killed my network router and gave my daughter’s TV a permanent rainbow across the screen.

The difference between my house and theirs is that every electronic device I had was plugged into a surge suppressor. Not really expensive ones, either, just the little $15 dollar jobs. However, all my computers were not only plugged into one, but two surge suppressors joined in series.

My neighbors suffered damage directly from the surge of electricity that came streaming through their power outlets. The damages I suffered were due to the EMP, or Electro-Magnetic Pulse, from the huge magnetic field projected by the metal chain link fence. It permanently warped the magnetic field in the picture tube of my kid’s television, and it sent a surge of electricity via induction directly into the small transformer which powered my router — bypassing the surge suppressors altogether. There was nothing to be done about that.

What I’m advocating here, though, is the use of more than one surge suppressor. If you’re paranoid like me, plug your electronics into a surge suppressor, then plug that — and only that — into another suppressor. Then plug that other suppressor into the wall.

If a surge does get through the first one, it’s not likely to make it through the second. But, if you’re REALLY paranoid, you can put in a third. Anything that makes it through the first and second will not make it through a third one. If it does, well, the lightning must have come through the window and hit the electronics directly.

If that happens, let’s hope your insurance company doesn’t try to claim it’s an act of God.

You can do real AIDS research in your own home, day and night, even while you’re sleeping. You can even do it at work. Nobody even needs know you’re doing it.

I’m not lying.

A conglomeration of companies and universities are working together to fight AIDS using computer models to test drugs, and they need your help. Simply go to FightAIDS@Home, join up (it costs you nothing) and download their client software. The software runs quietly in the background, downloading tasks and doing computations, all using spare cycles of your computer’s processor which would normally go to waste. After it’s done processing its packet of information, it sends it back to FightAIDS@Home then downloads the next packet.

Many of you may remember doing this for SETI@Home, which is the exact same setup, but with the goal of finding signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.

You need not be constantly connected to the Internet to run this program. It will upload / download its processing packets at your convenience, and run in the background when your computer is idle. If you have a computer that’s always on, and always connected to broadband, then it’ll really do some work.

And you can literally fight AIDS while you sleep.

UPDATE as of August 9th, 2008:  I’ve stopped using this because for some reason it started crashing like mad, and taking the whole machine down with it.  I tried updating to the latest version with no luck, it still crashed.  Suspect it’s an incompatibility with something else that got loaded on my computer, though I have no idea what.

I’m testing the beta version of Microsoft’s “Windows Live Writer” which you can download for free from writer.live.com. It’s set up for Microsoft Spaces but will supposedly work with a number of other Blog platforms, including WordPress (which I use). So I downloaded it, installed it, pointed it over at my WordPress site on MojoWriter.com, and sure enough it sucked down my blog’s look and feel, and enabled me to write an entry offline. The main advantage is that it gives advanced control over formatting, including that of images (including nice effects such as drop shadows and watermarks). Also included are a full spell checker and an accurate preview of what your blog will look like after uploading.

So far I am very impressed. VERY.

It’s also supposed to work with Blogger, LiveJoural, TypePad, Movable Type, Radio Userland, and others, but it does not currently seem to support the likes of Xanga or MySpace.

Anyway, yes, by all means grab it and play with it. It’s awesome.