Henk van Rensbergen offers a guided tour with photographs and descriptive commentary, of abandoned places and buildings he has inspected himself. As he is Belgian, most of the locales are in western Europe.

"There is a sinister sense of decay; impressive facade, monumental stairs, high ceilings, decorated balconies, gothic arches, endless corridors, thousands of doors, perfect symmetry ... all overtaken by nature. Ivy enters through open windows, trees grow in gutters and a dense thicket of blackberry makes access a matter of perseverance and agility."

Some pretty creepy places and some great photography.

an intriguing collection of 100 pieces of artwork, by people who were moved to create them, after their experiences in the Great War.

This one by Paul Nash, called 'Menin Road', 1919, after the main route taken by the soldiers to and from the ever-changing front in the Ypres section, France.

Many , many dognoses here, in all shapes sizes, colours, views...all very wet and up close. In fact , thats all this site has - hundreds of dogfaces and their noses.

"But that's not all! With your paid membership to dognoses.com, you also get 24 hour a day, 7 days a week access to our live webcams! Watch them sniff the camera lens! Watch their talented noses do tricks just for you!"

Images, videos and pictorials for the curious and fanatic alike.

A version of "The Top 100 Gadgets of all Time" from Mobile PC. The critera....

"It has to have electronic and/or moving parts of some kind. Scissors count, but the knife does not.

It has to be a self-contained apparatus that can be used on its own, not a subset of another device. The flashlight counts; the light bulb does not. The notebook counts, but the hard drive doesn't.

It has to be smaller than the proverbial bread box. This is the most flexible of the categories, since gadgets have gotten inexorably smaller over time. But in general we included only items that were potentially mobile: The Dustbuster counts; the vacuum cleaner doesn't."

the Zippo lighter comes in at number 81...

A great collection of bike images, more than 500, from BSA's to Harleys to Yamaha's.

From Bert Knoester's "Motorcycles of the 20th Century".

Pictured is the Indian-101 Scout , 1928.

When search engines fail to find an answer, try MetaFilter, a forum that allows you to post a question on virtually any subject which may be fielded by any of the thousands of members.

Interesting to follow some of the inquiries and the responses given. It's free to read , although there is a nominal fee ($5) to joining the community that can post a questions and comments.

link

I've been blogged....!

Kevin Kelly , writer, and former editor of Wired Magazine, has a section of his site devoted to "cool tools".

"Cool tools really work. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. I am chiefly interested in stuff that is extraordinary, better than similar products, little-known, and reliably useful for an individual or small group."

He invites people to send him examples of things they like and work well for them.

i sent him a blurb on these rolls of velcro that i've been using (i had to send a review to get on his mailing list) and, well, you can read the rest over there.

a weird sort of point and click game that i haven't really figured out yet.

I'm good at blowing the tower up, though.

Interesting to poke around this site...the late & great McKinley Morganfield aka Muddy Waters.

"Anyone who's followed the course of modern popular music is aware of the vast influence exerted on its development by the large numbers of blues artists who collectively shaped and defined the approach to amplified music in the late 1940s and early '50s. Chicago was the pivotal point for the development and dissemination of the modern blues and virtually everything else has flowed, in one way or another, from this rich source."

A huge songlist and discography, as well as photos and recipes for Muddy's famous southern dishes.

A small tribute site to the art of Russian born Boris Artztbasheff, an artist who drew fantasy and science fiction themes, among other things, famous for his work with Time Magazine.

An online architectural reference book, this site has drawings, images, discussions and search functions for great buildings one might want to know about. From The Great Buildings Collection....

This gateway to architecture around the world and across history documents a thousand buildings and hundreds of leading architects, with 3D models, photographic images and architectural drawings, commentaries, bibliographies, web links, and more, for famous designers and structures of all kinds.

With the corresponding 3-D software, the file for a building can be downloaded and rendered for viewing and walkthrough.

Benedict Carpenter will draw his image from your description, but the rules are, you can't named what you've described.

"This object consists of an oval - approximately a third as deep as it is long - lying on its side, so that the longer axis is horizontal. The right end of the oval is slightly fatter than the left. The bottom of the oval is flattened to allow it to sit on a surface. From the left hand apex of the oval, a peak rises vertically that is slightly higher than the top-edge of the oval and then slopes gently down to meet the line of the top of the oval a short way along its length. On the right hand side a circle rises from the top edge. The diameter of the circle is about half the length of the oval, and it is positioned so that the right hand edge of the circle is in line with the right hand apex of the oval. From the bottom left of the circle there is a curve........."

He invites submissions of descriptions to play the game.

A gallery of SIRDS (single image random dot stereo) and stereogram images that will leave your eyes buggy.

When looked at correctly, they will reveal a 3-D image, however the trick is looking correctly...

A sculpture by artist Jim Sanborn sits on the front yard of CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia, and contains an encrypted code that hasn't been deciphered yet by anyone, let alone the CIA.

From Wired News

What does it say about the Central Intelligence Agency that its agents can crack the secret codes of enemy nations but can't unravel a coded sculpture sitting outside their cafeteria window?

It's been nearly 15 years since Sanborn installed the 12-foot-high, verdigrised copper, granite and wood sculpture inscribed with four encrypted messagesat the CIA's Langley, Virginia, headquarters in 1990. And it's been seven years since anyone made progress at cracking its code.