Fantasist's Scroll

Hey’s it’s Friday and I have no theme to my crazy links.

Look I paid all my important bills last night and I’m too tired to come up with any real theme here, but these all are perfect links for a Friday.
First, in honor of Halloween, I bring you a link to the story, via Boing Boing, of a cyclops baby born in India.
Also in honor of Halloween, and via Boing Boing, I bring you horror furnature props.  Those things are totally cool!  And, luckily, they’re not cheap or I’d be giving my friends heart attacks all the damn time.
And, finally, since I’m sure you’re probably reading this at work, I thought it was high time I helped you sneak around on the web without getting caught. It’s a site called Work Friendly and it will open browser windows that are camoflaged as Micro$oft Office files. Pretty clever, huh?
So, if I do this NaNoWriMo thing, I’ll have to queue up a bunch of Friday Fun Posts this weekend, since I won’t have time otherwise. Well, in any case, this Friday, you can enjoy these crazy links.

Well, more specifically, SteamPunk machines.

This great site, called CrabFu, which seems to be dedicated to cool toys of a steampunk flavor, offers some advice about how to draw steampunk machines. Now, I’m no artist, but their advice really made sense!
Still, if you just like the pretty pictures, scroll to the bottom of the page and you can see some rockin’ steampunk concept art.

Way cool!
Enjoy your Friday!

And, yes, by that I mean, Friday the Thirteenth.

I always thought it was because Judas was the Thirteenth Apostle or something like that. No, according to this article on GlobalPsychics.com, it has to do with the plot to suppress the Knights Templar. Hey, stop laughing! That’s what it says!! And, I quote:

The modern basis for the Friday the 13th superstition stems from Friday October the 13th, 1307. On this date, the Pope of the church in Rome in Conjunction with the King of France, carried out a secret death warrant against “the Knights Templar”. The Templars were terminated as heretics, never again to hold the power that they had held for so long. There Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was arrested and before he was killed, was tortured and crucified. A Black Friday indeed!

So, there you have it, Friday the Thirteenth is a global conspiracy! Personally, I usually have better luck on Friday the Thirteenth, but, then, I always have been a little out of step with the world. Oh, and here’s a link to some alternate ideas why everyone else is afraid of Friday the Thirteenth.
Enjoy it.

So far this year, May has been my biggest web traffic month.

I had an average of over 6500 hits per day in May and these were the search terms that brought people to my site:

Now, you might be asking yourself why I’m mentioning this… Well, that’s a good question.  It’s a test, of sorts.  A little experiment to see if it’s the content or the search terms that make the biggest difference.  I’m betting that my hits go up for at least the day or so after I post this and then drop off.

Well, only one way to know for sure!

You know, I could rewrite this…

But, it’s easier to just link to the post over at my other blog, Diary of a Network Geek. Go there, and look at what I wrote then check the links for cool fractal art.

Hey, it’s free! Besides, it’s Friday and what else do you have to do?

Oh, these are strange, but good.

Here’s a link to a DefenseTech article about the CIA’s Online “Personality Test” which is supposed to open our eyes to what it’s really like to work for the CIA. Apparently, it’s not ALL like James Bond. Who knew?

And, in a totally different vein, this is the most disturbing wallpaper I’ve ever seen. Look really closely at it. Hmm, maybe for one of the guest rooms…

But, finally, for the geeks, How to Make StarTrek-style LCARS Panels. I cannot make this stuff up!

So, go, link and enjoy. It is, after all, Friday! Whoops! Now, I’m late to work!!

Okay, this might not be what you were expecting…

No, I’m not talking about pornography in a library, but images of libraries that would excite book enthusiasts.  At least, it got me all excited.  Interestingly enough, the book is discussed on the Cool Hunters website.  It’s brought to us by Kids Republic and, based on the pictures, I can only describe it as library porn.
Seriously, if you like libraries, or old books, or just lots of books, at least go look at the Cool Hunters website, if not the book itself.  Way cool.

Besides, it’s Friday, what else do you have to do?

According to Writer’s Almanac we have three birthdays to celebrate today.

First, there’s novelist Herbert George (H.G.) Wells, who was born in Bromley, England in1866. According to the note I got from Writer’s Almanac, Wells had a job writing biology textbooks until he developed a respiratory illness in his late 20s. Since he thought he didn’t have long to live, he left his wife and ran away with another woman, after which he began writing furiously. In roughly three years, he published all the novels for which we know him: The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds.

It’s also the birthday of the novelist Stephen King, born in Portland, Maine in 1947. His father was a merchant seaman who left the family when Stephen was just two. He has no memories of his father, but one day he found a whole box full of his father’s science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, and that box of his father’s books inspired him to start writing horror stories.
He was working as a teacher when he wrote his first novel about a weird high school girl with psychic powers named Carrie White. He gave up on the book at one point and threw it in the trash. His wife rescued it. Carrie was published in 1973. The hard cover didn’t sell well, but then his agent called to say that the paperback rights had sold for $400,000.

Lastly, but, perhaps, most importantly, today is the birthday of the man who first put high quality literature into paperbacks, Sir Allen Lane, born in Bristol, England in 1902. He was the founder of Penguin Books.