KSFO's Web Wanderer

The Links for November 15, 2003

Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena - Dudley

Dudley says: "I've seen many optical illusion sites, but I think this one is the best."

I agree with Dudley. This is one of the best. Unlike some sites, which are galleries of stationary images, this one is loaded with mouseovers, flash, and quicktime movies.

There are several categories of optical illusions covered:

Each illusion has instructions how best to view the illusion, comments, and references.

I worked through every illusion on the site - great stuff.

Give it a look. Thanks, Dudley!

WebExhibits - Dyno Don

Dyno Don says: "Doing a little looking since we just set our clocks back I found this. If daylight saving time and butter can be explained on the same web site then you've done something. Another thing, this site strikes me as having class. It just seems well done. There is a -lot- of very interesting stuff here, not just butter and daylight saving time. For example check out Color Vision and Art."

I checked out the "Bogus Science" exhibit. I found good, solid coverage of the topic, with relevent examples.

One exhibit - "butter" - will tell you more about the topic than you could imagine is there.

About the site: "WebExhibits is a pubic service seeking to make people more savvy at making decisions (e.g., looking at lots of evidence), and more informed about science and culture (e.g., studying connections between art and science)."

Interesting exhibits. Check them out.

Thanks, Don!

Free Hearing Test - Dudley

Dudley says: "This site has some simple hearing tests which include sounds of different frequencies. There is also a link to vision tests including color-blind tests. Not the same as visiting an audiologist or an ophthalmologist, but you can get a clue of a problem."

In addition to the hearing test, there is a lot of good information about hearing:

Informative and useful. Thanks, Dudley!

Top 500 Supercomputer Sites - Charles in San Francisco

Charles in San Francisco found the "Top 500 Supercomputer Sites" site.

I checked out the information on the "Current List" page, and found the following:

The Top5 presentation was very cool. There's a lot of information on the top 5 computers, with information about the hardware, environment, and links (galleries, official site, etc).

If you're into really powerful computers, this is the site for you.

Thanks, Charles.

Free For All!

"Free For All" picks are hot, FREE items or services. It can be software, online services, you name it - but it's got to be free, with no strings attached.

RAMDisk - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve says: "I recently did a search for "free ram disk for windows xp" and found RAM Disk v 2.2 for Win 2K/XP /Server 2003.

It's great! It installs via the "Add Hardware" option of Windows and shows up as a device in Device Manager. Then, you can control the RAM Disk size and drive letter via its properties. The only limitation with this program is the biggest size of RAM Disk you can have is 64M. However, the author (Christiaan Ghijselinck) says that he will provide the unlimited version upon request.

Neave Classic Arcade Games - Solinas

I found this classic arcade game site

Asteroids and Sokoban are coming soon.

The games are quite good. You get a description of the game, telling about it's history, and quite a few links to check out.

You can play them online, or download for PC or Mac.

Source code is available for use on your web site, and for Flash MX.

Spyware Blaster - Santa Rosa Steve

Santa Rosa Steve recommends SpywareBlaster, which is freeware that disables Spyware ActiveX controls.

Santa Rosa Steve says: "I've used SpywareBlaster for months. It is a small, worthwhile addition to your system."

Reviewed and top-rated (5-stars) by Snapfiles.com (formerly known as WebAttacK). Read the review and download SpywareBlaster (717 Kb) at Snapfiles.com

From the readme: "SpywareBlaster doesn't scan and clean for spyware - it prevents it from ever being installed."

How? By setting a "kill bit" for the CLSIDs of spyware ActiveX controls, it prevents the installation of any of them from a webpage. You can run Internet Explorer with Active-X enabled, but you will never even get a "Yes/No" box popped up, asking you to install a spyware Active-X control (Internet Explorer will never download or run it!). All other Active-X controls or plug-ins will work fine.

The SpywareBlaster database contains information on these known spyware Active-X controls. Make sure you run the Check For Updates feature frequently to get the latest database! (And make sure you check the new items to protect your system against them!)

As a side benefit, setting this "kill bit" will also prevent the spyware Active-X from running, in many cases, if it is already installed on your system.

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This page, and all contents, are Copyright (C) 2003 by Michael A. Solinas.