The site has a pretty original/sweet premise. Basically they put up a wicked deal, usually 30% or more off on a clearance item. There are limited quantities and usually they sell out pretty fast. If the item sells out a new one is put up, if it doesn’t sell out a new one is put up anyway. Most stuff I wouldn’t even consider buying, hence why it is clearance. But every once in a while there is a decent deal. I have bought a couple of shirts from the site. Expect to add about $15 for shipping, but even with that the deals are pretty decent.

And, if you like Whiskey, check out Steep and Cheap and Chainlove.

The real winning aspect of the site is that it offers most of its wallpaper in a range of resolutions including widescreen, fullscreen, 720p and 1080p, and even mobile phone resolutions.

There are new additions almost every day but if you don’t happen to like whats on the main page hit the “Random” button at the top to see something else.

So, if you like free wallpaper check out Interfacelift or iphone.interface.com from your iPhone for direct access to 320×480 wallpaper. Oh yeah, the site also has free icons and themes too if that tickles your fancy.

The guy is clearly not making it up, it’s just too funny to be fake. Even if it is fake, it’s still golden. His name is Matt I believe, and I think he lives LA. Could be Wily though, cause thats the author name on the posts. I don’t know, I’ll call him Matt. He has a roommate who’s name starts with P, so for privacy, Matt calls him P. Since P moved in with Matt in January there have been hundreds of crazy interactions between them and Matt has posted a dozens of them online for our enjoyment.

If you get a chance, take 20 minutes and read them from the start. They are in chronological order and some won’t make sense if you don’t read the first ones. I specifically enjoyed his bike story.

The Bike Incident

Me: What hapanned to you?
P: I fell down the stairs.
Me: We don’t have stairs.
P: I fell down the stair in front.
Me: You look like you were hit by a bus. The “stair” out front is a 3 inch step.
P: I had hot dogs in my hand.
Me: What?
P: I tripped on my shoe and saved the hot dogs.
Me: Who does that?

Now, if this was anyone else in the world, I would’ve called bullsh*t right there. P being P though, “I tripped over my shadow” was believable….

The Next Day….
Person 1:
J: What happaned to you?
P: I crashed M’s bike.

Person 2:
S: What did you do to your hand?
P: I crashed M’s bike.

Brilliant liar this P….About 20 people later…..

P: So, ummmm……There’s something wrong with your bike.
Me: Yeah, I know, it fell down a stair.
P: Yeah, so, thats fine, right?
Me: Nope. You took it without asking, crashed it, then lied about it. You buy it or fix it.
P: It’s not my fault! I didnt’ mean to crash.
Me: You’re retarded. You have a week.
P: Nooo! The important thing is that I’m o.k.
Me: No, it’s not. The important thing is that you owe me money or a fixed bike or your homeless.
P: I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it.
Me: I know, and you’ll buy a lock for it too. I’ve been having problems with people taking it and crashing it.

Not always fun and games when dealing with a crazy person.

Like I said, read them from the start. They just keep getting better from #1 on.

Now if they could somehow create a spotlight style search where images start appearing in the results view as you type your search, that would be a sweet feature.

End transmission.

Check out the software at Oldversion.com/

Pandora references the Music Genome Project database to compare the songs you like with ones with similar genres, instruments, rhythms, lyrical content and many other attributes. This way it is able to make a logical guess at a similar group or song to the ones you like.

On the main page you type in the name of an artist or song you like and Pandora finds other similar artists or songs. The great thing about this is it works like a radio station. You can tell it when you do or don’t like specific songs so it learns what you like best. The great thing though is you are not limited to one station, you can create several stations depending on your mood. You can train one station to play death metal and another to play classic rock.

Pandora usually starts off by playing a song by the artist you choose (if it is in Pandora’s database). The songs after the first one will be ones it deems similar to the artist or song you searched for when creating the station. If available it will show you the album art. If art isn’t available it usually just shows a picture of a stack of CDs.

To help Pandora learn what type of music you like all you have to do is click on the album picture and choose I Like It, or I Don’t Like It. It uses some complex algorithms to help it decide what music it should play for you later. It will also link you directly to iTunes or Amazon.com to purchase the album if you wish.

You can also ask it why it played a certain song for you. When I asked it why it played Comeback Kid on a the station I created for Dark Tranquility it told me “Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features hard rock roots, mild rhythmic syncopation, a vocal-centric aesthetic, minor key tonality and repetitive melodic phrasing.” Going by that you can tell that the creators of Pandora know a lot about music and put a lot of hard work into it.

Head over to Discover Music – Pandora and give it a try. Personally I’m not a huge fan of online radios, but this is a great tool for finding new music that is like the artists I already enjoy listening too!

Bill Gates Quotes

Some other quotes that are not sourced, but are still funny can be found here:
Unsourced Bill Gates Quotes

Huge Freakin Catfish.

Check out the full post and try it out for yourself.

Now on the practical side, maybe there was some information on a website you really needed access to but it has since been removed. Well wouldn’t it be great if there was a tool that would let you view old versions of internet sites? In comes the Wayback Machine. Type the address of the site you want to view and see if it has an archive of it.

It’s not perfect, some of the sites don’t show images because they havnt been archived. And some sites have been blocked for copyright reasons, but you can spend a good 15 minutes playing with this, and if you know about it it may come in handy one day.

Here are some interesting searches I did:
Microsoft.com from 1996 compared to Microsoft.com from today
Yahoo.com December 1996 compared to Yahoo.com December 2004

Check out the Wayback Machine for yourself.
The Wayback Machine Main Search Page
Heres a link to the computers that archive and run the Wayback Machine