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A solid regular bookmark page (by “Pudgy”).
I have heard that other Internet denizens do not mention or link to
these bookmark pages, not because of what I link to, but because my
full name appeared up front. This has to do with “doxing”.
I keenly believe in security and privacy on-line, but being identified
for these bookmark pages is something I accept, if not encourage. I
stand behind the World-Wide Web sites to which I link. If you look at
the Source Code here, my name remains in the metadata.
This is the W-WW page extracted from above which will do a domain
registration and host location on a registered domain name or
I. P. Address. Its drawback is that you have a maximum of
fifty addresses which you can search per your own
I. P. Address every 24 hours. [If you need to get
around this limit, configure a proxy in your browser. That shall get
you another fifty.]
This is a collection of TCP | I. P. [Internet Protocol]
and Internet tools gathered from around the World-Wide Web for anyone
interested in tracking down DNS, HTTP headers, traceroutes from various
backbones, and more. This is a significant W-WW site. I was
disquieted it went off-line. So, I send you to the Internet Archive's
[c.v.] last capture of it: 21 August 2018.
Here is a Japanese W-WW site where you can lookup the domain record
of an I. P. address without it counting against an external
limit [such as Ad Hoc's lookup function]. But it also seems to be inaccurate
for some of them.
This is not a left-clickable link. To use this, right-click
on it; select "Copy Link Location"; paste that into the
'Location' line; and then type in the URL about which you want to inquire.
Enter the URL of the World-Wide Web page whose links you want to
check into the query box and click 'Submit'. This site will save you a
lot of time; however, I recommend clicking on the URLs it shows to be
broken. Some sites do not want to be remotely spidered, so there is a
possibility for false positives.
This is a hub W-WW site with information about on-line applications
and software programs to secure your computer. There is also a forum for
which you may register.
For my new Domain Name, I utilized this. It offers the
lowest price for domain registration and renewals. HTTPS | SSL
certificates are included at no extra cost. Many other TLDs
are also available for low prices (Click on ‘SALE!’
atop this page.).
This is a webhost located in Iceland which maintains
ultra secure hosting, with strident DDoS mitigation systems. It
guarantees that your World-Wide Web site will remain online and
uncensored, as long as it does not violate its Terms of Service
or the laws of Iceland. Anonymous service (with merely a valid
E-Mail address) via Bitcoin is offered. It also accepts a credit
card, PayPal, eChecks, wire transfer, and cash by mail. For
Pqrs-Ltd.Xyz, I pay $26.98 for six months hosting.
Tiny Apps is a depot of applications for Windows®-based
computers. All of these applications (and programs) are scripted
in tight, concise code. The webmaster also maintains a weblog,
and offers a free E-Mail newsletter.
This is a very informative and comprehensive site. It has an
informative forum where subscribers with broadband connectivity
relate their experiences. You need to accept cookies to use this site.
This is a very rare W-WW site where I have lurked for years,
but am not yet registered. The information passed along by its
registered members, especially pertaining to networking and
maintenance, was crucial in installing 1 GB Fiber broadband here.
This is the easiest and most reliable tester of broadband
Internet service providers. Its accuracy and performance is made
possible through the 11,000+ servers around the world that host
its server daemon.
This is another broadband internet speed tester. It is powered
by Netflix™ and concentrates on downloading speed. Uploading
speed and “bufferbloat” may optionally be tested.
This is a cracking forum's page with free NNTP newsservers. You can
search for a specific newsgroup on the twenty-two newsservers it
currently has. Keep in mind that most of these newsservers will not
carry all the newsgroups in which you could be interested.
Mibbit features the most complete, up to date and relevant IRC
search on the web. Its IRC search engine monitors scores of IRC networks
to bring you more live IRC channels, more active IRC users, and
thousands of pages of information on IRC networks, their services, and
their servers.
If you have a landline telephone which has an unlimited | untimed
local calling area feature (This was formerly noted as your Band
“a” and “b” calling areas.), this is where you
can determine if a potential telephone number is within the confines.
Input your area code and prefix. Click through for a printable
version. JavaScript|ActiveX® must be enabled.
mIRC is the Internet Relay Channel program I recommend for
all users with Windows®-based computers. The current version
is v7.75. It has been downloaded over 220 million times.
This is a concise freeware program (Do not succumb to
guilt tripping by a party seeking to monetize their placement on
the weekly "Ask Woody" [c.v.] newsletter!) by Jörg
Rosenthal which, similar to Dup Detector, will search for
duplicate or similar files on a specified disk drive.
This site teaches you how to refine your searches to hone in on
exactly the material which fulfills your quest. It will take some
time initially, but you will know how to find information very
swiftly thereafter. Inexplicably, this W-WW page went off-line, so
I am retrieving it from the Internet Archive [c.v.].
Google™ is a search engine and portal which is especially
keen on rejecting URLs which are nothing more than spam traps.
This link sends you to the TLS version of the ‘Advanced
Search’ page. U.S. law enforcement agencies include
some bizarre topics on internet subpoenae, such as
"pork" [!?]. In my vista, this conflates the
investigation to find genuine miscreants.
StartPage is a search engine which claims it is "the
world's most private search engine". It does not record your
I. P. Address, or surreptitiously place any cookies on
your hard drive. So a law enforcement agency will have nothing to
obtain from it. It feels its search results are more comprehensive,
and more accurate than other search engines. Its unique capabilities
include an advanced search, a global search, and power refinement.
StartPage goes via Google™. I send you to the page where
you can specify technical searching parameters.
This is another privacy-keeping search engine which allegedly
has a ‘no-removal’ policy toward what it may find. It is
available in English, German, and Español.
This search engine goes via Bing. Its foundation is that it
does not record your I. P. Address, or
surreptitiously place any cookies on your hard drive. It is also
available on Tor.
This is a search engine for “vintage” computers. Its
search functionality is basically a custom wrapper for Duck Duck Go
[c.v.], converting the results to extremely basic HTML that old
browsers can read.
Yandex is a technology company which strives to deliver a
world-class, locally relevant search. It appeared online in 1997.
Yandex is divesting itself of all its Russian-based businesses.
Gibson Research Corp. (Steve Gibson) offers this site for
all computer users. I originally recommended this W-WW site for
its "Shields Up!" service, where you can securely test
your computer's shields and probe your computer's ports. There
are also other solid services for protecting your computer.
This site, maintained by Michael Horowitz, focuses
on the security of routers. It covers configuration changes to
make a router more secure, and picking a router that is more
resilient out of the box. If your router gets infected with
malware, or re-configured in a malicious way, most people
would never know. There is no antivirus for routers.
This is another W-WW site maintained by M. Horowitz. It is a
list, both of things to be aware of, and specific defensive steps
that we can take in response to the computer threats of 2023.
Neither of these two W-WW sites have ads (If an ad appears on
your screen, either your browser, computer, or router has been
infected.). Hardly anybody (besides me) links to them.
Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist.
He has composed numerous print publications, including fourteen books,
alongside on-line articles and essays. He is a board member of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation [c.v.]. He distributes the free on-line
newsletter "Crypto-Gram".
This is a World-Wide Web site which provides random passwords
which you can use on a particular W-WW site, or a .rar file. You can
choose between a weak, good, or strong password. Nonetheless, a good
password is one you can remember, and many of the passwords
generated here are just a vomited bowl of alphabet soup. Choose two
dictionary words, use mixed case, and splice in a number. That will
be a password you shall recall.
I read reports that some Internet Service Providers have
configured their provided DNS servers to deny access to select
World-Wide Web sites. This is a site which provides freely
available DNS servers, for both IPv4 and IPv6 connections, which
may be utilized instead of the censoring DNS server by the ISP.
Here is a contingent DNS server W-WW page for the above. It
claims to be checked continuously, and is available for download
in plain text, CSV, and JSON. I send you to the page for the
U.S.A. Other countries are available.
Spybot Search and Destroy is a program which digs deeply into
the workings of your computer to find (and eradicate) programs that
are stealthily tracking your W-WW surfing behavior. It is available
in 32 languages. This site has gone missing at times.
Freenet is a peer-to-peer network designed to allow the distribution
of information over the Internet in an efficient manner, without fear of
censorship. Freenet is completely decentralized, which means that it
cannot be attacked or blocked.
This URL has a review of a book authored by Clay Shirky,
published by Penguin Press in 2008, on the effect of the Internet
on modern group dynamics and organization. It astutely describes
a problem still affecting on-line fora, communities, and
social media platforms. Essentially, what he states is
that World-Wide Web venues need a constitution in order to
be able to deal with the online users who will perform uncivil
acts there.
This is the W-WW-based free E-Mail service I recommend for new
accounts. I have an account here. It scans each complete email,
including attachments, for virii and spam. If a virus is found, it
is blocked at the gateway, and is not even allowed onto its servers.
It utilizes greylisting, public, and private block lists, and
SpamAssassin to detect spam. If detected, it is then discarded and
will only appear in your spam folder if it is potentially legitimate.
This is another World-Wide Web-based E-Mail provider. Its E-Mails
are encrypted end-to-end. It was founded in 2013 at the CERN research
facility. It is open source, and hosted in Switzerland. As such, it
is subject to that nation's strict privacy regulations. It is also
available on Tor.
For some good news associated with Spring 2020, SpamGourmet
was revived. This is a free E-Mail “proxy” service
which you can use to protect your real E-Mail address. The concept
here is that when you encounter a situation where you need to
provide an E-Mail address (a forum, an on-line travel price
quote, someone who you do not know), you give it a disposable
E-Mail address which, if you do not subsequently permit the
sender, will die after a limited number of E-Mails. Its
shared largest drawback is that a variety of situations where you
would prefer to sign up with an E-Mail proxy will not
accept a four-part E-Mail address, which is absurd
contemplating how many persons have workplace E-Mail addresses
formatted "firstname.lastname@officedomain.com", and
that an “anti-spam” software suite [e.g.: Barracuda]
may consider an E-Mail bearing a "spamgourmet.com" or
"xoxy.net" domain to be spam and bounce that E-Mail with
an "Address is not allowed to send E-Mail to
<recipient>." error message. The reality
is that spammers know how to forge an E-Mail header to appear to
be from "gmail.com", "hotmail.com",
"outlook.com", "apple.com", or
"yahoo.com". If the “anti-spam” suite bounced
all the E-Mails with those domains, it would eliminate ~96% of all
the E-Mails sent by anybody. I have utilized SpamGourmet
since May 2005. Since then, I have never given out
the direct address at Fastmail.com. In this span, SpamGourmet has
eaten 52,935 spam E-Mails. My core belief is I should
not have to surrender my U.S. Fourth Amendment Rights to
"unreasonable searches" in order to send an E-Mail message.
“Anti-spam” software corporations also should be
interrogated about their associations with spammers.
When it appeared that SpamGourmet was going off-line, I
was testing the free level at 33mail. You are welcome to
experiment with it. It is not as instinctive as SpamGourmet.
Need an E-Mail address to attach to a music or video clip which you
are sharing (to comply with state law)? Or do you just want to avoid
being spammed when you register for a forum? One method is to use a
disposable E-Mail account. This site offers hundreds of companies which
will allow you to not use your primary E-Mail account. View its forum.
Frequently, as you surf the W-WW, you may encounter a URL which you
would like to refer into a forum, weblog, or E-Mail message, but which
is so lengthy that cutting and pasting it will result in the URL being
extended beyond one line, or you running out of characters in your
text message. This is designed to correct that. It will snip the long
URL into a much shorter URL which serves as a seamless “gateway”
to it. If you tick the specific box here, it will count how many surfers
have clicked on it. Its hazard: A URL shortener can be used for
evil as well as good [i.e.: hiding affiliate codes, or standing in
for malware domains]. I certify to you that I shall always only use
them for good.
RingSurf offers easy access to thousands of member World-Wide Web
sites organized by related interests into easy-to-travel rings. If you
seek other persons who share your hobby, link here. RingSurf is
completely free and does not require you to identify yourself in order
to maintain a site thereupon.
This is an add-on for Firefox 57 and newer browsers.
Download it, restart Firefox and click on the button in the location
bar to enable it. Then, when you mouse over a character in Japanese,
a bubble will appear giving the definition of that character in
English. I submit that all erotica enthusiasts will need to
at least learn how to comprehend Japanese. This reader will help.
The World-Wide Web is truly universal, now that it has this
phenomenal service. This page will translate your designated text
into Pig Latin. You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®.
This is the most amazing resource you shall ever find on the
World-Wide Web! The Internet Archive is a U.S.A.-based 501(c)(3)
public nonprofit that was founded to build an Internet library, with
the purpose of offering free and permanent access to historical digital
collections for researchers, historians, and scholars. I found my
“lost” Chicago POWER results and statistics pages archived
here, there are a lot of Grateful Dead [c.v.] concerts, and
the entire library of "Psychotronic Video®"
zine issues as well. I have donated to it.
You have probably heard about this. Wikipedia is the free on-line
encyclopedia which any registered user can edit. This is the main page
of the English-language section.
I have known about this Wiki-styled webpage since 2008, when it
released a caché of data about the questionable money-handling
procedures of multi-national banks. You probably heard about this
thanks to the release of documents and cables collated by the
U.S.A. This is a very important resource for whistle-blowers
and investigative reporters, amongst others. I emphasize this:
DDoS attacks are bad. They should not be undertaken by
anybody against any W-WW site. Developers of internet
surveillance packages like to sell their software suites as the
“solution” to DDoS attacks. They are not - but that claim
influenced many network I.T. managers to install the suite. This
puts more W-WW sites on the wrong side of the privacy and anonymity
border. The proponents of legislation or regulation aimed at
"rogue foreign websites" may drape their argument
with the cloak of protecting “Intellectual Property”, but
you should realize that WikiLeaks would be one of the first W-WW
sites which would be attempted to be delisted and removed from DNS
registers!
It is one thing to go after multi-national banks. It is
another thing to go after republic nations. Going after
both will result in a massive cyberattack on both
the legal and “illegal” fronts. Twitter
[c.v.] prevented the term "#wikileaks" from
trending! [It can do this for any word or term it does not like.
It disables its counter for it.] Cyberattacks are undertaken
continuously by nations, botnets, organizations, and individual
persons who will go very far to victimize those who present
vistas with which they contend. Censorship, or
terrorism, is never the best answer. It engenders a
“chilling effect” such that differing viewpoints are
not expressed. This is wrong. The response to ‘bad’
speech is more speech. The best quote I viewed
about WikiLeaks: "When exposing a crime is
treated as committing a crime, you are ruled by
criminals."
I had difficulty determining where to place this link. Via the
Internet Archive [c.v.], this is the actual software program which
operated Data East | Bally®'s BurgerTime™
arcade game, originally released in 1982. This is my all-time
favorite video game. It runs only in Firefox (and Chrome®).
JavaScript must be enabled. After it completely loads [The
Copyright screen appears.], hit the ‘Tab’ key on your
keyboard to access the game's DIP switches. You can then change
the game's settings for number of lives, at which point level you
earn another life, and giving you an additional Pepper for
completing each Stage. During game play, hitting the
"P" key pauses | resumes the game. (My highest score so
far = 261,500 [Stage 15].)
Saving Illinois History, One Story at a Time is a weblog
maintained by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph. D. He presents information in a
comprehensive, educational manner. The preponderance of the blog
entries orbit around Abraham Lincoln.
This is the W-WW site of the U.S.A.'s most important voice on behalf
of individuals. You do not have to agree with all the positions it
supports in order to understand its importance. I deduce traffic to this
site is being monitored by any number of agencies and | or persons.
The E.F.F., one of whose founders was John Perry Barlow [R.I.P.],
is an organization promoting freedom of expression in digital media.
It is the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the
digital world.
Free Speech Internet TV is the first audio | video hub on the
World-Wide Web created and defined by the people who use it. Free Speech
Internet TV's commitment is to offer services. It is available on
Dish Network® direct broadcast satellite (channel 9415).
Here is the Federal Communication Commission's broadband map of 24
May 2023. It has multiple variables you can select, including the
method of how the broadband access is delivered. The FCC defines
broadband at the minimum of 100 Mbps down & 20 Mbps up. I keenly
encourage you to opt for Fiber to the Premises 1000 Mbps down.
I believe you do not need anything faster (some addresses have 5000
Mbps capacity); however, take note at how fast you can upload.
XFinity | Comcast generally offers 1200 Mbps down, but only 35 Mbps
up.
This is a World-Wide Web site which assists you in finding
amenities including television and Internet connectivity for a
geographic area. It is available for the entire contiguous U.S.A.
I send you to the page for Chicago. Back-parse for other cities.
Here is a comprehensive World-Wide Web site listing scores of
ISPs, including dial-up | v.92 modem ISPs (which I recommend
having as a contingency should your broadband connection fail). This
page is for the U.S.A. Other countries are available.
This site will yield the ZIP + 4 ZIP Code for virtually any address
serviced by the United States Postal Service. You need to turn on
JavaScript|ActiveX®.
Here is a good interactive site which will provide the exchange rate
between your home country and the recipient country. This displays U.S.
Dollar to Japanese Yen. You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX® to
use this site.
This is Snopes. Since 1995, it has been a W-WW site which
debunks the mentioned topics. Before you forward that E-Mail, or
recirculate the URL which purports to disclose a life-changing message,
please check here.
Are you tired of getting mailings from banks offering you another
credit card, mortgage, or line-of-credit offer? This TLS W-WW site,
maintained by the U.S.A.'s “big four” credit reporting
bureaux, is where you can terminate receiving those offers in the mail.
This may not be 100% effective; because there are some financial
institutions which do not use the big four's services; but it should
significantly curtail the onslaught.
Across the U.S.A., some houses of religion are dabbling into
something expressly prohibited to them by the U. S.
Constitution: Partisan politics. This organization exposes which
ones are, and offers actions which can be taken to cease this.
The World-Wide Web has many sites on which miscreants are annotated.
Here's a site which identifies the miscreants whose “day jobs”
are being paid snitches for entrapping other individuals (who may not be
contemplating any “illegal” activity). It strives to be the
largest online database of informants and agents. There is also a forum
for which you may register.
Via the Tor Project [c.v.], this is a World-Wide Web site maintained
by the Cato Institute, a libertarian organization, documenting genuine
instances of when law enforcement personnel have abused their position
of authority.
This is a W-WW site espousing progressive ideas for dealing with
today's world. However, subscribing to this magazine may result in
you being refused a U.S. Governmental security clearance (including
T.S.A. PreCheck®).
When “DNAinfo” ceased operation in November 2017,
this became where many of its reporters wound up. It is an
online newspaper that reports local and neighborhood news in
Chicago. It operates as a non-profit, subscription-based
service. Its mission is to deliver reliable, essential, and
nonpartisan coverage of Chicago's diverse neighborhoods.
Boing Boing is an aggregator of both blog postings and W-WW v2
websites across a vast spectrum of topics. It has been consistently
rated amongst the top World-Wide Web sites.
This is a comprehensive forum with many dedicated members which
should help you (and I) discern how to accomplish a particular quandary.
You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®, and accept cookies to post
or respond here.
This is the World-Wide Web location of the U.S.A.'s most
esteemed organization rating products and services. (The magazine
was first published in May 1936.) It is a member of Consumers
International, a federation of more than 220 consumer
organizations from over 115 countries.
mySimon is a service of C.B.S. Interactive. It is a World-Wide
Web site which turns its shopping bots loose on the Internet to find
prices of items for which you are seeking. For something eminating
from a W-WW behemoth, it is quite good.
This W-WW site allows you to compare product prices across a
spectrum of on-line purveyors. It also has a keen forum where you
can learn about the sites surveyed herein, as well as technical
aspects of computing and the Internet.
This is a purveyor of discontinued merchandise sold at closeout
prices. It has opened its outlet store at 4249 W. Diversey Ave. in
Chicago. [Park kitty-corner from it on the northwest corner of
Diversey and Kildare.]
Cook Bros. is a warehouse store not charging a membership fee. Its
prices may not be the lowest, but the spectrum of what it stocks in its
store at 1740 N. Kostner Ave. in Chicago is something you should
check.
This is a World-Wide Web site which collates a large number of
supermarket and other stores' weekly advertisement flyers and presents
them in one space. I send you to the grocery list for 60641.
Change to your ZIP Code and the types of stores in which you are
seeking on the left side.
Craig's List began as a cooperative forum in San Francisco,
CA. It matured into an on-line campus compounding social and business
spheres, for communities across the U.S.A., and around the world. The
communities are on the right side of the screen. Despite the negative
coverage it has attracted from “mainstream” media, there are
solid deals and valuable services available here. Craig's List prefers
you browse with Firefox.
This is the W-WW site of the financial institution in which an
amount of my funds are deposited. It has been in business since 1944.
(It moved to the corner of Belmont Ave. and Cicero Ave. in 1953.)
It is FDIC insured. It is a bank I can highly recommend to everyone
in metropolitan Chicago, especially those not wanting to entrust
their money to a multi-national corporation. It offers many banking
services for free; and has consultants who speak English, Español,
or Polish.
This is Chicago's most astute forum discussing food, both
domestically and commercially. I am registered here. I recommend
doing so also. (Requires JavaScript|ActiveX® on, and cookies
accepted.) However, as I scribe below, the COVID-19 pandemic
should cause all the LTHF Great Neighborhood Restaurants (GNR)
to be delisted and have to re-prove they are worthy of recommendation.
This is a Google™ document noting the above. In many
instances, the percentage being added is inferred to be the
substitute to a tip, but is not. This also notes which venues add
the surcharge after taxes have been included. There are
also annotated examples of when a surcharge is designated for the
benefit of employees [e.g.: for their health care plan], but said
employees note they do not qualify for health care because they
are not assigned enough hours. Information on how to add a venue
to this document is indicated on the page.
This is | was a phenomenal Google™ document produced by the
LTHF's [c.v.] member "eating while walking". It
displays thirteen variables about the italian beef shack where he
dined. Nine of the thirteen apply to the sandwich itself. He has been
to ninety-five shacks. For ‘E Giard Type’, Standard
equals serrano peppers, olives, celery, carrots, and cauliflower.
This was very valuable circa 2018, but many of the shacks listed
here have closed - but are not shown as closed, and the ones which
remain have not been visited since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in
the U.S.A., such that the ratings can no longer be fully trusted.
Further, some shacks where I have been and feel are quality are not
even documented.
This is a World-Wide Web page with hundreds of pictures of
various courses of Chicago-styled foodstuffs. All foods on Grease
Freak appear exactly how they were intended to look by the folks who
prepared them. He does not touch-up the food to improve appearances.
The methodology: He orders, gets the food, shoots, and eats. He
does not claim to be an expert on fast food, but he is well aware of
the merits and pitfalls of Chicago's staple meals. He has eaten
countless winners and, all too often, some real stinkers that made
him physically ill.
This is a Google™ map constructed by me where I depict the
restaurants along the Chicago Transit Authority [c.v.] bus routes
#54 Cicero and #77 Belmont which I have visited in person and
bought food from there back to the abode.
This is a weblog maintained by somebody who may be associated
with a barbecue joint. But he does not limit himself to posts
about B-B-Q. He began this weblog in September 2008. But I did not
learn about this until a Google™ map he compiled about venues
in Tokyo, Japan [c.v.] turned up on another foodie weblog.
This is a national food, beverage, and venue collator, similar
to the Little Three Happiness Forum [c.v.]. I send you to the Chicago
branch of the operation.
This is a W-WW weblog run by a former librarian. In 2017, it was
revised to provide more general thrifting topics. I cannot recommend
it as much as I did formerly. But it still provides enough valuable
data to remain on here. She has remarried. Once a month, on a
Saturday [‘Caturday’], she posts an entry featuring her
new household's cats, featuring the ‘Notorious BKL’. Almost All Aldi® has been folded back into this weblog.
This is along the lines of Craig's List, but featuring registered
users relating experiences in a spectrum of products and services,
and local flavor. Should you wish to register (which is required to
post), you need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®. My reviews begin
at http://snipr.com/yelp1. Yelp's ‘garden’ is
now mostly thorny weeds. It is the case that some ‘persons’
giving one-star ratings to dining and drinking venues are actually
"Sockpuppet" accounts working for a competing
venue, or trying to coerce that venue to give them money to take it
down (a mutation of Do You Know Who I Am), and the
one-star ratings for transportation stations are covertly backed
by taxi or rideshare operators, or work for automobile dealers.
There was also the matter of a lawsuit alleging that Yelp
skewed the display of a venue's reviews to put a “negative”
one atop the list, and shadowing all the “positive”
reviews. As a former data processing programmer, I know how simple
it would be to compose an algorithm which would do what was alleged.
[Two variables. Yelp sponsor: 0 = non-sponsor, 1 = sponsor.Yelp Sort review order: 1 = ascending, 0 = descending.]
The lawsuit was thrown out with prejudice due to First Amendment
“freedom of expression” grounds! (A venue or service
is not entitled to only “positive” reviews.) Yelp
would then solicit the venue to become a Yelp sponsor. This seems
exactly like the old syndicate “protection” [| extortion]
racket. ("Nice little place you got here. It would be horrible
if something bad was to happen. We can help you minimize that, for
a small fee.") My reviews were real. I tended to give
venues the benefit of the doubt. But when the venue was a poor
value for the money, I mentioned that. (My most infamous review? I
gave the Superdawg Drive-In a 3-star rating because
I felt it was selling the ‘sizzle’ [its
atmosphere], rather than the ‘steak’ [its food].
I was accompanied by my dad [R.I.P.] that day, and he also
expressed that the hot dog was not that impressive. However, if
you are excavating my old reviews, you should also see the one of
a since-closed brewpub on west Division St. named Moonshine,
noting what I scribed about its clientele back in 2008.) I
send you directly to the TLS page where you logon. I leave
this on here, but realize I have not logged on to it since June
2012. I always suspected my reviews were filtered or not shown.
I am certain were I to logon and review a venue now, you would
never see it.
I have deleted Twitter from this bookmark page. It locked
me out in February 2023. It would not send the unlock code to an E-Mail
address. I do not give out the telephone number here for anything.
Essentially, Twitter has become the exclusionary venue where
viewpoints differing from that of Elon Musk are unwelcome. I keenly
believe in free speech, and not just that which coincides with my
personal beliefs. This is a distinct World-Wide Web page
displaying all the above which are extant. If you back-parse, other
symbols are available.
Groupon began as a side project of a progressive political
organization along the lines of Moveon.org. But its ability to
negotiate pricing deals with local restaurants, and stores, swiftly
overtook the original intent. You sign up with an E-Mail address in
order to access the site [It will send you a daily E-Mail.]. As for
the deals it has been able to purvey; I think they are good. It
helps if you know someone with whom you can enjoy the deal. Most are
overwhelming for one person alone. I send you to the Chicago page.
I ordered books from Edward R. Hamilton, of Falls Village, CT.,
for over 30 years. It started out as a remaindered-only, mail order
company. It keeps its prices low by not accepting credit cards or
doing any billing. The ultimate payoff is at the conclusion. It charges
only $4.00 for postage and handling, regardless of the number
of books which you order.
Obtaining parts and supplies, including air filters and
carburetors, for the 1987 Chevrolet Sprint might have been a
much more expensive foray were it not for RockAuto.
Here is an advertising-supported World-Wide Web site comparing
residential and business VoIP providers. It is maintained by
Slashdot Media. In North America, the telephone number you
dial to learn who is your default long distance carrier for that
line is 1-700-555-4141.
This W-WW site has completely revamped. It is a purveyor of
uncensored Usenet access. Rates are $12.00 | month, or $99.00 | year.
Data downloads are capped at 635 GB | month. The service is offered
in six languages. It is registered to somebody in, and hosted in
Germany, but its corporate headquarters are in San Marino.
This is an open source map of the world, user-maintained
and free to use. There is a learning curve involved with it. Its
base is much more intricate than that of Google™. It emphasizes
local knowledge. It may be utilized for any purpose as long as you
credit it and its contributors.
Chicago is one of the easiest cities (in the U.S.A.) to traverse
without an automobile. Unlike some cities, its system does not shut
down completely at midnight. Link here for routes, maps, and
schedules. The Authority has implemented a fare payment system
called Ventra [linked from here], which is also valid on Pace
suburban buses. There is no longer an excuse to not utilize
Ventra. The cost of a one, three, seven, or 30-day pass ($5, $15,
$20, $75) will swiftly undercut what funds one would expend if not
utilizing Ventra. (The 30-day Reduced Fare pass is similarly being
slashed from $50 to $35.) The cash | pay-as-you-go
fare is now essentially a gouge. There are no transfers
included. If your travel involves two other bus routes in merely
that two-hour span, you would spend $6.75 then and there.
{How much is that one-day pass?} The one exception is if you
start at the O'Hare “L” station; the fare is $5.00. I am
disappointed by this; however, many other cities [e.g.: St. Louis,
MO.; Vancouver, BC., Canada] also hit travellers with an airport
transit surcharge. There is now a Flickr® account in which
it posts photographs from its library.
The Authority has overhauled the Bus Tracker application. Now,
both the stop location and the map displaying where a bus is
operating are both under this URL, which also no longer generates
a separate pop-up window. A text-only option may be chosen. This
page is also available en Español.
Here is the CTA W-WW site which attempts to communicate when
a train shall arrive at a specified station. Where it is sometimes
slightly off is at a station close to where a train originates
its run. [e.g.: @ Cumberland awaiting a southeastbound Blue Line
“L” train]
This is a swift and informative W-WW site which searches the
Authority's ‘Clever Devices’ application to locate its
buses currently in service. It has been upgraded to tracking all
buses, broken out by model. It is updated every ten minutes.
Our webmaster | janitor is sporadically slipshod at renewing the
site's TLS certificate, so there may be times when you are warned
not to proceed.
Here is a similar W-WW site to that of the above. It locates
all Pace suburban Regional Transportation Authority buses. It is
in numerical order. Pace does not number a vehicle to end in
13. It is updated every ten minutes. For vehicles with a
five-digit number, the first two digits are the last two digits
of the year they were delivered.
This is a rubric of a transit inspection World-Wide Web site
by Darwin O'Connor that provides real-time bus (and now train)
tracking and next vehicle predictions for multiple metropolitan
areas, including the CTA. It is a significant W-WW site, but its
misspellings are disappointing [e.g.: "broweser",
"shink"]. I send you to the routelist. A CTA system map
is also available. Back parse for the other systems it inspects.
This is an interactive W-WW site maintained by Brandon McFadden.
It examines the current service levels of the Authority's
“L” trains at selected key stations. This accurately
depicts the number of actual arrivals compared with the number
scheduled.
Back by request; this is a forum with both operators and
riders of metropolitan Chicago posting frequently. It still has
a number of unsubstantiated and irrational opinions, and
people talking across other people without reading them, but
it is worth monitoring. My transit content is now usually
posted on the Skyscraper City forum [c.v.].
This is an impressive user-generated W-WW page which depicts each
Chicago rapid transit station over the street grid. For further
information, click on the station dot, or the text link on the right
side. You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®.
This is the World-Wide Web's largest resource for information on
Chicago's rapid transit system. It encompasses transit history;
advocacy; and technical data. It is a member of the "Chicago and
Northern Illinois History Ring".
I have been a member of C.E.R.A. since 1978. It is the
longest-lasting conglomeration which has not yet dissolved, or
extruded me from its membership rolls. C.E.R.A. has been around
since 1938. It is a railfan organization orbiting around the
metropolitan Chicago area. Monthly {except July and August}
meetings of the organization are held at 899 S. Plymouth Ct.
(entrance on W. 9th St. @ State St.) in central Chicago on the
fourth Friday of each month (at 19:00 hours [GMT-6]).
C.E.R.A. is also conducting videoconferencing meetings via
Zoom on the second Friday of the month. C.E.R.A.
needs new members. It is jarring when I attend the physical
meetings and sense I am the youngest person in the room. If you
are intrigued by trains, or Chicago, join C.E.R.A.
Here is a user-compiled list of future railroad presentations,
both electric and steam, via the Zoom program. You can adjust the
beginning times of each for the four time zones of the contiguous
fourty-eight U.S. States, plus a selection of other time zones.
There is a Google™ Calendar frame embedded within.
The official C.E.R.A. weblog had its domain name lapse.
Its webmaster | janitor was David Sadowski, who is behind this
weblog. He resigned from C.E.R.A. in November 2014. It
orbits around photographs of traction vehicles, mainly
in Chicago, but including a number of other areas in the U.S.A.
I have contributed to it, and I appear in his photographs.
The "Hicks Car Works" name commemorates a Chicago Heights
train car manufacturer (1897-1911). It constructed Chicago, Aurora,
& Elgin car #309 in 1907. (CA&E #309 continued in service on
the CA&E until the railroad's abrupt end of passenger service on 3
July 1957.) It is still operated sporadically at the Illinois Railway
Museum in Union, IL. (McHenry County - northwest of Chicago). This
weblog orbits around the preservation activity @ I.R.M. It has three
regular contributors.
This is an expanding World-Wide Web site which is scanning and
uploading print publications issued by the CTA, for both the public
and its own employees. This page loads swiftly. If you click through,
the documents are in .pdf format.
Is your flight delayed? Are you at the airport right now
wondering if the airline's gate agent is telling you the complete
truth? Link here for the real answer. FlightAware collects
data from air traffic control across the U.S.A. Select by
specific flight, airport, or aircraft type. You may register for
it to obtain additional information.
This is the travel forum which I found most educational when
researching my trips to Tokyo, Japan. This forum began as a
resource for airlines' frequent flyer program members to provide
key data. It has expanded to include specific recommendations
within popular destinations. I am registered here, and I can
recommend you do so. You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®,
and accept cookies. There is a rubric here which you will not
view until you have been on the forum for a specified number of
days and made a number of posts and replies.
If you're out on the highway, you see them everyday. Traffic is
moving safely and expeditiously, but not legally according to the posted
speed limit. Link here to learn where are the speed traps out on the
highways of the U.S.A. It is sponsored by the National Motorists
Association.
This is a search engine specializing in hotel rooms. The precept
is that the same hotel has different prices for its room
depending on which World-Wide Web site it appears [e.g.: the
“budget” W-WW site v. the city's Chamber of
Commerce W-WW site]. Trivago searches over 317 W-WW sites
[1,000,000 rooms] daily, and collates the data here.
When you travel, staying at a hostel puts you in touch with people
who are very interested in sharing their journeys with you. It is also
one of the least expensive ways to sleep. I am a Life Member of HI-AYH.
This is its central site, available in four languages. You don't
have to be under 30 years of age to stay here. Bring a towel.
Here is the most vast World-Wide Web site disclosing hostels
around the globe. There is also a weblog here. Its aim is to feed and
water your wanderlust. It shares its best travel tips with the help of
favo(u)rite travel writers; such as where to find those authentic,
soul-filled places, in any particular city.
Motel 6 is the U.S.A.'s lowest-priced national motel chain. I began
staying at Motel 6 in 1987. On-line reservations are available. You may
register if you wish it to save some of your data.
This was formerly "Roomsaver". It is a collator of hotel
and motel coupons. This site also allows you to print out coupons from
its guides on-line. This corporation publishes the “green guide”.
You may have forgotten that back in 2011, Google™ bought ITA,
a travel industry software developer. This semi-obscure W-WW site [Can
anything affiliated with Google™ be obscure?] utilizes that
technology to create an easier way for users to find better flight
information online. It makes it easier to search for flights, compare
flight options, prices, and get to a W-WW site swiftly to buy the
ticket. (If you have a Google™ account, you can save potential
itineraries here; but it will always involve booking the airfare
elsewhere.) I found the lowest airfare for my flights to Tokyo in
April 2014-17, September 2017, and April 2023 via here.
It was bought by Google™, but this URL is still extant. It
is aimed at savvy frequent flyers who know how to tweak airline
booking searches to specify a route, cabin section, airline alliance,
and a number of other variables. Should you want to delve into this,
there is a rubric on the FlyerTalk forum [c.v.] under
‘Travel Tools’ offering key information.
This is a comprehensive travel planning W-WW site offering
the facility to check airfares and hotels worldwide. In a few
instances, it may not find the lowest rate, but it will put you
far enough along the path for you to obtain the lowest rate:
I.E.: An air flight will almost always be less costly to book
at that airline's own W-WW site.
This is the W-WW site founded by five U.S.A. airlines. I have
found some solid travel bargains here. All these travel
reservation sites work swifter if you use a direct connection to
the Internet, turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®, and accept cookies.
Priceline® is an aggregator of airline tickets, and hotel
rooms. All of its business now is in hotel rooms.
Registration is required in order to use this service. The concept
is that you name the price you are willing to pay for a hotel room,
or a rental car, in a specified area.
Hotwire® is a site which searches other travel W-WW sites
searching for low fares from the cities and on the days you indicate
on its form. You must register in advance with it.
This is a World-Wide Web site striving to save you a significant
amount of money on airfares worldwide. It emphasizes itself on
"error fares", which are extremely temporary.
This is another W-WW site comparing flights to find you the
cheapest deal, fast. It also attempts to find the cheapest hotels
and car rental for the trip. I send you to the U.S.A. site. It has
websites in other languages and countries.
This is a airline searching W-WW site endeavoring to locate and
identify the least expensive flight on the route in which you are
interested. It also has a “trip finder” aspect allowing you
to find new destinations from your home city. It has won awards, and
been recommended by CNN, the New York Times, and the Daily Telegraph.
I send you to the U.S.A. site. It has websites in other languages and
countries.
This is a W-WW site, in the format of a weblog, which believes
it is the only airfare alert and comparison site that includes fares
on all airlines, including Southwest, Skybus, Allegiant, Spirit,
Frontier, and JetBlue.
Fare Compare is an airline ticket comparison shopping World-Wide
Website. It is an independent airfare shopping site with the all the
tools necessary to help consumers find the best deals available
quickly, easily, and first. Ticket prices often change dramatically
from hour-to-hour, day-to-day and week-to-week. Fare Compare
believes that no one site has the cheapest price, nor the best deal,
at any given moment. Less than 10% of passengers on each flight pay
the cheapest price for the same seat. Online travel agencies and
metasearch sites want to sell you a ticket. Fare Compare wants to
help you find a cheap flight deal.
This is a BBS where you learn how users of Priceline® bid for
travel, including the prices which were accepted. This is a valuable
BBS which reached critical mass: i.e. There were enough accepted bids
to have a reasonable idea of how low you can offer. I have used it to
obtain hotel rooms in cities. You need to turn on
JavaScript|ActiveX®, and accept cookies. Bidding For Travel was
mentioned in "Consumer Reports" [c.v.]. It is a
member of the Tapatalk network of fora. The main moderator when I
was active here (Cheryl) has passed away. I have not subsequently
logged on since then to notice any changes.
This is another BBS dealing with the same topics as Bidding
For Travel. I would not call it a rivalry, but there are a clutch
of registered users at each BBS which feel that that specific BBS
is ‘better’ than the other. So I will present both of
them. You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®, and accept
cookies.
This is my favorite airline. Other air carriers may match its
airfare prices, but then they will snipe you with any number of nearly
unavoidable fees. Sign up for Rapid Rewards®. The program has been
revamped, so I can't swiftly tell you how to earn a free flight. It now
requires a certain amount of points. However, you will be able to book
and find a seat when you attempt to claim your award flight.
It really messed up during the Xmas 2022 snow and cold event. It was
reported on FlyerTalk [c.v.] that a major element in its failure was
its lack of technological updates.
I do not have cable | satellite television here at the abode.
But I did enjoy watching selected shows on this channel. Specifically,
"No Reservations", "Bizarre Foods", "Booze
Traveler", "Hotel Impossible", and "Man v.
Food". This page includes much multimedia.
Here is a fascinating travel weblog by Jürgen and Mike, from
Germany and the U.S.A. They love learning about new cultures and have
decided to see the world slowly. They travel the globe, photographing
and annotating their experiences. When not travelling, they live in
Valencia, Spain.
This is an independent, unaffiliated W-WW page which compiles all
the venues which have appeared on a panoply of cable | satellite
television shows revolving around food and beverage.
I leave this World-Wide Web site on here although Chicago no
longer has service. (The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc with
intercity motor coach providers.) You may register if you wish it to
save some of your data. I send you directly to the page where you can
investigate the cost of your trip.
Gas Buddy has a sufficient number of reliable gasoline price
posters throughout the U.S.A. and Canada. Use it to deduce where
to refuel as you motor. You can search via state, city, or zip code.
The potential hazard is mendacious gas station operators entering a
price lower than what they are charging in an attempt to influence
motorists to visit their station.
Interstate 95 [I-95] is the main highway on the east coast of the
U.S.A. Portions of it are a toll road. (I do not drive on toll roads |
turnpikes.) If you do drive I-95, here is a World-Wide Web site which
lets you know about food, lodging, gasoline prices, shopping, and more
along its route.
This is a forum orbiting around urban areas across the globe. It
serves as a repository for planners and the people who live or travel
there. I am registered here, and make my transportation posts and
replies here. You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®, and accept
cookies.
It is not affiliated with the above; but this forum orbits around
development news and construction activity on projects from around the
world, alongside discussions on urban design, architecture,
transportation and many other topics. I am registered here. You need
to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®, and accept cookies.
This is a comprehensive forum orbiting around all aspects
of railroads in the U.S.A. and Canada. There are rubrics for all
classes of extant freight railroads, passenger rail, equipment
manufacturers, as well as railfanning and modelling. I am
registered here. In order for me to logon, I had to turn off
Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox. You need to turn on
JavaScript|ActiveX®, and accept cookies.
Here is a railroad discussion forum which is one of the oldest
railroad-orbiting World-Wide Web sites (online since March
2000). It has been integrated with Rail Images, which
launched when image hosting was rare on the W-WW. It estimates it
hosts over 100,000 railroad and model railroad images. For
the latter, it has a rubric titled “Special Runs”. You
need to register in order to view the full-sized images. It
requires JavaScript|ActiveX® on, and accepting cookies.
Here is a scintillating weblog I wish I had found years ago,
especially when my dad was alive. It is by Dennis DeBruler, and
features railroads, bridges, and the businesses served by them. He
takes photographs of them, which are Creative Commons - BY -
4.0, and shares them here.
This is a user-maintained W-WW site informing people about the
streetcars which ran, or in a few instances, are still running, in
Philadelphia, PA. However, it has not been updated since March 2020.
It's a lot different being shown around by a friend in San Francisco
than navigating the foggy maze on your own. This is the best independent
guide to what is worth seeing, and what is just a tourist trap.
It is overshadowed by the city's cable cars, but San Francisco also
has a fleet of electric streetcars running along Market Street seven days
a week. Here you can learn more about San Francisco's transit history,
the postwar P. C. C. (Presidents' Conference Committee)
streetcars used to provide service, and how to become a member of the
organization.
Did you link to a page which seemed to have the information for which
you were looking, but it had those unfamiliar Japanese Kana characters on
it? Here is a World-Wide Web page which can come to your assistance.
This is Jisho, another Japanese to English dictionary. This
page is where you can enter an English word, tick the box that reads
‘Kana as romaji’, and view the output in both Kana and a
pronouncible English word. There are additional translations options at
the top of this page. Jisho is maintained by Denshi Jisho.
This is a URL I posted here to assist you in finding specific
venues in Japan by using one of the few elements you can read and
write from a Japanese-language [Kana] World-Wide Web site on your
western keyboard: Its telephone number. Enter the number in the
box atop this page. The output display will include the Kana
characters with the street address of the venue. You can then use
the copy and paste function of your computer's operating system
to transfer that street address to your map program.
A dynamic table illustrating what the trading range is for these
two currencies. This shows the current month. You need to turn on
JavaScript|ActiveX®.
This is an English-language translation of a chain of shops
in metropolitan Tokyo, Yokohama, and other cities in Japan, which
offer a higher [| better] purchase rate for a U.S. Dollar
(and subsequent conversion to a Japanese Yen).
This is another currency exchange corporation which I learned
about via a poster on FlyerTalk [c.v.]. Compare and contrast the
two shops' exchange rate. They seemed in lockstep. It appears many
of its shops are in MUFG bank branches.
After trying since 2017, in January 2020 I finally located a
service which would purchase an item sold only in Japan and ship
it to the U.S.A. In my case, it was a P145/80R-12 tire for
the 1987 Chevrolet Sprint. I recommend it to you as well. I placed
it precisely here because you will have to convert your U.S. Dollar
to Japanese Yen when depositing funds into your account to obtain
whatever you order, and your own credit card issuer will give you a
higher exchange rate (which you will glimpse by checking one of the
above exchange rate links) than this W-WW site's own. (You can
also use X-Rates, which is the "Currency converter" link
in Resources above.)
You will find much informative data here. I point out to you the
Japan Photos section. As you proceed, you may opt for a framed or
non-framed presentation. It has been online since March 1996.
This is the English-language home page for the above named
organization. There are more pages in Japanese which refer to the
general history of pinball.
This is Tokyo's (and probably Japan's) number one beer
bar. It has one hundred taps (but not all of them are
connected at the time), including real ales. It is off the beaten
path in Ryögoku, an east-central area [Sumida-ku] of Tokyo.
The closest train station to it is the JR Sobu Line's
"Ryögoku" stop [west exit]. (If you catch it at
Akihabara or Ochanomizu, it will cost ¥140.) If you order
designated beers (indicated on the menu with a crown) during
“Happy Hour” (15:00 - 20:00 hours Mon.-Sat.), you
receive a free pub snack. (Try the pizza.)
This is a bar in a neighborhood just north of downtown Yokohama,
which has two things going for it: Very low prices on “extreme”
craft beer, all of which are on draft and; recorded music, and music
videos, of hard rock and metal bands playing in the background.
Koichi-san is the proprietor. Its hours are extremely limited.
The bar received a write-up in "Vice" Magazine [c.v.].
Our craft beer blogger (Neil) is English, a soccer fan
(Kawasaki FRONTALE), a non-smoker, and a vegetarian. His
objective is to provide the information you could possibly want
about bars such as opening hours; an idea on prices; if they
have a cover charge; beer selection; how to get there if you
can't read Japanese; et cetera. He also presents guest reviews.
Here is an English-language weblog which I forgot about. The
bloggers here delve into multiple aspects of craft beer in Japan
(not just Tokyo & Yokohama).
I do not know how I missed finding this English-language
guide to the above topic. This is a comprehensive World-Wide Web site
annotating venues in Kanto [i.e.: The area of Japan in which is Tokyo.]
It is updated frequently. A Google™ map of the selected venue(s)
is available. It has recommendations for other areas of Japan if you
back-parse.
I nearly had an article printed in the Lumpen Organization's
"Mash Tun" magazine which was put out during Chicago
Craft Beer Week 2012. My article was cut. This is a Google™
map which displays the bars about which I wrote. Some of these
bars no longer exist.
This World-Wide Web site offers Japan visitors unlimited local
knowledge from a select Senpai network. This includes travel advice,
Japanese manners, learning about Japan and other questions.
This is a weblog, powered by Disqus, in which our four regular
bloggers (and the sporadic guest blogger) pontificate on how to
enjoy Tokyo while spending as little money as possible. Tokyo
is frequently cited as one of the most expensive cities on the
planet to visit, but that is a smokescreen. The venues you learn
about in those reports are written by public relations agencies
cohabiting with the venues being mentioned. The venues pay
to be included in the articles. The venues jack up their prices by
67+%. They find some cachet in being described as expensive, as
though you achieve some mythical status for shopping or dining
there. You do not get more, you just pay more. Tokyo Cheapo
helps you find the venues which do not participate in this racket.
[N.B.: This racket exists World-Wide. There was a Chicago
monthly small-sized glossy print magazine, ‘The REAL
Chicago’, which consisted of advertisements for avaricious
venues for eleven months, and which in the twelfth month were then
proclaimed by the magazine as ‘Chicago's Best’ in a
convoluted category in which they were the only honoree.]
It took a while to find a definitive World-Wide Web site with
this information. Japan is loaded with convenience stores
(“conbini”), any of which are elevated over what
is found in North America, although this could change since the
Japanese corporation owning ‘7-Eleven’-branded stores
has bought the Speedway gasoline | convenience store chain.
There are several branches of ‘Lawson’ stores
in Japan. This is where there is a list of the Lawson stores
which sell everything for ¥100 [+ 10% tax]. I have
consistently shopped here when in Japan. The fascinating fact
is that Lawson was founded in northeast Ohio, U.S.A. in
1939. It expanded in the U.S.A. and was invested in by a larger
American corporation. In 1975, this corporation was approached by a
Japanese corporation seeking to compete against
‘7-Eleven’-branded stores there. Lawson stores
began opening in Japan in June 1975. The larger American
corporation bought out the Lawson U.S.A. concern in 1985 and put
its name on the stores. The Japanese corporation continued using
the Lawson name. Lawson is the third-largest conbini chain
in Japan (because former numbers three & four merged to
become #2).
Donki (as it is commonly called) is a chain of department
stores in Japan. Its prices are extremely low. It also purveys
"shopping entertainment" in each store. I have bought
lots of items from its stores in Tokyo, Yokohama, and Osaka. The
next time I visit Japan, I will again shop it. It accepts a credit
card. If you spend at least ¥10,000 in one visit, present
your passport, so it can deduct the excise tax from your purchase.
This is the weblog of a young female who lives in Vancouver,
BC, Canada, but frequently visits Tokyo. She has appeared on
satellite TV channels such as the Travel Channel [c.v.]
and CNN in the U.S.A.; NHK in Japan; and
Canal+ in France. She orbits around gothic style,
alternative culture, and ‘cute’ elements of Japan. You
can also follow her cat, Basil Farrow's blog at
http://www.lacarmina.com/basilfarrow.
This is a relatively new weblog by Gianni Simone, a
{former?} zinester who I actually met in Tokyo in December
2005 (one of the few non-messups of that jaunt). I did
reconnect with him in April 2023. He is now posting his content
via Substack, which offers bonus material to people who pay for it.
I enjoy his posts, but will not pay money to Substack.
This is a blog by Kirk Brown, a 30-ish male from Kingston, Jamaica,
who began travelling to Japan in September 2011, and now lives in
rural Japan as a participant with the JET Programme.
“Jamaipanese” is a candid portmanteau of the words
JAMAIcan and JaPANESE, hence he calls himself and
the blog Jamai + Panese or Jamaipanese.
This World-Wide Web site has revised again. It is now a weblog
with an accompanying forum to help English-speakers get more out
of their visit to Japan.
Here is another translated blog by an individual. I like his
posts because he has a habit of photographing the ticket machine
and annotating what is each button. So you can attempt to learn
Japanese in this method.
These ten World-Wide Web sites are weblogs for English-speaking
people who are planning to visit Tokyo | Yokohama | Osaka, love
ramen, and do not read enough Japanese to be able to understand
Japanese ramen W-WW sites. After much searching, I discovered
a ramen reviewer who has continued to visit and report on ramen
shacks throughout Japan, and whose blog reports load more swiftly
than many others. The W-WW site strives to provide you with
quality ramen content. It is here to help you have an enjoyable
time in Japan. From restaurant reviews to recipes, it hopes you
will come to love ramen as much as it does.
This is a connoisseur's guide to the very best ramen of Japan.
It strives to discover and celebrate only the best: Legendary shops
open for generations, new school innovators carrying the cuisine
forward, and the countless Japanese ramen chefs devoted to the
mastery of their craft. One of its contributors is Abram Plaut, who
worked with Brian MacDuckston [c.v.] on a ramen column for a weekly
magazine.
This is an English-language blog by Steve D., who lives in Tokyo,
but went to junior high school and high school in Hawai'i, U.S.A. He
eats at any number of restaurants, not merely ramen, in the
metropolitan area. He began blogging in 2009. He is also into
photography, so his entries mention the camera he used to take the
pictures. If you click through to his profile, you will find more
weblogs he composes.
This is the map compounded by the above named person to which I
refer above. It was how I discovered his weblog. For his trip to
Tokyo (in 2019), he turned up hundreds of venues, many of which I
was | am unfamiliar.
Here is another ramen review blogger I finally learned about
when he guested on a ramen podcast I downloaded. He has been
blogging since March 2016. Its title is attributed to what one
consumes after a long night of drinking in Tokyo: A hearty bowl
which settles the alcohol in your stomach.
This is a ramen shack blog maintained by Gabriel Bloch. He did
most of his reportage in 2014-15, and has not blogged since
December 2017. The blog strives to be the essential resource for
the beginner and the connoisseur. For the beginner, check the
glossary for: Shio (salt), Shoyu (soy sauce), Miso (chicken &
pork), and Tonkotsu (pork). They are the four basic
classifications. Choose the one that sounds most appealing, and
then use here to find a shop in Tokyo. This is an attempt to
encyclopaedically list the city's best ramen shacks in a method
allowing newcomers and tourists to get into the best without a lot
of time or trouble. He got to (some) shacks that no other
English-language blogger did.
This ramen blog is maintained by Benjamin Weber. He grew up in New
York City, eating pizza every day. After graduating college, he moved
to California, and then to Japan. He lived in Tokyo for over a year,
but then got a new job. He moved to Osaka in June 2011. Much of his
reportage is of shacks in Osaka. Each blog post is bi-lingual [English
| Japanese]. However, he has not posted since July 2022.
This is an account of a person living in Tsukuba, Ibaraki
Prefecture (northeast of Tokyo), Supleks' [c.v.] ramen reviews.
He is prolific. He writes one review per day, and each review is
thorough. Other Japanese-language ramen reviewers on Supleks
whom you could peruse are mocopapa, Y M K, &
Tomason.
This is where Keizo Shimamoto has resurfaced. He closed
the ramen shack in San Juan Capistrano. He has taken over this ramen
podcast (which had not had a recent podcast since April 2021). One of
the new episodes delves into what happened with that ramen shack. I
send you to the direct link. I recommend registering for Podbay.FM [c.v.].
This is the pocket-sized atlas I obtained at a bookstore in
Yokohama. It should be translated into English. But for now, it is
only available in Japanese. Kanagawa Prefecture is where you will
find Kawasaki, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Misaki, Sagamihara, Hakone, and
Odawara - all of which frequently attract English-speakers
visiting cosmopolitan Tokyo. With GPS devices flooding the
planet, is anyone publishing print atlases anymore?
This is a fascinating site formerly maintained by Steve Schultz,
who no longer resides in Japan. That does not diminish the crucial data
provided by this W-WW site. It describes Japanese pornographic books and
videos in English. This will help you if you land on a Japanese W-WW site
where the only use of English characters is in the linking URLs. The bulk
of this site orbits around music.
Somebody from Europe went and placed all the venues that S.
Schultz mentioned in his Tokyo Trip Report [linked from above] on
a Google™ map. Here it is.
This is an English-language weblog by Yasushi Hamada, who
retired. He was a petroleum geologist working in Shinjuku-ku. He
travels on many train and subway lines in cosmopolitan Tokyo,
not just JR.
This is a railfans' association, similar to C.E.R.A. [c.v.],
headquartered in England, which focuses on activity of the indicated
topic. J.R., municipal, and private railway lines are covered. I have
joined this society. If you are interested in the topic, I recommend
doing also. It costs $45.00 | year. There is a U.S.A. representative
of the society (in Iowa). If you contact me, I will pass along his
address.
Here are the World-Wide Web site[s] which will decipher the
‘hidden code’ known by residents thereof, but not
necessarily by overseas visitors. Navitime is the best. Hyperdia
is Hitachi's foray, which is not as valuable as it used to be.
Jorudan finishes third. Navitime provides navigation related
services for various transportation modes to meet the wide needs
of consumers.
You begin by inputting the station names which you want to
transit in Japan. It notes what you are typing and suggests the
station(s) beginning with those letters. If you are staying at a
hostel in Asakusa, the station name you want is
"ASAKUSA(TOBU/SUBWAY)". Indicate whether the time you
enter is your desired departure or arrival time. Click on the
"SearchDetails" link for more key options; including where
you may optionally include a station or stations through which you
wish to pass en route. This is where you specify the types of
conveyances you want included, such as extra-cost trains like the
"Shinkansen", "Airline", or "Limited
Express"; the number of routing options [up to ten] you would
like; and now having an option which will include, or exclude, JR
trains. The output may be sorted by cost, transfers, or time
elapsed. Hyperdia will let you click through [new browser
windows] to investigate the train's run, the service schedule for a
specific station, and even a Google™ map of the area of the
station. The results will let you know how much it will cost;
how many times you need to transfer (and where); and how much time
will be consumed. This facility has dropped to second place because
in April 2022, it ceased supporting a timetable search. This is one
of those very rare W-WW sites whose facility makes it fun to play
with, even though some of its alternate routings are exasperating.
While doing background search on Hyperdia; I found this other
interactive W-WW site maintained by Jorudan. The concept is the same.
Its output is lengthier and less interactive than Hyperdia, but its
results should be the same. A Japanese-language version is available.
I break out of the frame for you. Compare and contrast the two of
them. Here is a quote from Bob Radlowski of Chicago, submitted
to Josh Noel, then of the Chicago Tribune,
which describes the area:
I have been on some of the
biggest public transportation systems - London, Paris, New York -
but I have never seen a transit system like Tokyo's. Your initial
impression when looking at the transit map is that it's a plate of
spaghetti, but spend a little time with it, and you'll realize what
a thing of beauty it is. Clean, fast, and efficient, you can get
anywhere in a metropolitan area of 30-plus million people in less
than half an hour. It's a reason in itself to visit Tokyo.
Beer Me!™ is a W-WW beer site maintained by Richard
Stueven, who is a brewmaster at the Gottberg Brew Pub in Columbus,
Nebraska. This site is the most complete source of brewery and beer
information available on the Internet.
The concept behind this W-WW site is that beer can be so much
more distinctive than the industrial megabrews excessively
advertised on television. Taste these. Your perception will be
altered (for the better).
If you collect beer coasters, labels, crowns, neon signs,
glasses or steins, bottles, or cans, or are interested in the
history of breweries, join the A.B.A. I am member #1727. The
Association has merged with the East Coast Breweriana Association.
This was formerly the Brewers' Association [link]. The B.A.
has become big enough that it has to lay off people when
its finances wither {oops} now needs multiple W-WW sites
for each wing. This is the wing aimed at people who are not
necessarily homebrewers, but enjoy savoring craft beers, either
on- or off-premise. I continue to encourage you to join the
American Homebrewers' Association to take advantage of the
"A.H.A. Member Deals" program.
This is a WordPress® weblog maintained by Joel and Jeremy. Its
goal is to enhance the community of craft beer enthusiasts so that more
people get to experience great beer and the people who make it. It aims
to be the definitive online resource for locating breweries that craft
beer drinkers love.
This is a weblog of Mark McDermott. It was previously hosted
on Chicagonow before that platform was discontinued.
It orbits around the craft beer scene in metropolitan Chicago.
Depending on your browser's settings, you may be compelled to complete
a captcha before being allowed to view content here.
This is a dynamic W-WW page which currently attempts to denote
which beers are available at both on-premise and off-premise venues
in numerous U.S.A. cities. Alcohol by Volume (abv) levels and prices
for each are annotated. Beers and breweries may be sought. I send you
directly to the Chicago main page. If you register, it allows you to
make tasting notes for each beer you have. You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®, and accept cookies. There is also a forum here.
I love close-ups. Here are some close-ups you would not expect to view.
This site features photographs taken through an optical microscope of some
of the world's most famous beers.
This is the World-Wide Web gateway to Jason & Todd Alström's
network which strives to give beer consumers a voice; provide beer
education; empower consumers to learn, share, and advocate; rally
to support the beer industry; and put the respect back into beer.
It remains semi-independent, having been merged with the corporation
that owns Untappd (compare to ratebeer.com, which
is now fully owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev via
its ZX Ventures Corporation, and may be biased against certain beers,
breweries, and its members who will comment about this, or flood the
service with "Sockpuppet" accounts rating its
“impostor” craft beer brands highly). There is a forum
here to which I am subscribed. It requires JavaScript|ActiveX® on
should you want to register and post.
The fabled publication assets were purchased by John Holl and
Andy Crouch. The magazine was first published in 1979. What
is now available here bolsters its reputation as a trusted and
cherished information source. It is committed to providing engaging
and in-depth articles and interviews covering every aspect of brewing.
I was published here in Summer 1993.
This is a craft beer weblog whose mission is to serve beer.
It does that in a variety of ways: Through partnerships and
collaborations, strategic, and creative work. But its most
visible, and arguably most important service, is through the
stories told. I particularly recommend downloading and
listening to its podcasts. However, it seems to occasionally
express a differing vista due to it not wanting to perturb
a party or organization which might sponsor it.
This is a beer weblog by Jeff Alworth. From a modest
start in 2006, it has been augmented with deeply-reported pieces
and detailed descriptions of beer and brewing techniques, industry
analyses, meditations on culture, discussions of beer's rich history,
and more. It has been cited three times by the North American Guild
of Beer Writers as one of the best blogs on the World-Wide Web.
J. Alworth is also a co-host, with Patrick Emerson, of the Beervana
podcast.
Despite its domain name, this is a W-WW site covering beer,
spirits, and venturing into content not necessarily associated with
wine. There are articles as well featuring travel destinations, but
it should be in this rubric. It also has a podcast.
This gentleman does not want you to know his name. Which of
course, I could absolutely understand. However, it is John Duffy.
{A "Thank You" to Jeff Alworth at Beervana [c.v.]
for the revelation.} He is married, and resides in Dublin. Before
the COVID-19 pandemic, he frequently visited continental Europe,
frequenting brewpubs, taverns, and off-licence shops. This beer
weblog has been online since April 2005. It is "Made fresh
from only four natural ingredients: Beer, opinion, travel, and
unspeakable puns". He has an affiliated blog "Stash
Killer!" in which he drinks beers from his attic.
From the above link, I landed on this beer weblog by Alistair
Reece. He is an expatriot Brit now living in Virginia, U.S.A. He
has been blogging since April 2008.
This is a beer weblog by Ronald Pattinson, who is an
historian studying commercial brewing methods. He is a member of the
British Guild of Beer Writers. He began blogging in June 2007. He
has been delving into the recipe archive of both Dutch and English
breweries (because those have been digitized). I met him when he
visited Chicago in October 2022. He resides in Amsterdam, Holland.
This is a WordPress beerblog by Martin, a Manchester City F.C.
ticket holder. He writes about places, pubs, people, and new music.
He posts very frequently. You will also see him replying on some of
the other beerblogs I list here.
This is a beer weblog by Paul Bailey. He was a member of CAMRA
for 45 years before resigning in 2019. He is married. They live in
Kentish Weald, U.K. They operated an off-licence shop for six years.
He is a beer judge and a homebrewer. He began this weblog in November
2008. I especially appreciate his posts because he also likes to ride
transit (buses & trains) to beerworthy venues. Without trying to
sound rude, I believe they are the same age as me (judging by the
mentions of the transit pass they now possess).
This is a beerblog by Jessica Boak and Ray Bailey. They scribe
especially about beer and pubs. They reside in Bristol, U.K.
This blog was begin in 2007.
This is a beer weblog by Nick C. I have added him to this
bookmark page because he lists his interests as "Pubs 'n'
beer, off-kilter music, and second division {soccer}". He
explores the real ale pubs and craft beer bars of Oxford, U.K.
This is the World-Wide Web site of the legendary Homebrew Digest
E-Mail list. It is a U.S.A.-based 501(c)(3) educational charity
maintained by Pat Babcock & Karl Lutzen. If you prowl its
archives, you can find here one of my first ever E-Mail messages,
sent to here back in July 1994. (When I was using a
Commodore 64 on an Amiga BBS.) I break out of the frame for you.
This is a beer review World-Wide Web site by John Staradumsky. He
lives in Canton, GA. {not Ohio}, a suburb of Atlanta. He has
been reviewing beers since the 20th Century. His site lets you focus
on specific beers, breweries, beer style, etc. I cannot deduce how he
wound up with two domain names for the website.
The Chicago Beer Society has been around for forty years.
In this span, the universe of beer has greatly transformed (and it
may be transforming again); and much of that transformation can be
traced directly to its members. It is an organization for both
homebrewers and beer enthusiasts with events occurring every
month in the metropolitan Chicago area.
Here is the first draft of a wiki-styled page which will
purportedly collate all the frequently asked questions sent to the
Chicago Beer Society [c.v.] E-Mail listserv; so that the same
query does not have to be made again.
This is a World-Wide Web site which began in 2010, and has
gradually expanded into reviews, reporting, and beer-orbiting
advocacy. It offers a weekly E-Mail which you may find intriguing.
I had difficulty determing where to put this link. Yard-Social is
a suburban organization committed to increase awareness of
metropolitan Chicago's transit systems to make it more fun.
It believes sustainable suburbs which maintain their ‘local
community feel’ despite being infested by soulless subdivisions,
chain fast food restaurants, and big box stores in massive parking
lots, are where the future resides. This is its user-compiled
map of beerworthy venues along Metra rail's ten commuter train lines
in northeastern Illinois.
This organization was founded in December 2010. Its mission is to
inform craft beer geeks about the events and locations around the city
and surrounding suburbs. The main beer geek (Nik White) is Black.
However, this blog has been mostly set aside in favor of a podcast,
"Chicago Beer Pass".
Sheffield's is the superb craft beer bar closest to Wrigley
Field. It is @ Sheffield and School Sts. There are three bars. It
has also developed a solid repertory of barbeque cuisine.
Management also operates the Tricycle bar at 1700 N. Damen Ave.
Here is another great music and beer venue in Chicago. It has
at its core an eclectic booking policy which traverses all musical
genrés. It also has a luscious cat named "Peg"
{a Steely Dan [c.v.] reference?}.
FitzGerald's is the Chicago area's most eccentric indoor concert venue.
It is in Berwyn, a west border suburb, at 6615 W. Roosevelt Rd. From
“fat” music; to rhythm & blues; to big band jazz; to touring
national acts: All of them play here.
The Twisted Spoke is a friendly “biker” bar at Grand
and Ogden [501 N. Ogden Av.] in Chicago. It has superb beers as well.
I am drawn to have the “Butch's Beer Special”. It is
presented as the one selection which it feels is unworthy of being
served there {"We carry 52 good beers and one that really sucks.
It's usually best not to ask too many questions like, “What is
it?” What it is is only ____ bucks."}, but you should
not believe that. It has included some great beers from breweries such
as Atwater, Left Hand, Oasis, Summit, Victory, Lakefront, New Belgium,
Anchor, and even Affligem Abbey Ale. If you motor here, I
recommend you try to park on Elizabeth St., which is a one-way
northbound street north of Hubbard, west of Racine, and east of Ogden.
If you take the Blue Line “L”, the closest stop is
Chicago; not Grand (walk south-southwest down Ogden).
If you are on a tight layover, and can visit only one craft
beer bar in Chicago, I recommend Hopleaf. It is at 5148 N. Clark St.,
near Ashland Ave. and Foster Ave. There are three bars. The ones on
the first floor have more draft selections than the one on the
second floor. Belgian-inspired foodstuffs are also available. The
proprietors are Michael Roper and Louise Molnar.
This is a small, quiet bar @ 3135 W. Montrose Ave. Its owners
emigrated from Australia years ago. The aura of it would seemingly
be Australian, but since I've never been there, I cannot be definitive.
It is a very good venue. It is a Phish bar. Its beers on tap
run the spectrum. It will put on the soccer game if requested. (It
does not serve food, but you can bring it in or look at the nearby
restaurants' menus.)
Delilah's, at Lincoln, Diversey, and Racine on Chicago's
north side, is the tavern which is as loony and eclectic as me. It
scores on multiple levels (beer | whisk(e)y | music | movies).
In 2019, it was proclaimed the "Best Whiskey Bar in the
World". Mike Miller is the proprietor. I hope,
but I doubt, that the metropolitan area where you live has a tavern
as enthralling as Delilah's, which has been around for 30
years. (The edifice has been a bar since 1894.)
From the management of ‘The Whistler’ (a cocktail
bar); Sleeping Village, at 3734 W. Belmont Ave. is a bar, concert
venue (350 person capacity) showcasing local, national, and
international talent, and work-space which orbits
around craft beer.
In another glaring gaffe, I left this venue off the list for
way too long. {People could contact me to inform about a
venue which deserves consideration.} It is a store at 3173 N.
Elston Ave. (the triangular corner of Belmont, California, &
Elston) which began as a package shop in 2013. Christopher
Quinn (& Margaret) expanded to include a taproom (20 taps)
in 2017. It features numerous craft beers which do not get much
distribution in metropolitan Chicago. It has a frequent buyer club
you can join which does not require you to download an app to a
mobile telephone. C. Quinn also co-hosts "The Beer
Temple Insiders Roundtable" podcast.
Here is a venue at 2900 W. Belmont Ave (@ Francisco). I think the
reason I left it off this bookmark page was because it didn't need me
to tell you about it. Before it was depicted on a television show, it
was a tavern with an ‘attitude’. Somehow, despite its
kitchen being only 16' × 6', it began creating artisan hamburgers,
and naming them after heavy metal rock bands. It is a venue for the
digital era - you will either love it or loathe it - no in-between.
There is a second Kuma's @ 852 W. Fulton Mkt., a third Kuma's in
Schaumburg, IL., a fourth location in Vernon Hills, IL., and a fifth
location in Indianapolis, IN. A line from its beer menu read
distinctively:
Death to Miller and Budweiser... they
are over-produced and inferior products that prevent passionate
craftsmen from sharing their gifts with all of us.
Here is an intriguing bar on Chicago's south side. The address (960
W. 31st St.) had been a package liquor store for the past quarter-century.
Years ago, Mike and Ed Marszewski rehabbed the rear portion to
include a seating bar. All the brews on tap are solid craftbeers (&
not just Marz's). "Kimski" is taking the next two months on
hiatus. Other purveyors will pop-up in its stead. In 2018,
Chicago magazine proclaimed it "The best bar in
Chicago". The CTA route #62 Archer bus, which has owl service,
is within three blocks of here (walk north-northwest).
This is at 1612 W. Irving Park Road (@ Ashland). It began in
January 2000. It is a Black-owned business. It offers a
curated list of beers both on draft and packaged, as well as
cocktails. It is a dim, quiet venue with no televisions, but it
has free wi-fi (from Astound | RCN, not Xfinity or AT&T).
During daylight hours, it also offers coffee.
This is a bar on the northwest side of Chicago at 6154 N.
Milwaukee Ave. Its foodstuffs are good. It offers a spectrum of
beers on draft at lower than average prices. It has a rooftop
patio. I have been slow to acknowledge the venues west of the
abode which I have visited. In the case of the Garage, the snag
is also that this part of the City of Chicago is served only
by Pace transit, albeit the advanced Pulse bus rapid
transit mode. However, Ventra one, three, & seven-day
passes are now valid on Pace transit routes, which will enable
more patronage to venues similarly located like this.
This tavern, shoehorned into an old manufacturing district of
Chicago [at 1354 W. Wabansia], features good beers and enthralling
live music acts. It is a 2½-block walk north-northwest from the
Throop bus stop on North Ave., east of Elston Ave.
This is the brewpub at which everybody in Chicago was gawking
awaiting its opening back in 2010. It is located at 2323 N.
Milwaukee Ave.; within a two-block walk from the Blue Line
“L”'s California station. Its production
brewery is at 3340 N. Kedzie Ave. Revolution's beers were exported
to Japan (including venues where I have been [c.v.]).
This Chicago production brewery is the undertaking of Tracy
and Doug Hurst. It is dedicated to brewing lagers, and to a lesser
extent, other Germanic styles, which have been under-represented in
the craft beer movement. (Ales can be brewed and released quicker,
which can be more important to the finances of the craft brewery.) I
love its Dynamo Copper Lager (which is now a winter seasonal). It is
also the brewery producing Seipp's Extra Pale Pre-prohibition Pilsner.
The brewery is at 3057 N. Rockwell St. in Chicago. It is one
of the very few breweries willing to comment publicly when it
seemingly loses a tap handle at a venue or shelf space at a package
store due to some behind-the-scenes machination (such as a distributor
informing a venue if it wants a “whale” beer it handles
[Let's call it “Bourbon County”.], it should replace a
{Metropolitan} tap handle or shelf space with another
non-“whale” beer it handles [Let's call it “Bud Light
Olive Seltzer”.]). This is “illegal” in Illinois (and
pretty much every other U.S. state), but no agency ever
enforces this law.
This is a brewery which has both a taproom and a packaging
location. Its brewmaster is John Laffler. The taproom, dubbed
"The Mousetrap", is at 1460 N. Kingsbury Ave. It is
strictly walk-ins, and allows patrons to bring in food from outside
venues. The packaging location is further west at 3925 W.
Dickens Ave. However, its store there is closed indefinately.
Here is a brewery with an amazing story. Its proprietors, Beejay
Oslon and Gerrit Lewis, met while working at a Chicago package liquor
store. They went to Belgium and worked at the De Struise Brewery. When
they returned to Chicago, U.S.A., they formulated a business plan. But
it ultimately hinged on a Kickstarter project. It raised its goal. Its
main production brewery is at 3912 W. McLean Ave. (Near Pulaski and
Armitage).
This brewery brews a spectrum of beers, with emphasis on sour
beers and beers deliberately infected with brettanomyces. It will
open a venue in Avondale any day now at 3076 N. Milwaukee Ave.
This is a brewery which has taken up a spot in an
under-represented part of Chicago for breweries and beer bars. It is
at 6186 N. Northwest Hwy. (@ Sayre Ave.) Getting there on transit is
straight-forward, but getting back from there after 21:00 hours shall
involve a walk toward Harlem Ave., and if later, to the Harlem Blue
Line “L” station.
This brewery finally got a regular World-Wide Web page. (I am not
on Facebook [a|k|a "Dungheap"], and you
could not give me money to make me sign up for
Facebook.) Its production brewery is at 2010 W.
Balmoral Ave. in the Malt Row Chicago [c.v.] neighborhood. It sold
its original tap room on N. Lincoln Ave. to the Hop Butcher for
the World Brwy.
This is a brewery which was founded in 2012. Its taproom @ 2024
W. Balmoral Ave. in Chicago is next door to Half Acre's brewery. Its
beers originally had snarky brand names. My favorite beer from it is
God Damn Pigeon Porter. Similar to Metropolitan [c.v.], it is not
a member of the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild.
Dovetail is a brewery that is very close to the Brown Line
“L”'s Irving Park station, as well as Begyle Brwg. [c.v.]
Its goal is to produce beer of the highest quality similar to the
level of craftsmanship found in fine woodworking. It merges
continental European styles and techniques with American creativity
to produce the kind of beers found in small, family-run breweries
in Europe. Dovetail's reputation has been spreading world-wide.
Here is a community supported brewery with a tap room.
It wanted to use the name "Argyle", but was
delivered a “cease and desist” order from Japan's
Kirin Brewery conglomerate citing its use as a wine
brand it was offering (It is a winery in Oregon. Do people know
it is actually owned by Kirin?).
This is on the southeast corner of Randolph and Halsted Sts.
near Greektown in central Chicago. Peter Crawley is its
director of fermentation. It has a frequent drinker program
called ‘Local 737’ It is the home for Chicago's
Drinking and Writing Theater. The distributing brewery is
in Bridgman, MI.
Here is the W-WW site of one of my favorite regional breweries.
This is the second-oldest brewery still operating in the U.S.A.
It is now owned by a Canadian corporation which has introduced some
intriguing ‘bridge’ beers to its house brands [Huber Bock,
Rhinelander]. Many of its beers can be found at Trader Joe's markets.
There is also a distillery and a winery in Monroe. WI. This page also
has data about its brewery and taproom in Calgary, Alberta.
My favorite Milwaukee brewery is Russ and Jim Klisch's Lakefront
Brwy. I especially like Eastside Dark. Its brewery tour is
well-acclaimed. It is located on Commerce St., northeast of downtown.
You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®.
The August Schell Brewing Company has been operating in New Ulm,
MN. since 1860. I toured there in 2010. It brews some of the
finest beers in the entire U.S.A. It is the prime example why small,
regional breweries which also devote part of their production
capacities to "contract beers" must not be allowed to go
out of business. I will do everything I can to ensure that this does
not happen. But it no longer distributes to Chicago. (It is
available in central Illinois.)
This is the long name of the Schlafly Brewpub, St. Louis' largest
American-owned brewery. When I visit St. Louis, I wind up spending
some time at one of its two locations (The brewpub near downtown, or
the Bottleworks in Maplewood.). I love its beers; I agree with
most of the viewpoints expressed by Tom Schlafly; and this World-Wide
Web site regularly makes me smile and chuckle.
This has nothing to do with a classic automobile. The Toronado is a
diminutive tavern in San Francisco, CA. (in the Haight - on Haight St.)
Latitude: -122.43014 N; Longitude: 37.77215 W. I finally got back there
again in January 2016.
This is a World-Wide Web site featuring the funniest, cutest, and
some very amazing cat pictures. If you opt to register, you may also
rate the pictures.
Here's a good W-WW site with lots of information and resources
for cat lovers. You can even obtain a semi-anonymous E-Mail account
ending in "@i-love-cats.com" (which would probably
be bounced by Barracuda).
Quimby's is Chicago's most comprehensive zine store. Many of the
zines which I read are obtained here. It mails zines within the U.S.A.
(International postage rates are now exorbitant.)
These are the “Berne Convention purveyors” to which I
refer on my "Adult-Oriented" bookmark page. Here is an
organization which manages to scarf up rare, out-of-print, and
lost ‘cult’ videos on DVD. Its prices are low.
Cinefear is Keith J. Crocker's video service, orbiting around
1960s and 1970s horror and exploitation movies, both from the
U.S.A. and internationally. "Exploitation Journal"
was dedicated to the serious study of it. Issues of it are being
presented @ cinefear.blogspot.com. Keith J.'s most
recent movie was "Blitzkrieg: Escape From Stalag 69".
From browsing a movie weblog, this is a purveyor which still
seems to be in business. It is located in Silver Spring, MD. It also
offers posters, stills, lobby cards (U.S. and Mexican), and celebrity
posters and photographs. Movies are $12.00 each for full packaging,
or $10.00 for the bare DVD-R.
Video Screams is a members only archival and transfer service
offering rare, hard-to-find, and out-of-print films from all
over the globe. It specializes in obscure horror, gore, sci-fi,
schlock, and just plain bizarre movies, on both videocassette and
DVD. Collectable books, posters, and pressbooks are also
available. If you noticed; DMCA actions have caused a clutch of
these purveyors to cease business. But very few of the movies they
offered were actually in a true release by the property rights
holder. {These purveyors offered movies on demand. Now the
majors offer movies on demand for the features on which they
feel they would lose money putting out as a DVD or Blu-Ray®.
Guess who created the market for their movies on demand?}
This is the organization which defends illustrators of comic
books (or graphic novels) and the stores which sell them. Some
judges and juries have convicted comic book store owners for
selling a comic book labelled for "adults only" to an
adult.(!) More recently, individuals have been indicted for
possessing illustrations (hand-drawn or computer-generated) of
an ‘underage’ person in a sexual situation. If
the idea is to prohibit objects which can be used to try to
convince a real-life ‘underage’ person to commit a lewd
act, it would seem you also need to restrict or criminalize
chocolate, soda, bubble gum, and ice cream. ("Hey little
girl, want some candy?") Is barring illustrations really
effective? I can't envision Hershey, Nestlé, Coca-Cola,
and Pepsi allowing their products to be so circumscribed.
{Oops. The epidemic of obesity and diabetes in the U.S.A.
is having an effect on the sales and marketing of sugar-sweetened
beverages, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi, especially to juveniles.
Many authorities are imposing a tax, or considering one, on those
beverages. Consumer Reports [c.v.] is on record that weaning
people off sugar-sweetened beverages will dictate an effort similar
to that used to minimize cigarette consumption.}
This is Steven Puchalski's "Shock Cinema"
website. "Shock Cinema" is a magazine, published
twice a year, which reviews some of the most bizarre, illusive films
ever made. It is a superb read. I recommend subscribing to it ($30
for four issues).
Screem Magazine is a print magazine orbiting around horror
movies, although it sways into other genrés. Darryl
Mayeski is the editor. I subscribe to this magazine, and can
recommend you doing so. ($40 for four issues)
"Cashiers du Cinemart" is a movie review
zine published by Mike White. His most recent book, "Short Takes:
Mad Movies with the L. A. Connection", is available
from BearManor Media. Mike has restarted the CduC zine. View articles
from prior issues here. Mike has additional weblogs orbiting around
topics other than movies and music.
This is a podcast hosted by the above-mentioned Mike White. I have
linked to Mike's CduC W-WW page for years, but he never mentioned
this W-WW site there. TPB is a comprehensive W-WW site exploring
movies. The podcasts (some of which are four hours long) are
interviews of people involved with that week's movie, or in the case
of vintage movies, those who re-introduced people to them.
I had difficulty determining where to place this link. I
elected to choose here because it links to podcasts in all
genrés, not merely craft beer, which is what I have been
downloading. Additional facilities are available if you
register here. I am registered here. But it seems I need to
register with iTunes® if I want to rate and report on
the podcasts to which I listen. I puzzle whether I want to
trust Apple® with my identifying data after learning about
their method of operations with a VPN [c.v.]. You need to turn
on JavaScript|ActiveX® to fully utilize this site.
Cinema Treasures is the world's largest guide to movie theaters.
It is passionate about movie theaters, and going to the movies. It
strives to be a comprehensive guide to movie theaters. This includes
current theaters, and countless numbers of defunct theaters,
including those which at some point in their life showed explicit
erotica. (You may be surprised how many of them did.) It has
been on-line since 2000. However, the "news" section
has not effectively been updated since September 2017.
This is a weblog by Dave B. He is a ‘film geek’. His
mission was to view and report on 2,500 movies on DVD. He began in
2010, and finally finished in November 2018! He resumed reporting
in March 2019. He views all genrés, including some which
would go on my adult bookmark page. [Some images may be NSFW.] He
is a co-host of two movie podcasts.
This is Heather Drain's World-Wide Web site. She is a writer
who flexes between the worlds of esoterica film, wild music,
heart-born words, and prose that is dark, rich, quirky, and often
undefinable. In the nonfiction realm, her work has appeared on
the print and digital pages of Dangerous Minds, Diabolique, Video
Watchdog, Art Decades, Rue Morgue, etc. She has also been a guest
on a number of podcasts, including the Projection Booth [c.v.].
While looking up data on a “B”-movie, I landed on this
weblog page. Our bloggess is a transgendered Canadian female residing
in Toronto, ONT. She has reviewed quite a number of movies, in a
manner similar to that of DVD Infatuation [c.v.]. But this is
only part of the story. Not including Instagram® and | or
Flickr®, she follows one hundred and fifty-seven other movie
weblogs. {Click through to her profile to view them.}
This is a movie weblog with a roster of persons, including Greg
Goodsell, reviewing contemporary DVD (and BluRay®) releases of
previously-issued movies. The reviews are thorough.
This is a movie weblog by somebody who grew up in the Toledo,
OH. area in the 1970s. It is mainly a blog about interesting films
through the years with some background information about them.
While I went to indoor theaters [“hardtops”] looking for
erotic presentations, he went to a bunch of drive-ins in both
Toledo and Detroit, MI., mainly in the early 1980s, and saw just
about anything. He has enriched his blog posts with newspaper
listings showing where the movies played. He takes breaks from
here to concentrate on other social media W-WW sites. However, he
has not made a blog post since August 2022.
Many movies on DVD have been released and re-released by a
number of producers with a variance of how it was reproduced.
This key World-Wide Web site enables a poster to display the
difference between two releases. You may post by file upload
or by URL.
This is a useful W-WW site with numerous files of subtitles of
movies and television shows in a spectrum of languages which can be
loaded into your media player.
This W-WW site has a dual orbit. It promotes a twice-annual movie
and memorabilia exposition by Ken & Pam Kish, in
Strongsville, OH. [a suburb of Cleveland]; of which I have attended a
bunch, and always had an intriguing experience. There will be another
Wasteland exposition on 29, 30 September, & 1 October 2023. Its
other orbit is the sales of DVDs, posters, and trading cards of
movies, at prices lower than other purveyors.
This is where Jon Kitley expounds on horror movies. He has gotten
quite deep into this. He had a featured article about him in the
"Best of Chicago 2021" issue of the Chicago Reader.
He is a staff writer for "HorrorHound" magazine. He
won a Rondo Award for that. His latest book is
"Discover The Horror". He seeks to educate, expand,
and entertain his browsers' knowledge of the horror genré. He
lives in Aurora, IL. He also works the “B”-movie
exposition circuit. This page has a frame.
Here is a World-Wide Web site which requests some tolerance
from you. It contains information about known scenes from
movies, television series, and newsreels with ‘underage’
actors and actresses that may now be considered offensive or
unacceptable. There are no images or videos hereupon. The
information is collated from IMDb, Wikipedia, Children in Cinema,
Youth in Cinema, and Children in Media.
I should not have to explain too much about this troupe. So I won't.
This World-Wide Web site is comprehensive, accurate, and
includes the dead parrotloony.
Have I mentioned I am the chairperson of the Chicago chapter of the
"Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things"?
This is a weblog by Cory Doctorow. He is a science fiction
author, activist, and journalist. He also has a presence at
craphound.com. His latest book is RED TEAM BLUES, a
technothriller about finance crime; his latest nonfiction book is
CHOKEPOINT CAPITALISM (with Rebecca Giblin), about creative labor
markets and monopoly. He is the author of the international young adult
LITTLE BROTHER series. He is also the author HOW TO DESTROY
SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, nonfiction about conspiracies and monopolies;
and of RADICALIZED and WALKAWAY, science fiction for adults, a young
adult graphic novel called IN REAL LIFE; and other YA novels like
PIRATE CINEMA. His first picture book was POESY THE MONSTER SLAYER
(Aug. 2020). His next novel is THE LOST CAUSE (November 2023). His next
nonfiction book is THE INTERNET CON (September 2023), a nonfiction book
from Verso about monopoly and radical interoperability. He works for
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research
Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open
University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North
Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the
U.K. Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, he now lives
in Los Angeles, CA. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science
Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In 2022, he earned the Sir Arthur
Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Awardee for lifetime achievement.
This is a new multi-faceted weblog by Tony Forder. When Ale
Street News quit publication in 2019 after its advertisers went
away, T. Forder had other interests into which he could delve. He
presents them here. The weblog strives to be a “virtual”
café to relax and inspire you with art therapy.
This is a weblog by Skip, who is an atheist in Madison, WI.
He is married, and they have two cats. He began blogging in
September 2003, and has been consistent throughout all these years.
The entries touch on several interests which I share.
This is an absolutely comprehensive clearinghouse of the animated
television show "The Simpsons". This site has guides,
news, and information. It is where to head if you have any queries.
This is the on-line component of the eclectic, entertaining, and
informational print magazine "Vice". I was unsure if
it should be here, or on an adult bookmark page. A rubric here is
NSFW, but the majority of the material places it on this page.
The Music Box Theatre on Chicago's north side is one which is not
afraid to show films which have bypassed the Motion Picture Association
of America's rating system. With the increasing concentration of
ownership of movie theatres by large corporate entities, theatres like
the Music Box are very important.
Mr. Lloyd Kaufman, the President of Troma, has been involved
in filmmaking-on-the-cheap for over forty years. Check this W-WW
site regularly for new releases and specials. Net
Neutrality is again an issue for the Internet; but the battle
has also encountered a threat from mega-entertainment media
conglomerates like Sony, Disney, and Universal to enact
legislation in the U.S.A. and enact secret treaties
in other countries, which would effectively lock down creative
endeavors in the visual arts solely to the output from these
mega-entertainment media conglomerates. {There would be
‘cease and desist’ and Internet takedown orders if one
of the megas felt an independent media project infringed on its
copyright. The independent media project's producer would have to
spend more of its time and its limited funds defending itself in
a courtroom than in making and presenting the media. So the
independent media would not be released, and the megas would
retain their 99% share of the market, which is their main intent.
An example: In 1999, Lloyd was interviewed on MTV News.
In 2019, Troma uploaded the segment to its own YouTube®
channel. The owner of MTV, Viacom®, reacted to this by having
Troma's entire YouTube® channel taken offline!}
Frankly, copyrights need to expire at some point. They have been
manipulated into eternal cash cows for entities only
tangentially responsible for them, not the original individual(s)
who created them.
This is a superb W-WW site which was personally recommended to me
one Saturday evening at the Twisted Spoke. It is a repository of
posters and lobby cards for a vast spectrum of motion pictures. It
has special sections for selected movies and performers.
JavaScript|ActiveX® is needed if you wish to use the 'Search'
function.
Live Journal was dumped back in 2007 for
capitulating to a gang of vigilantés; effectively turning a cold
shoulder to free expression on the World-Wide Web. The underlying
reason: The “bean-counters” hoping for a buyout of the
corporation figured whomever took over would not be able to place
advertisements on Live Journal pages where a
weblogger expressed controversial viewpoints. It
“solved” the problem by "permanently
suspending" the webloggers expressing those controversial
viewpoints. (Having a Paid or Permanent Account did not save them.
If anything; since Live Journal knows it will never
get another dollar from a Permanent Account holder, it has every
incentive to find an excuse to get rid of that account.) This
is Insane Journal, another weblog service utilizing the Xanga
interactive free source software. "Squeaky", the major
domo behind Insane Journal, has gone on record that he will only
remove content from a person's weblog if he is presented with a
genuine order from a legal entity.
This has good technical information on setting up your computer
(regardless of operating system) to use the software. The links along
the left side of the screen contain additional information.
Hash House Harriers are people who compete in a foot rally, and whom
afterward consume lots of beer and comeraderie. They are "The
drinking club with a running problem."
I have modified all of my links to proxy judges and
environmental checkers with the href.li [c.v.] link
anonymizer referrer. This will allow you to click on these
URLs and not be declassed in the result by the HTTP_REFERER
{sic} variable. All the proxy judges to which I link
are version 2.35. AnonyLevel 1 is the most secure. What is
most important is whether your actual Internet Protocol
[I. P.] Address is displayed anywhere on
the output screen. If you know of any more version 2.35
proxy judges, please E-Mail me. This is a
numeric I. P. Address judge. Text has been
removed. There are no more CoDeeN | PlanetLab proxies.
In all modern browsers, the HTTP_DNT [Do Not Track]
variable, when implemented, lowers a Level 1 or Level 2
[“elite”] proxy into Level 3 or Level 4. If you
investigate "about:config", you can toggle
“noscript.doNotTrack.enabled” to false to
re-raise your level. There is a browser variable,
HTTP_UPGRADE_INSECURE_REQUESTS, which appears to be a solid
privacy measure, but it will lower an “elite” proxy
into Level 3 or Level 4; and I cannot deduce how you could
reset this value. Suffice that as long as your I. P.
Address does not appear on the result page when you
test your proxy - it is a servicable proxy. You need
check your proxy against only one of these judges.
Due to the Tor Project [c.v.], browser-based anonymous
proxies now stay active much longer than they did
previously. If you search for proxy judges via
Google™, clicking on "Cached" on the
result screen will show you the information about the bot(s)
Google™ uses to spider the World-Wide Web. [white on
pale blue] [pops.midi.co.jp]
This URL did not resolve numerically. The CGI code which was used
to create these proxy judges was scribed by someone in Japan. Proxy
judges consume a goodly amount of CPU time on a server. If a series of
judge requests occur, it slows the response time for other W-WW pages
hosted thereupon. This is another reason webhosts prohibit them.
[white on pale blue]
This is an older proxy judge. I opt to present it here because
of the paucity of v2.35 proxy judges. It displays the information you
need to know about your I. P. address. [white on black]
I have added environment checkers here. All are version 1.04, and
black on white. The presumption is that they are just as accurate as
determining whether you are anonymous as a cgi-bin proxy judge, but are
not as intensive a use of CPU time on a host server.
Anonym.to began interjecting a Google™ URL into its
anonymizer; such that it would appear Google™ was the referrer.
I have replaced it with href.li, which does not. This is an
interstitial screen which is useful when you want to visit, or send
traffic to, a World-Wide Web site which you do not want the site
to know from where it was linked. It can be used dynamically by
prefacing the "http://" in the destination URL [and you
must include the destination URL's "http://" in your
text] with "href.li/?".
This was formerly Samair.ru. It was restored because its webmaster
elected to no longer hold proxies hostage. You need to turn on
JavaScript|ActiveX® to view the port numbers of the proxies. I
have resorted the order of the W-WW sites which offer lists of
anonymous proxies. A WHOIS link for each proxy is also included. Why should you configure an anonymous proxy in your W-WW browser? A vocal minority always claims that you must be doing something
“illegal” if you prefer to remain anonymous. There will
always be those who abuse certain privileges or liberties, but those
few cannot be allowed to ruin an entitlement for the overwhelming
percentage of people who do not abuse it. There are many factors
why privacy is important. First: There are repressive governments that
forbid access to certain sites, censor the World-Wide Web, and then
monitor users who show interest in particular topics. Second: There are
people who want to tell the truth without fear of repercussion, such as
corporate whistle-blowers and bloggers. Third: There are intelligence
needs, in both corporate and government sectors. Fourth: An on-line
stalker could pinpoint the precise community where his | her prey
resides by deciphering that user's I. P. Address. (Many
internet service providers in the U.S.A., in particular cable television
corporations, put their host server's city and state in the
REMOTE_HOST variable. Many broadband internet users never change
their I. P. Address, usually because they do not know
how.) Finally: We live in an age where our personal and
private data, including names, identity characteristics, telephone
numbers, dates of birth, credit reports, buying habits, demographics,
and surfing tendencies are traded like commodities. When I
want to let a W-WW site know who and from where I am, I disengage the
anonymous proxy. Otherwise, it is not entitled to that information.
This is the first page of the NewNet Time Group's HTTP proxies. It may
remain affiliated with Samair.ru. They are in order of the most recently
checked. A reasonable guess is made of its country of location (which is
not always accurate). You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®.
This is the proxy list portion of an anonymity W-WW site. You can
search for proxies on a spectrum of variables. You need to turn on
JavaScript|ActiveX®.
I found this W-WW proxy site through Dmoz.org. It is sorted by
latency, and has a dynamic function which you can use to refine your
proxy selection. A column identifies if the proxy supports TLS. It is
available in six languages. Our webmaster is still trying to
get you to purchase a private proxy list from him. But he is
being more low-key about it. First of all: It is wrong to
try and charge for something which is available elsewhere for free.
Secondly: It is difficult to remain anonymous when purchasing
something on-line. If you actually used Paypal™
to pay for a list of proxies, when a governmental agency, or private
organization subpoenas Paypal™, it will demand
the credit card numbers associated with the accounts.
Paypal™ will provide that to it. Credit
card numbers lead directly to your front door. So much for
“anonymity”.
This is a Japanese World-Wide Web site which tests a bunch of
proxies every hour. Its hazard is it doesn't let you know in which
country each proxy is hosted. It is one matter to have a proxy
from a specific country. However, if the proxy in that country is
registered to (for example) an elementary or middle school;
or the R.I.A.A. or M.P.A.A. [these are referred to as
"honeypot" proxies]; you will still be filtered from some
W-WW sites, and monitored wherever you surf. I would discard that
proxy and test the next one on the list.
This is a collator of proxies which I wrote down in a text file
and then forget to look at later. There are numerous options for
obtaining browser-based proxy servers here. I send you to the
anonymous free proxy wing. Our webmaster also offers a private
proxy list for sale, but I discommend that. You need to turn on
JavaScript|ActiveX®.
If you are interested in a VPN, this World-Wide Web site displays
the most frequently selected providers. It is searchable on several
variables. The most significant aspect to selecting a VPN is in
which country is it hosted; considering how difficult it is for
an agency to compel the VPN provider to release identifing information
about a user. Because, if you use a credit card to obtain a VPN, that
VPN would have to provide your identification to the inquiring
operation. So a VPN is not entirely anonymous. Apple iOS
users take notice: In late May 2022, M. Horowitz [c.v.] published a
report that Apple iOS leaks data outside the VPN tunnel. He
reported it to Apple beforehand, but got no response. The report was
picked up by Ars Technica on 17 August 2022 and went viral.
Only then did Apple reply to M. Horowitz. It said its OS is
"Performing as expected". M. Horowitz, and at least
three VPN providers (including Proton [c.v.]) feel this is not fully
protecting its users. VPN providers are in a rough spot. If they
go public with this, they may lose customers to VPN providers
that say nothing. Apple is too powerful for
nearly anybody to compel it to do something it does not want to do.
M. Horowitz states, and I can concur with this, that
if you are running on Apple iOS, you should not bother with a VPN.
This is a combination VPN provider and World-Wide Web blog
which delves into the deeper matter of a VPN. It recognizes that
a VPN provider very frequently overstates what it does in order
to sell its service to non-technical Internet surfers. With an
increasing number of VPN providers being invested in (if not
outright bought) by vertically integrated corporations seeking to
enrich their income by obtaining and monetizing whatever data they
can harvest from their users, this W-WW site is significant.
This is a World-Wide Web browser add-on from the Electronic
Frontier Foundation [c.v.]. It learns to block invisible third-party
trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look
at. It does not block an advert unless it happens to be tracking
you. It is an algorithmic tracker blocker: It defines what
“tracking” looks like, and then blocks or restricts domains
that it observes tracking in the wild. What is and isn't considered a
tracker is entirely based on how a specific domain acts, not on human
judgment. It is available in eight languages (including Chinese).
This is a World-Wide Web site in which the janitor expounds
on how to reclaim your privacy (both online and in the real
world), stop censorship, and maintain online security. As he
astutely scribes, "It is no conspiracy that big tech
companies are spying on us and gathering as much data as
possible to profit from us in several ways."
Here is a comprehensive World-Wide Web site with detail on
how to maintain a level of privacy on the Internet. The digest
is: Avoid W-WW privacy services (including VPN providers)
hosted in the ‘Fourteen Eyes’ countries: Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, the United States of America, United Kingdom,
Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway,
Spain, and Sweden. While laws exist prohibiting each country
from spying on its own residents, these countries swap
information amongst themselves - i.e.: If the U.S.A. wants to
investigate a U.S. resident, it remits the name of that person
to the surveillence agency of one of the other thirteen countries,
utilizing the magic passphrase
"terrorist", "drug dealer", "child
abuser", or "copyright violator". The other
country does the spying, because there is no law protecting you
from that. The U.S.A. subsequently gets the data. Some
people feel the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is
under siege. It is the Fourth Amendment dying by a
thousand cuts with any number of non-U.S. governmental agencies
and corporations achieving the ‘unreasonable’ searches.
This is a World-Wide Web site by Shimon Brathwaite (who is
now likely being monitored 24/7/365 for making this information
public) explaining that the spying program dates back to 1943
(World War II). It has modified since then to decrypt intelligence
from the U.S.S.R. and subsequently identify genuine threats to
nations. The snag which then could arise is that you will be
considered a genuine threat to a nation. To be earnest, the more
you delve into the function of a VPN, the higher the possibility
that you do not want to have one. The surveillance alliance
is concentrating on smartphones, because they come
from the phone manufacturer with the backdoors already built-in.
This World-Wide Web site has modified to provide users with
information and services relating to Internet anonymity. This
encompasses free online anonymizers | proxy service, as well as
Virtual Privacy Network (VPN) providers.
Here is an excellent site giving specific, detailed information (in
two URLs) on how to make yourself less visible to World-Wide Web sites,
Usenet newsgroups, and E-Mail address harvesters, while still browsing,
lurking, and contributing. The digest version: Disable both Java
and JavaScript|ActiveX®. While Java is practically dead,
disabling JavaScript|ActiveX® will break most W-WW
sites. The consequence is installing a Firefox add-on that can
turn it on and off for those W-WW sites.
The Tor Project is free software, and an open network that
helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that
threatens personal freedom and privacy, amongst other things.
It is free and open source. It works only with the
Firefox W-WW browser because other browsers are not open
source, and thus, could hide some monitoring code within.
The situation with WikiLeaks [c.v.] shows that the actual
censors on the World-Wide Web are not merely governments, but
corporations (server hosts and payment processing
services).
I now include PHP and Glype proxies. This is a World-Wide Web
page which collates current W-WW based proxies. The output can be
further refined by the type of proxy, its host country, et cetera.
These proxies bypass most W-WW filters which attempt to keep
you from accessing any number of W-WW sites which somebody deems
“non-essential”.
I elect to specifically break out a number of them here. This
is Hidester. It also provides a list of browser-based anonymous
proxies if you back parse.
This is SSL Secure Proxy. It offers additional hosts and
locations from where you can appear to be surfing. It is effective
for dealing with downloads from 1Fichier.com, which
imposes a waiting period on an I. P. Address that
is not from a paid account.
This is 4everproxy. It offers additional hosts and locations
from where you can appear to be surfing. It is also effective
for dealing with downloads from 1Fichier.com.
You don't need a fancy HTML (HyperText Markup Language) suite to
write HTML. This is where I learned HTML. The instructions are
available in twenty-four languages. All my pages are maintained using
regular, old "WordPad®", and utilize the commands
included here.
Here is a Wikipedia page describing W-WW colors. It includes charts
of X11 and “web-safe” colors, and a depiction how
some of these colors differ in the CSS color scheme.
If you do not need a nearly-infinite color selection, this URL
illustrates the 390 non-dithering colors which adhere to HTML in
their hexadecimal codes. A link to a more expansive color chart is
also present here.
This is a dynamic color selection World-Wide Web site. It is
comprehensive, including palette generators, color pickers, color
charts, and color names. The sliding scale on the right-center can
be used to limit the colors being presented. It also links to
other W-WW sites which have royalty free stock photographs.
You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®. It was designed by
Dixon & Moe.
W3 Schools is a compendium of values and commands which can be used
in HTML and CSS World-Wide Web pages. This sends you to the main page
for colors. Back-parse for more computer languages.
These three URLs were found in moonsliver's Insane Journal [c.v.].
This is an interactive page (requires JavaScript|ActiveX® on) which
outputs the color value (a 216-color webmaster's palette) in both RGB
and hexidecimal. There are four frames on this page.
This is a weblog and forum where designers, both on-line and off,
experiment and present color tableus and palettes. It strives to be a
resource that monitors and influences color trends.
This W-WW site helps one compose a particular color scheme; with
five base sets comparing and contrasting ‘warm’, and
‘cold’ colors. A drop-down box allows for schemes for
infrequent human vision ailments [e.g.: protanopy].
This site has three, well-thought-out frames. This allows you to
interactively test out text, background, and link colors. You need
to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®.
Pandora is a leading music and podcast discovery platform,
providing a highly-personalized listening experience to approximately
70 million users each month. I am registered as a free member. It is
a subsidiary of Sirius XM Holdings Inc.
Here is a World-Wide Web site which collates over a thousand
free on-line radio stations. You can search on a spectrum
of variables, including by region, country, or radio format. As
it states, its fast and convenient on-line player will open up
the world of radio broadcasting. There is no need to install
special software or pay for the access. You may also register
for it should you want to save your favorite stations. I am
registered here. I send you to the page with its genrés
annotated. I apologize; but there are just too many
stations worth listening to for me to scribe here. What I now
recommend you doing when you land here is to choose a genré,
then a station which lists its playlist, and listen to it for
awhile. When a song you enjoy, but which you have not heard in
{whenever} plays, click on its title in the lower frame.
This will display all the stations world-wide which have played
this song. Click on a station listed there to discern what
else it plays. This could become your next favorite station. You
need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX® to fully utilize this site.
WFMU has a bunch of solid music programs, and some have
corollary television and | or movie side projects. I have broken
out this URL from the above link so you may more precisely link
to a certain program being broadcast on WFMU.
This is a music weblog by Tom G. He is another person who
deejays on ‘Boss Radio 66’. He has eclectic tastes
in music. He tries to link to them here. I subscribe to this
weblog. I was derelict in not including him on this bookmark page.
This is a World-Wide Web site collating a significant number of
recording artists, and playing music associated with them,
without commercial interruption. I discovered it via a
search for John Coltrane. It is provided by the Uber Media Group.
I have installed 1 GB Fiber Broadband Internet here at the
abode, and have set up a free account at Pandora® [c.v.].
There are many outlets doing a better job at broadcasting
music than terrestrial stations. I have excepted WXRT because I do
want to occasionally hear new music. But I do not listen to it all
that much either. [N.B.: Nobody asked me, but I certainly noticed
how similar the Audacy logo is to that of {now-defunct?}
Amherst Records.]
This is a World-Wide Web site mostly serving broadcasters of
radio stations, both terrestrial and Internet-based. What may be
of interest to the radio listener are the posts of Sean Ross. He
delves into which songs that were hits now hardly receive any
airplay, and what terrestrial radio stations should do in the wake
of automated and now Artificial Intelligence - directed broadcast
outlets.
This is another media W-WW site with insights about terrestrial
radio by Fred & Paul Jacobs. Fred J. is the person most
responsible for the Classic Rock format.
Walter Becker & Donald Fagen were musical genii. There was
no musical genré they could not succinctly assuage. They
finally earned both the acknowledgment of their peers in 2000 by
being elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and winning four
Grammy® Awards for "Two Against Nature".
This is Jim McKay's original Steely Dan fan internet resource.
It was founded in 1993. A popular venue for Steely Dan fans to chat
is in here, linked from the ‘bluebook’ rubric. It is a
member of the Steely Dan Webring.
The Jazz Institute of Chicago was founded in 1969 by a small band
of jazz fans, writers, club owners, and musicians who came together
to preserve its historical roots in Chicago. The core belief of the
organization is all forms of the music should be equally represented
in whatever it does. It presents jazz throughout the year in a
spectrum of venues. Its prestige event is the Chicago Jazz
Festival, held in Millennium Park in downtown Chicago around the
beginning of September each year. I am a member of this organization,
and I can recommend it to you even if you are not in metropolitan Chicago.
This is a W-WW site with a peculiar shortened domain name.
It orbits around jazz music on all formats. It includes scores of
musicians and record labels. It has been online since July 2001.
It has a "GNU Free Documentation License".
This site was conceived for fans of the Grateful Dead. Registration
is recommended to post or respond. You need to turn on
JavaScript|ActiveX® to fully utilize this site.
This is a weblog which seeks to identify and illuminate live Grateful
Dead (and band members' side projects) shows that are unknown or poorly
documented. Its webmaster | janitor, Corry342, attended his first Dead
show on 2 July 1967 (@ El Camino Park; Palo Alto, CA.).
This is another weblog orbiting in tandem with Corry342's weblog [c.v.].
In combination, and due to fascinating remembrances of commenters,
substantial information about Grateful Dead concerts have been provided
after years of stagnating in the ozone {or another hazy substance}.
Here is another Grateful Dead weblog I finally discovered. While
new blog posts are scant, there are informative comments being made
on posts going back six years.
This World-Wide Web site, by David Dodd, annotates Grateful Dead lyrics
(their originals only). The site provides links for words or phrases which
might benefit from some elucidation, without attempting to give definitive
“interpretations”. There are also links to other thematic essays.
The site has been frozen in place since late June 2007.
You (and I) can spend entire days following the links from the
WFMU Rock & Soul Ichiban blog [c.v.]. For somebody who
had a quote from Frank Zappa on my profile at a sexpositive World-Wide
Web site, to not have a Frank Zappa link here was very derelict.
Fortunately, I landed on this W-WW site. Information Is Not
Knowledge is a comprehensive W-WW site. It encompasses all of
Frank's record career. I splice this in here from an interview
of Frank by Bill Milkowski, from November 1981.
[The preceding question was whether
there was a national shift toward the right, to which Frank
answered it was a national shift toward nowhere. It was toward fake
security.(!)] "Is this a phenomenon that you've
noticed taking hold within the past few years?" Frank:
"This year it's really taken a nose dive, since the Reagan
Administration has gotten in. It's frightening. We're looking
at the prelude to the New Dark Ages here. If you know anything
about history, the Dark Ages we're going into now is
gonna’ make the first one look like a company picnic."
This is a wiki-styled page dedicated to Frank Zappa. Their efforts
are simply nothing more than a fan's efforts to broaden the knowledge
and appreciation of the many works of Frank Zappa.
"Ugly Things" is a huge, thick magazine,
published by Mike Stax, which does not merely orbit; but
digs into the ground to comprehensively explore the music by
underappreciated artists. It was founded to dispense information
about England's "Pretty Things" group [R.I.P. Phil May
& Jon Povey]. Since 1983, it has bloomed into a magazine to
bring “wild sounds from past dimensions”. It
consistently presents passionate, informed, insightful, in-depth
coverage of overlooked music. I keenly recommend
subscribing to it. It is published three times a year. Visit
here for back issues and other artifacts.
"The Big Takeover" is the pinnacle zine covering
the independent pop music scene. Its writers care about music, and
support the bands and musicians who pioneer, rather than rest on
their laurels, or are thrust at the public through brainwashing
marketing techniques. There is a forum here for which you may opt
to register. Jack Rabid is the editor. I recommend subscribing
to this. Four issue subscriptions (two issues a year) are
available for $24. J. Rabid's radio show is available for
download from here.
What happens to punk rockers when they get older? It has been
attributed that they read "Razorcake" magazine.
It is a bi-monthly publication, published by a certified non-profit
organization in southern California, which still has a strong spot
for hard-driving music (and politics) which has a ‘resist’
message embedded therein. I recommend subscribing to this. A
six-issue subscription costs $23.50. Ask for freebies (7"
records, stickers). I like "Razorcake" enough to donate
to its foundation.
This is the forum affiliated with Steve Hoffman, a mastering
engineer. He was responsible for a number of reissued record albums
when they received a CD release. Members here discuss any number of
components composing a home audio system. The forum is
extremely active. Some threads go pages deep with new responses
in only 24 hours. I am registered here. You need to turn on
JavaScript|ActiveX® to fully utilize this site.
Do you need an answer about a certain record? You would do well
to reference one of Joel Whitburn [R.I.P.]'s tomes. He had
"Billboard" magazine's permission to publish works
based on its charts' data. This W-WW site has a frame.
These five W-WW sites are ones which I found one evening when I
linked from Vee Jay Records' Wikipedia [c.v.] page. If you are not
careful, you can devote hours browsing them (or maybe that is the
point). 45cat is the hub for a spectrum of user-supported W-WW
sites reporting about not only 45 RPM 7" discs, but ~ via its
affiliate [www.45worlds.com] ~ 78 RPM platters [this site answered
one of my deepest music trivia questions], vinyl albums, 12"
singles, and most other entertainment physical media. {I have been
cataloging my cassettes and vinyl albums on 45worlds.com under
"PudgyM".} There is also a forum here with which I am
registered. You need to turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®.
This is ARSA, the Airheads Radio Survey Archive, a
non-profit W-WW site mixing historical value with nostalgia. You can
find tens of thousands of radio station chart surveys with clickable
links for each record listed thereupon. This site is comprehensively
absorbing, as you can trace the records which did not break out
nationally to where they received their airplay and popularity.
(Look at the 1970-75 surveys for WCFL-AM Chicago to note which
decks it played that WLS-AM did not.) You need to register and logon
to get full access to the site (requires JavaScript|ActiveX®
on). There is also a forum here with which I am registered.
This is Music VF. It is a database of 120,000+ U.S.A. and U.K.
music hits since 1900. It collates multiple charts of the U.S.A.
You can search by artist name or a song title; or browse the charts
by artist, year, or decade.
This is a W-WW site which won an award from Brittanica.com
(!) as “one of the best on the Internet when reviewed for quality,
accuracy of content, presentation and usability” back in 2000.
It has continued on to the present day concentrating on
infrequently investigated stereo 7"-single records from the
1950s. From this, it expanded to discographies of record labels,
and from there to the stories about many of those labels.
Obviously, this is an epic {oops} which is impossible to fathom ever
reaching its end objective, but what has been provided to date is
engrossing. The site is webmastered by Mike Callahan. Read the
terms of use [TOU], and its frequently asked questions [FAQ].
This W-WW site is dedicated to soul music and the
discographies of the artists who recorded it. Its webmaster is
located in the United Kingdom. It features both the contemporary
‘Northern Soul’ scene, and its past history.
This site's mission is to seek out the best music being made today
and spread it across the universe. Visit here to learn about the people,
organizations, independent bands, venues, stores, representatives and
others all working together.
If you have a music collection, I suspect you have either
duplicated some of the songs thereupon to another medium, or have
considered doing so. Here is a W-WW site which is dedicated to notating
mixed tapes, CDs, DVD-Rs, iPod® playlists, et cetera. You need to
turn on JavaScript|ActiveX®, and accept cookies in order to post or
respond here.
If you are a fan of loony tunes and crazy comedy, you probably
already know about Dr. Demento. The core is a two-hour program |
podcast, now only posted on-line here (the broadcast was losing
money). The Dr. was profiled in issue #77 of "The Big
Takeover" [c.v.].
This is a non-commercial, free, public service channel available to
terrestrial, cable, and satellite services. On Dish Network® dbs, it
is channel 9406. It features performance, orchestral, and visual arts. It
is funded by The Lloyd E. Rigler - Lawrence E. Deutsch Foundation.
Link TV is an international and interactive channel that brings the
world's events, issues, and cultures to audiences in the U.S.A. It is under
this rubric because of its music programs. It is available on both
DirecTV® and Dish Network® dbs systems.
RFD - TV ["Rural America's most important network"] is a
satellite channel dedicated to serving the needs and interests of rural
America. It is under this rubric because of its diverse music
programming (It has the broadcast rights to videotapes of old
syndicated country music programs, which it obtained from Willie
Nelson's personal library.). It also has regular series about
railroads, both real and model. It is available on both Dish
Network® and DirecTV® dbs systems.
This is a booster club for the U.S.A. National Soccer Teams (both
Men's & Women's). A year's membership is $30. Membership provides
perks like the ability to obtain tickets to matches in the same
section as other members, as well as discounts on apparel and airfares.
I can recommend joining this organization.
F.I.F.A. is the most significant organization on the
planet. It is the administrator overseeing all the efforts of its
member associations which operate in soccer [football]. Its mission
is to reach out and touch the world, using football as a symbol of
hope and integration. This W-WW site is available in English,
French, Español, and German.
CONCACAF is the confederation, similar to UEFA [Europe],
overseeing its member nations in this hemisphere. This includes the
U.S.A. Its prestige event is the CONCACAF Gold Cup™,
held every two years in the odd-numbered years. It also presents
annually the CONCACAF Champions' League®, whose winner
qualify for the F.I.F.A. Club World Cup in December. A
Spanish-language version of this W-WW site is available.
Here is the official site of the United States Soccer Federation.
The U.S.S.F. affiliated itself with F.I.F.A. in 1913. Besides all the
National Team programs, its marquee event is the annual Lamar
HuntU. S. Open Cup Tournament.
This was the swiftest I have ever added a bookmark to this page.
It has lots of articles about the sports which do not command a
plethora of media attention: I.E.; the “minor leagues”.
This is the official W-WW page for the M. A. S. L..
It has twenty teams across the U.S.A. and Mexico. It is an affiliated
member of the World Minifootball Federation (WMF).
This is the W-WW page of the Chicago MUSTANGS M. A. S. L.
2 franchise. The team's owner is Armando Gamboa. The franchise
play their home games in the Sears Centre in northwest exurban Hoffman
Estates. {Hoffman Estates is closer to Elgin than Chicago.}
Did you know that the U.S.A. has a National Soccer Hall of Fame?
Its physical location was in Oneonta, New York until 2010. In 2018,
it reopened in Frisco, TX. (near Dallas). This site has data about
its inductees.
Four Four Two, created in England in 1994, is the world's biggest
soccer magazine, published in 17 markets. Its mission is to offer
intelligent, international audience access to the game's biggest names,
insightful analysis, and a bit of a giggle. It unashamedly loves this
game and hopes its coverage reflects that.
This somewhat obscure site orbits around the players on the U.S.A.
Men's and Women's National Teams. It has a good array of articles,
games, puzzles, playing tips, coaching tips, and other support
functions for soccer boosters in the U.S.A. There is also a message
forum for which you may register.
Here is the W-WW site of one company manufacturing mechanical
action pinball machines. If you have an older W-WW browser, click
on the 'site map' link in the lower right corner of this page.
This manufacturer eluded my attention until I glimpsed two of
its machines in the Logan Square Emporium Arcade one evening. It is
headquartered in Streamwood, IL., a northwest exurb of Chicago. Its
mission is to provide the highest quality pinball machines in the
world. Its team has been listening to the pinball community and is
driven to design pinball machines that appeal to the collector, the
pinball player, as well as the commercial operator.
This is a World-Wide Web site celebrating, showcasing, and
building for the pinball and arcade communities, one pixel and one
person at a time. Its links to other pinball-orbiting W-WW sites is
comprehensive. It also offers a free e-mail newsletter (Moving
Parts).
Pinside is a vibrant and welcoming online community dedicated to
all things pinball. It brings together pinball enthusiasts from all
over the world, providing a wealth of resources, information, and
support for collectors and players of all levels.
This is a W-WW site featuring the latest news about pinball.
The rubric Pinball University is a solid resource for people
just beginning their exploration of machines.
This is a forum begun in January 2015 which talks about game
strategies, upcoming events, locations that we love, etc.
Registration is required to participate.
This is a W-WW site with multiple rubrics dealing with all
aspects of pinball. It was initially created in December 1999.
Its webmaster is Martin Ayub, but there are numerous writers
contributing to it. It considers its non-commercial status its
most important element.
This is a comprehensive, searchable encyclopedia of virtually
every pinball machine ever commercially made. The database
currently includes 80,174 images of 6,679 games, 5,872
other game related files, and links to other pinball websites,
grouped by machine. The database also includes pitch & bat
baseball games, cocktail table machines, bingos, and payout
machines (when they have a pinball theme).
The OPDB is a searchable archive of pinball machines with a
focus on providing a solid API for software developers who wish
to incorporate pinball machine data into their apps.
