MeMag - Me Magazine

Here is something slightly mind-boggling. To me anyway: When you Google your way through the web, you are really just scratching the surface of available information. It seems that there is a hidden internet basement as well where all the databases and archives reside. It is referred to as The Deep Web, or (scary music) The Invisible Web.

When search engines crawl all the web sites out there, they come upon a huge number of archives of information that they cannot search within. The library of information may have been deliberately constructed to stop outside search engines from peeking in, or it is simply a case of data being stored inside a database, into which one can only peek by entering a query into a search field. Since the different segments of information do not have their own web pages, they are invisible to web crawlers.

If you are someone using search engines to obtain facts, the information is such databases is typically what you would want to look for. Data found within the boundaries of a reliable source, such as a library database, is often more trustworthy than loose facts and rumors floating around on Googlable personal web pages.

This article explains it better. There are also links and links to links.

“Think about the Web as a vast library. You wouldn’t expect to just walk in the front door and immediately find information on the history of paper clips lying on the front desk, right? You might have to dig for it. This is where search engines will not necessarily help you, and the Invisible Web will.”

Discovered through this very informative article with more tips and links over at Lifehacker

Iceberg photo found through Google Image Search. If you own this image and object to it being used here, please let me know.

One of Akira Kurosawa’s greatest masterpieces and one of my favourite movies Rashômon is now available as a free download at the Internet Archive.

Rashômon has been a gateway film to many people who have not previously dared to face the prospect of watching a half-century old black & white movie in Japanese. It is said that this film is the very reason why the The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences created the Best Foreign Film Oscar category.

Japan 1950, 88min
Genre: Crime, drama, mystery
Japanese with English subtitles
Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Takashi Shimura, Masayuki Mori
Good reasons for not watching: blindness, death

From IMDB trivia: “Kurosawa found that the rain in the background simply wouldn’t show up against the light gray backdrop. To solve this problem, the crew ended up tinting the rain by pouring black ink into the tank of the rain machine”

This is something I have heard references to before. It has always fascinated me, although it has never occured to me that I could use the internet to learn more about it:

Polyphasic Sleep is a technique for changing your sleep pattern into a series of short snoozes every 4 hours, instead of the normal continuous sleep of 8 hours or so every night. The benefits are supposedly a compressed sleep cycle of only 2-5 hours a day, as well as a feeling of higher alertness. According to the followers of this technique, the brain will, after a difficult adjustment period, use these short naps for pure REM sleep, which does the brain a world of good. And just think of how much longer your life will be if every waking day is a couple of hours longer.

The technique has apparently been used by several inventors and brainy people such as Tesla, Edison and daVinci. I’m sure it has been used by a few idiots as well. My problem with this is that I think life is basically a long boring wait until you die and your worries are finally over. Who wants to be awake more than necessary? Not me.

Should you however be in the lucky position of working with something that actually makes your career seem worthwhile, this may be worth looking into. Also see the 28 hour day.

More info: Kuro5hin, UberSleep.com and Polyphasic Sleep.

Discovered through Cynical-C Blog

If I could be somebody else I would be Saul Bass. Well… maybe not now because he’s dead, but I would have loved to have his talent for movie title design. That is something I have always wanted to work with. I often drag his name out in movie discussions, but I have yet to meet anyone (here in Norway) who has ever heard of him. So I usually go on to mentioning some of the films he did the titles for, like The Man With The Golden Arm, where he has a simple theme of white lines introduce a movie about a junkie. Genius. But no one has seen any of these films either, because like I said before, in Norway people only watch movies with Steven Segal.

Here at least, are the best titles by Saul Bass as clickable frame-by-frame animations. There is also an official homepage, with movie clips of some of the titles. For those who can get it to work. I couldn’t.

Titles by PCL LinkDump

Throughout 2005 Basic Hip Digital Oddio is presenting a grand variety of vintage childrens records for download in MP3 format. Visit Kiddie Records Weekly and have a listen to those lovable crooning role models of the ’40s and ’50s.

Basic Hip… is also the home of The Online Guide to Whistling Records and the Live365 broadcast Space Age Pop Music. Space Age Pop, by the way, happens to be one of my favourite musical genres/concepts.

“We see this wonderful part of our past slowly dying out and are concerned that one day these recordings will be completely forgotten. Our mission is to give them a new lease on life.”

Found through GmtPlus9