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Text Collections
An international effort with online original copies of mankinds documents, ancient maps, photos, 100+ year old films, diaries. More than just text, this site has a nice way to see 1000s of years of mans direction in one place. and watching films of people in the late 1800s just walking in the street is fascinating, to see the last gasp of some medieval cultures. browse by place, time, type, or topic.
The largest index of quotations from all times and places, here's the 'random quotes' page just to read once a week. I love a good quotation, although I never quote anyone because I find that corny, but they are still good to read.
View the long term and big money bets on the future that various people have placed against each other. If anything, some interesting debate material.
Whether you want to read them or hear them as .mp3 files, these are the top 100 speeches as ranked by people. Even just making a habit of reading/listening to 1 a day for a couple weeks, one might pick up some inspiring thoughts. This site also has a general large list of speeches throughout the ages as indexed by person. The speeches are all either written or read aloud.
This is one guy who is converting 1000s of old 78 records over to mp3 format. They are mostly from the 30s and 40s and rare. If that's something which interests you to browse through and listen, then it's worth a visit.
This site lists a photo, the crime details, and the last words of people before they are snuffed out. Worth randomly clicking on some.
Here's a list of american government texts, for reference, it's interesting to read the forefather's actual writings and speeches, as they not only were informed about their past, they also made great predictions of the future of the country. To read writings, forgetting what America is today and looking at it as it was; a newfound giant island that a bunch of people had landed on just a generation earlier, here were some working-class men as statesmen, not politicians with an intent to 'sell themselves', who came together and honestly debated what it meant to be a human, to be a community, and how to make it work for everyone, all the while trying to step on the least amount of rights and restrictions. I randomly read any of their 200+ year old writings, and it seems todays governing people would be able to say something with even 1/10th of the purity, forethought, and insight of these men. They never wanted to 'sell' their ideas, but instead offered the 'why' they thought their opinions would work best for the people, and they acknowledged it was indeed their 'opinions'.
Near-death experiences from any religion, philosophy, spirituality, or persons point of view. Just a one-time thing to look through really.
View the top and worst websites as rated by people weekly/monthly. Good to get inspirations for colors, layouts, and design.
An interesting see-once clock showing interesting statistics, choose by year/monthly/week/day.
This is some magazines list of 100+ foods that can be found at a regular market, so perhaps a good reference in case you wonder what the healthiest choice would be in a certain category.
A collection of airline crashes' last words, in both text and some audios, which is something to read randomly through a few just if you want to give yourself chills, and be happy just to be alive in the here and now.
A running total of all the various debts and credits of america, fine to look at once.
The Rest
If you're into flashlights, lasers, LEDs, HIDs, and any type of light device, these forums are where 1000s of light-enthusiasts keep up daily with the advances of light technologies and which to buy for the job.
If you're into any type of audio-visual equipment of work, hardware, software or news, this is the biggest forum online of them all, covering anything audio-visual one could think of. Highly informative.
If you're wondering about roadtrips or travelling on wheels across the country, heres where people share ideas, tips, and places about travelling from a moped to a RV. Pretend gas doesn't cost more than milk. Oh wait they've both doubled.
If you're into camping, here's a list of inexpensive or free campsites, good for those long roadtrips of discovery.
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Photo Collections
These are an amazing collection of color photos from 100 years ago, and some great b+w ones (the southworth set) from 150+ years ago. The texture of the clothing, and the color details I found stunning when I ran across these. Nothing you could whip up in photoshop. Remember to choose 'all sizes' when viewing the photos so you can see the largest/best quality versions of each.
Some x-rays of people who seem to have some serious 'issues'.
Collections of photos that people find in old items from thrift shops or thrown away by strangers; just random photos of families once past. Neat to wander thru this site once to glimpse americana of the mid-1900s.
Interesting photo pairs of individuals then and now. Cute to run through once just for the concept.
Interesting random items, the first 'one' of them publicly outed.
Even if you aren't into aviation, you would still find some of these photos amazing, it's a good collection of recent air photos.
This photographer took 100s of photos over weeks from the same exact spot, and then just 'collaged' the various passersby over time, and the photos turn out a bit surreal. A simple, original idea.
Funny collection of photos from back when those tacky photo places took family pictures in the 70s-90s. Worth looking through once.
Good collection of photos a guy took from a helicopter. Another good once-through.
It's not in my language so i've no idea what they speak of, but it's an interesting site with daily links to songs, art, and photo collections of others. It's updated often i believe but i only drop in a couple times a month. Might have nudity in the art.
Some really good microscopic photos.
Dramatic photos of tiny animals.
A collection of family portraits, it is what it says it is.
A few pages of people shopping in walmart, I link this because whenever I used to take roadtrips I always enjoyed stopping local walmarts just to get a taste of the locals, so these pages are nice to reminisce.
Nasa has finally put up an easy index of space photos, all categorized and many never released before, it is interesting to randomly wander through or for when you need to use a photo for some project. There is also a timeline pictorial you can go through.
If you've been through anything like this with your parents or grandparent, then maybe you'll find this creative project interesting. It takes less than 5 minutes to go through the slideshow.
A daily-updated photo index of people arrested for all types of crimes. Once or twice a month i'll go through about 50 until I'm filled with the joy of living downtown. One of those photos can fill my head with more storylines than any tv show, or just get a sense of my local community.
It's inspiring to wander through this site, which lets anyone sell anything of theirs that is homemade, even food. They make it easy for sellers and their charge a personal store is low, so it would be a one-day thing to just make somrthing out of anything, then setup an account, take some photos of your creation, and just post it. Check out the search section since they can do searches by interesting divisions, like 'colors' where you can look at things homemade that are red, andother interesting ways to search I've not seen elsewhere. Is what it says. You can also see more novel and efficient architecture at another site HERE, just look at the bottom-right to go thru the pages of them
This site is newer but they are compiling unsual places and things around the world, my first find there was to see man-made fires, i was amazed to find there was a 30 year old fire thats still burning in the ground, but theres one from 350 years ago that also still burns, there's 100s of curious places and things here, they just need to list it better i think. Showing videos and photos that people have put online that doesn't cast their parental skills as a strong point.
Should I ever have property, this man would have to plant the trees on it, his photos show some original ideas with trees.
Quirky Items
I thought it was amazing enough to see they are just composed of shards like the california coastlines rocks, until it went into the actual web we are all weaved from.
This is a neat concept; print a simple black square on some good thick paper, and then with your webca, you can have a chosen virtual 3d structure from google earth appear on your paper via your webcam, fully interactive. Hard to explain without watching the demo or doing it yourself. I'm sure it will evolve into something usable within years.
This uses some youtube videos of strangers to compile your own music mashup, interesting concept.
An example of a single high resolution photo if you take lots of shots and use a program to switch them together into a single one, this is an example photo you can zoom into deep. not that a single photo one day could resolve this much detail.
This is just like the above, but instead of choosing a google earth 3d structure to work with in 3d, you can try a couple animated 3d virtual realities pop-up on your sheet of paper on a webcam. Good to see once, and again, I'm sure this concept will expand to things which serve a purpose others than being 'neat' once.
A series of videos pitting insects against each other, where the victor gets to live another day and another fight.
translation party
You give it a sentence and it will convert the english to chinese, and then back again to english to see how much the original meaning of the sentence changed, and then it reconverts back to chinese again, and so on, until it reaches 'equilibrium'- when the sentence means the same in english or chinese. . . and then its interesting to see how much it changed from the original.
My own collections
Not my own, but here are dozens of videos i saved in my own youtube collection from other people, whether they're funny, informative, freakish, or just a past memory.
Photos of mine. The day I actually put any up will be a day that the earth trembles because it seems I never have the time.
Here's either videos I have of mine on vimeo.com who i use because they allow higher quality videos than youtube, some videos are in HD, and some from grainy childhood.
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