| Marshall Rosenburg - Nonviolent Communication | ||
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I think that if everyone in the world spent 20 minutes flipping through this book,
humanity would take a giant leap forward in the evolution of its consciousness,
making incredible progress, at every level, from personal fulfillment on up
to global peace. It single-handedly (and effortlessly) changed the way I experience
communication and relationships (of all kinds), and
especially, the way I hear others, and what I say back. I don't even consciously practice the techniques;
exposure to the basic ideas in this book is enough to just change the way you
think. In a nutshell, he illustrates how
most of the communication we've learned is based on domination and manipulation,
even for the nicest of people; and he teaches you, instead, to think of everything in terms of peoples'
needs. Once you look beneath the surface of so many emotions, at the underlying
need that is not being met, everyone suddenly turns human; conflicts
can actually be resolved, communication can flourish, progress can be made, growth can ensue. It's amazing.
I could not give this book
any higher recommendation. Even if you're a great communicator already and have no major
conflicts in your life (I didn't), you'll be surprised at what this book opens your eyes to.
I'd also recommend doing a YouTube search for Marshall Rosenberg. But see him speak in person,
if you have the chance - he's an incredible speaker, and absolutely hilarious, to boot.
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| Gamelan Anak Swarasanti | ||
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The Gamelan Orchestra that I play with. It's a Balinese musical tradition designed to alter consciousness and induce trance, and it's quite beautiful (and often groovy) to listen to. Also check out a few ridiculously amazing videos of other gamelan groups, here and here. | ||
| Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra | ||
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Another music group I play with. Great people and loud, wonderful music.
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| Pacific Puzzle Works | ||
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My friend Lee Krasnow's website, featuring his hand-made 3D wood puzzles of incredible complexity, beauty, and innovation. He's one of the best puzzlemakers & designers in the world. Check out this
Youtube video of him showing off the Barcode Burr puzzle (a solid wooden box that disassembles in 128 moves), as well as other mind-blowing puzzle boxes, like the Clutch Box.
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| Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music | ||
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A really cool site that maps you through the evolution of electronic music, with many dozens of genres and good samples of each. Really fun and interesting to browese.
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| Dennis Kucinich | ||
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A House Rep from Cleveland, Ohio, a democratic presidential contender, and one of the only people in congress who I think I could really trust.
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| Guerilla Drive-In | ||
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Every other friday night in Santa Cruz, lots of people gather with blankets, chairs, and good spirits in a field near a large, unused wall (usually the side of a warehouse or bridge) to guerilla-project subversive or thought-provoking movies and documentaries. Many of the best movies I've seen in years I first saw at the GDI - many of which I'd never even heard of. It's great fun, you meet lots of nice people, and it's free! (It's also often followed by a midnight mystery bike ride.) They've popped up in lots of other cities now, which is great to see. One more nice way to meet people that doesn't revolve around bars...
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| Free Skool (at wikipedia) (in Santa Cruz) | ||
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The wiki article makes it sound like an official school, but it's not. You just grab the
calendar and drop in for whatever classes you feel like.
It's all free - the classes are taught by ordinary people, for ordinary people, and not for money. Classes include
bike repair, spanish conversation skills, survival gourmet, trash orchestra / musical instrument building, knitting, baking, yoga, and all kinds of other stuff. They have it in a lot of other cities, too.
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| HyperHistory | ||
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Ever wonder which empires ruled the earth, and when? Want to quickly piece together those fuzzy remnants of memories from world history, to deepen your understanding of the cultural history of our planet? Look no further. I think this is VERY cool.
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| beliefnet.org | ||
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Easy access to basic (and in-depth, if you like) information about the world's many religions and spiritual practices. Especially fun is their Belief-O-Matic - punch in your beliefs and it will tell you what faiths might resonate best with you.
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| whatgoesaround.org | ||
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Sick of getting (or giving) material gifts for the holidays? Consider this site; it lets you give "undirected" charity gift certificates as gifts; later, the gift receiver can go to the site and select the charity (from a list of many thousands) that they'd like to forward the funds on along to!
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| Ron English | ||
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A very interesting and heroic man. He spent decades liberating billboards - fighting Camel advertisements [that targeted kids], McDonalds ads, and so on. He took it in a lot of other directions over the years, as well. If you find his work interesting, you should really check out the documentary about his life, POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English.
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| Coconut Revolution | ||
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A must-see documentary. The fascinating story of a small pacific island called Bougainville, where the natives stood up against a mining company that was decimating their island - and won. The technology left by the miners, however, transformed their lives; and they transformed the technology to be ecologically sustainable, building small-scale hydroelectric power plants and running the trucks on coconut oil. An amazing and inspiring film!
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| automobile fuel economy | ||
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quick access to the gas mileage & pollution statistics for every car on the road
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| how to reduce junk mail & stop telemarketing calls | ||
click to expand:  | ||
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Free 3D glasses | ||
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(you can use these with MilkDrop, and/or Monkey)
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| Gardening.Growing.How.To | ||
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how to grow things that you can eat. it's fun and fulfulling.
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| The universal currency converter | ||
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lets you easily convert between foreign currencies online.
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| The Card Games Website | ||
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The rules for a bazillion card games. Great to review before doing any kind of traveling. Also check out the list of 2-player card games.
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Computer/tech stuff | ||
| AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition | ||
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a totally free, and vey well-written, anti-virus program. Rest assured, it's solid - they
have lots of big corporate customers (who pay). But AVG provides their
corporate anti-virus to individual home users FREE, fully-featured. I hate both McAfee
and Symantec's products because they're bloatware - they eat tons of RAM and slow
your system down. AVG Free is small and slick, though. It also
auto-updates itself (like the others) so you don't have to worry about it. Even if McAfee and
Symantec were free, I would hands-down choose AVG, and have for quite some time (and put it
on many others' systems as well).
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| WinThrottle | ||
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this is a cool little utility that will keep your computer cooler (extending
its lifespan) and lower your electric bill. When your CPU is sitting idle,
it gradually starts throttling it back to run at a lower frequency, saving
power and heat. The instant the CPU usage starts going up, it jumps back to
full-speed - you would never know it's running, except for the systray icon
with a little green "meter" that tells you how much it's throttling. You can
fully customize the maximum throttle amount, the thresholds, and everything.
Note that most laptops already do this when running on battery, so for those, winThrottle
won't help much; but plugged-in laptops, and almost all desktops, will benefit
greatly from it. Some laptops also have loud, annoying fans that kick in when they're "thinking" too hard (and getting hot); winThrottle is absolutely priceless in this case! It makes my annoying Vaio laptop's fan kick on about 90% less. | ||
| WallPaperChanger | ||
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A great, and TOTALLY FREE, wallpaper randomizer. I use it to auto-randomize
my wallpaper, using my photo collection, every 2 hours.
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| NSIS - the Nullsoft Superpimp Installation System | ||
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a totally free, totally tiny,
installer creation program. The footprint is usually about 36 kb (compare to
InstallShield's 2 MB or so). Does just about everything. A truly magnificient tool.
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| DaFont.com | ||
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a bazillion free fonts for Windows
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| ojuice.net, scene.org, pouet.net | ||
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news on the PC demoscene
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| Pentium 4 Instruction Set Reference | ||
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essential information for x86 assembly programming.
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Friends' sites | ||
| scheib.net | ||
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an excellent friend of mine who has a very unique and likeable character. He is done being a Huge World Traveler for a bit, and is currently working at a game company called The Collective, somewhere in southern California.
His site is highly recommended for a hearty browse. Lots of humor, as well as many great insights, artworks, and innovations; Do check it out.
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| spondooliks.org | ||
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the homepage of my good friend Alexander J. Southgate.
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| sphear.org | ||
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the homepage of my good friend Johan.
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| skyviewproperties.homestead.com | ||
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get away for a weekend at one of my awesome friend Alan's two beautiful houses:
one in Santa Cruz (CA), the other in Sedona (AZ).
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Free comics | ||
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qwantz.com toothpastefordinner.com | ||
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Humorous blogs | ||
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'The Best Page in the Universe' | ||
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Other funny stuff | ||
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End of the World (flash movie) Science Made Stupid (8 pages explaining science) badgerbadgerbadger (flash movie) This Is You (short film) | ||
Commercial plugs | ||
| Uni-tel Long Distance | ||
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Dirt-cheap long-distance; 3.9 cents a minute flat rate long distance service.
Pretty rad. Note that there is a $2 monthly fee IF your long distance for the month is less than $15.
And no, I'm not getting any kickbacks for plugging them... I just like the thought
of my money going toward a company that doesn't rip you off or invade your
privacy; doesn't send you 10 lbs. of junk mail per year, doesn't call you at home,
etc. etc. (unlike MCI, Sprint and AT&T). As far as I know, these guys don't even
advertise.
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| Shutterfly | ||
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A site that will print digital photos for you (into actual 4x6 photographs, or whatever). If you have a lot to print, it's a decent
price (340 pictures for $99), and the quality is unbelievable. Also, the website
is very well-made, and the service (printing & mailing your photos) is extremely fast.
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| SolarHardware.com | ||
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this guy is rad; he sells solar & wind equipment for almost cost. These are the lowest prices I've found anywhere. (Not that you should buy this stuff unless you have a crapload of spare time; buy green tags instead, it's far more cost- and time-efficient.)
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Terrible stuff | ||
| slaughtered | ||
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breakdown of the animals killed for food in the U.S. in the year 2000 (the total is a gnarly 8.8 BILLION).
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| pleasebekind.com | ||
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a site elucidating why we (you?) should stop treating animals like dirt
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| Anti-Bush Links | ||
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Help Make the World a Better Place | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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