TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): Industorious Clock / Bliss / More GBB

Howdy, y'all, and greetings once again from deep behind the Orange Curtain in the beautiful city of Irvine, California, a large marine mammal with two long tusks, tough wrinkled skin, and four flippers.

TOURBUS is supported by our wonderful sponsors. Please visit today's sponsors, do some pre-Groundhog Day shopping, and say thanks for keeping the Bus rolling!

On with the show ...

Industorious Clock

I'm not quite sure how to explain today's first stop other than to say it is quite possibly the coolest clock I have ever seen:

http://yugop.com/ver3/stuff/03/fla.html .

Created by Yugo Nakamura, "Industorious Clock" is a small, Macromedia Flash movie (@160 Kb) that uses your Web browser to display your system clock in the coolest (and most creative) way imaginable.

It's not very useful. It's just cool.

You shouldn't have to download anything to be able to see Nakamura's Industorious Clock -- Macromedia's Flash Player is already installed on 98% of the computers connected to the Internet. And if your computer falls into the unlucky 2%, you can download Macromedia's Flash Player for free at

http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash .

By the way, as long as you are checking out Nakamura's Industorious Clock, you might as well check out the rest of the Yugop site at

http://surface.yugop.com/ .

Like the Industorious Clock, the Yugop site is difficult to explain other than to say that it is cool. From what I can gather, the site is a collection of 32 interactive Flash objects that serves no real purpose. I guess you could call it "art." I'm not sure.

To navigate between each of the Flash objects, just click on one of the 32 dots at the bottom of the page. Besides the Industorious Clock (dot number 3), my personal favorite is the Clockblock (dot number 29). Oh, and the Clockblock is even available for download as a Mac or PC screensaver.

Bliss Screen Saver

Talking about screensavers [can you tell that today's post has no real logical structure whatsoever?], you might want to check out Microsoft's free "Bliss" screensaver at

http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/pro/downloads/bliss.asp .

Have you seen the default desktop wallpaper for Microsoft's Windows XP? It is a green hill with a blue sky and puffy clouds. Just think "Teletubbies" minus the wart-shaped house. [Eh-oh!]

You don't believe me? Check out

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/teletubbies/goodies/pictures/640x480/tubbytronicsuperdome.jpg .

Anyway, Microsoft has created a new, free screensaver that is a movie (.avi file) of the same hilltop in XP's default desktop wallpaper, and the movie shows clouds rolling across the sky. It's actually quite beautiful.

To download and install Microsoft's bliss screen saver on any PC -- the screensaver is supposed to be for XP, but it should work on any PC that has Microsoft's free Windows Media Player -- just go to that link I mentioned earlier and follow the instructions. The file is 1.7 Mb, so it will take about 8 minutes and 15 seconds to download over a 28.8 modem.

If you don't have Windows, don't be upset. While you probably won't be able to use Microsoft's bliss screen saver software on your computer, you can still download and view the bliss movie. After all, it is just a .avi file. Here's how to do it:

1. Download the BlissSaver.exe from Microsoft.

2. When the file has finally downloaded, DON'T double-click on
it. Instead, use an unzip program to unzip the file. Even though the BlissSaver file ends in .exe, it is actually just a self-extracting zip file ... and your unzip program should be able to extract its files. [For information on how to unzip files, check out http://netsquirrel.com/classroom/zip.html ].

3. The BlissSaver.exe file contains three files: Bliss.avi (the
movie), Bliss.scr (the screensaver), and Install.exe (the install program). Keep Bliss.avi and throw out the rest.

To view the movie, just double-click on it. Your computer's media player should pop-up and start playing the movie. And, if your computer doesn't have a media player, you can always download one for free at

>http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/"> http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/ .

By the way, the Bliss movie is kind of short, so you might want to loop it to get the full effect. Just hit Ctrl + T in Windows Media player or Ctrl + L in Apple Quicktime to loop the movie.

Google Browser Button Handout -- Update

Last week I told you about a free, Microsoft Word-based handout I created showing you, step-by-step, how to create and use Google's free browser buttons. Well, in honor of the Mac and *nix users out there who would rather eat warm poison and die than infect their computers with *ANY* software from Mr. Bill, your fearless bus driver has created a second version of the Google Browser Buttons handout, this one in Adobe Acrobat. You can find both versions of the handout at

http://www.netsquirrel.com/classroom/

Enjoy. :)

That's it for today. Have a safe and happy week and we'll talk again soon!

TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): Industorious Clock / Bliss / More GBB

TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE WEEK

SPALD (verb) Flawed or ruined. Usage: "Bubba, you done spald them kids rotten!"

[Special thanks to Brian Smith for today's wurd]

http://www.nixonlibrary.org .

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