My current favourite thing is a little browser extension for Firefox (the bestest browser in the whole wide world!) called StumbleUpon. If you’ve ever been sitting around waiting for something else to complete (compiling software, installing software, waiting for clues to spontaneously attach to cow-orkers, staring aimlessly into space) but you’ve exhausted all your usual sites, StumbleUpon will give you random site to visit based on your personal preferences. The recommendations are rated by other people who visit the sites, so you get sent to some pretty reasonable sites.
I’ve been testing it occasionally for about a week now, and I’m impressed. I’ve found some now and interesting stuff to read, some weird stuff and some utter wastes of time, which was pretty much what I wanted to find at the time. For example, check out this
Physics Prac Writeup. If you’ve ever done a science course at high school or university, this will probably sound very familiar. How I wish I’d had the audacity to write something like that when I was doing utterly pointless experiments that I already knew the results for and yet couldn’t reproduce with the poor quality equipment available. The only thing missing from this writeup is some mention of the level of experimental error which rendered the whole exercise completely pointless.
Ugh. Painful memories.
Anyhow, one more reason to use Firefox if you don’t already.