(Roughly) Daily

To every new movement there is a backlash…  so as a soon as one encountered the phenomenon of TinyURL, the service that compacts long web addresses into a few characters (the easier to cut and paste), one might have anticipated GiantURL— the service that takes URLs of ordinary length and makes them longer– much longer.

Consider your correspondent’s own LawrenceWilkinson.com; with the help of GiantURL, it becomes:

http://www.gianturl.com?UncwSwXkNRdC3x,B6,8p6,,Y2,2WKtw9XF0,GR3,8,SqN80z3w7jh,0BYHZ2lrVLqR
,x9z8w6N,,,9Yx32mCRnb3G,R8gq,,Lw3nC9wLp,W8N,8g1FXVLwP9s9,Z0CNj1qPQxRgs6,vm7mkXnm
SDd,,,Nlm3Z8,,YP2Mc0,DMh2x,6jxFvhsPbv9m2RZ3LNct3td8,3FW0HwzmW7DWKn,Fz4q,0mxvL9nr,,m
lb,YT2F1Ylh,H4w,9,4v,9sQWXgv2nZ6j,,7y,cYlx,0hT2T2W0bD5,k1snz7pxMCDpb6,GHw,dY,mZQRq
Wc6r7x4X,qW3Rf03pFSwl7XvN9,pm,Lx5kW6j,y,,0XF7g1BZCKgC8r4tQ1FRv4lBNbRmq8,jq7yhJkj
DGfbCnS,g1Q2qzDR1Zl5mFKs7jz4mnXwkjZ,s2h4CJ4JS,,3x,7,4PW0PkzqG6JVQkgR,3zZ0mk,,4cxfvl
sgwSL2H3,j,,C7,y7w4rn4bQZSbf9zH9cdh5mRw,jk,3d,5B2T0tQ6Kl2j,d7dpDLHbs3rJDtyx,sxX,,,
Mq5c1t2RRr,7,l81vBYzl9Nl,6pgsTWt3rJ8b,ccK6TL9f7,,SRdK7,6h,0YZr0,VK,L,t6Fck5qn,zr
K,rc,xQnn7F0t,W,5Yk0,DRz5pj3,pQlcnKvw8t5KQ2TS,w5vx8B7,Z7L,xyL5,N,mhTj6lZ0llg,1wlfns
IbwFab

..which, if pasted into one’s browser, does in fact take one there.

And further to the recently-featured Universal Packing List, another option: PackWhiz.

As we think like expansionists, we might recall that it was on this date in 1933 that the Inverness (Scotland) Courier newspaper related an account of a local couple who claimed to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The story of the “monster” (as the Courier’s editor called it) became a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound reward for capture of the beast.  While accounts of an aquatic beast living in Scotland’s Loch Ness date back 1,500 years, this was the first modern sighting, and the inauguration of the Loch Ness “fever” that one knows and loves…

Source: Planet Paradigm

It’s probably no coincidence that, on this date exactly 39 years later (1972), Steven Spielberg began the production of Jaws.

Spielberg and “Bruce,” one of the articulated models used in the filming