insomnia? put it to good use

It's been years since I looked at Web Pages That Suck ("learn usability and good Web design by looking at bad design") and was happy to see that it's still regularly updated .. now added to my RSS feeds.

Bad insomnia last night, so I waddled into the home office in an attempt to bore myself to tears with what's happening in the world. Thinking that traffic would be light (RealPlayer can be bursty during prime time) I listened to The O'Franken Factor on AirAmerica for a few hours, while doing other stuff. I heard several Public Service Announcements [PSAs] and interviews, many mentioning websites. Some of the more memorable ones: Punk Voter; Underground Action Alliance; Wax Bush (main goal: sell T-shirts). Lesson learned: opposing views are good for the soul. Conservative talk radio (Rush Limbaugh and his ilk) must outnumber liberal talk radio 25:1 so this was a very welcome change of pace.

Memorable interview: Chan Marshall (she's in the band Cat Power), which made the (legendary?) Farrah Fawcett/Dave Letterman interview sound like a nanotechnology briefing.

I tried to print the PDF newsletter from Circle Of Life (environmental) but it rendered in 50% kinda-Chinese and 50% English. Lesson learned: don't waste trees by printing brochures about environmental causes.

Finally, an idea that hasn't gone anywhere since the August 2001 unveiling: Purple. I read the spec, which immediately made me very, very sleepy ...