Ana Somnia

 

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THIS is a WEIRD website! At first, the Doctor was stumped about what to do. A strange soundtrack plays while something is loaded, a counter showing progress for several seconds. And then...well, then we see Ana getting ready for bed, and a long (hairy) forearm menacingly pointing from the supposed door in the wall opposite the bed. Now what? Well, that is something you'll have to find out...

Claiming to be a "weird greeting from East Berlin" (was there an Internet when East Berlin still existed?) the Doctor was impressed with the work that went into the fantastical project. 

(If you want a clue about how to get started, click here.)

Ana Somnia

 

Learning Websites

This entry is going to break format in many ways.

  • First, it's going to list a variety of related sites, creating a collection of our own
  • Second, no screenshots of the reviewed sites
  • Third, no real reviews to speak of - just a list and a few word about what they do
  • Finally, these really aren't weird in and of themselves. But who thought the Web would be a place people go to in order to learn a subject?

Here is a variety of site that offer to teach you something. Most are entirely free, although they will hit you up for a donation now and then. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of these, so if your favorite isn't listed, please accept our apologies. The Doctor only has so much time to surf and write reviews...and these days he prefers the former.

duolingo.com - learn a language in five minutes a day

khanacademy.org - Math, Science, Finance, Music - it seems that Khan Academy intends to become Khan University!

codecademy.com - learn to program in just about any computer language

w3schools.com - another programming site, but with all emphasis on web-based tech

lynda.com - video training for design, photography, programming, business and more

 

We hope these give you a start on a career, a career change, a hobby or a fun way to stay out of trouble on rainy days.

If you'd rather read random content and not worry about "learning" per se, you can go to Wikipedia.org's Random Article link and find something interesting....weird!

No Body Cases

 

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If there can be a weirder collection site than one assembled by a former federal homicide prosecutor, the Doctor is hard pressed to think of it. The website created by Tad DiBiase discusses the intricacies of investigating and prosecuting murder cases where the body of the victim has not been found. I'm sure one of the questions he answers is the Doctor's first: How do you know a murder has been committed if there is no body to be found?

If this is something that YOU want to investigate, you'll be welcome to read all the details Mr. DiBiase makes available.

No Body Murder Cases

Ted DiBiase's book, "No-Body Homicide Cases: A Practical Guide to Investigating, Prosecuting, and Winning Cases When the Victim Is Missing" is available directly from the publisher.

Map Crunch

 

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There are so many resources on the Internet, it was only a matter of time before someone took a random walk through the places of Google Street View. That's what Map Crunch offers: Instant (virtual) Travel! Cheap, spontaneous, energy efficient and...WEIRD!

 

Map Crunch

Naming Schemes

 

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Every now and again, the Doctor needs a list of names that can be used to label things. For example, his large server farm needs unique names for each server. The medical center he is building in the sub-basement of his vacation home will have many conference and exam rooms, and he wants a consistent theme for how they are all named. Now he has the perfect resource for finding such themed names: Naming Schemes provides a trove of names, organized into lists by description. For example, look up "Rockets" and you get a list of almost three dozen different rockets! We're not recommending he name medical exam rooms after rockets. Maybe something like the list of Medical Illnesses would be better? If you have a similar need, check out Naming Schemes. They use a wiki-type layout for easy update and a clean look, but it would be nice if each list was sorted.

Naming Schemes

The Quiet Place Project

 

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Everyone needs a quiet place now and then. Some more than others. Others more often than some. Either way, The Quiet Place Project may offer what you're looking for. The front page has selfies of visitors and hovering over an image makes a quote about his/her experience pop up. 

There is also the claim that "millions of souls chose quiet" and a link to click to "see why". Once on the second page, an interesting interface opens up - just "squeeze" the spacebar to scroll through "cards" of text offered up by the creators of the site. Some music starts to play (the music is "Life and Death" - from 'Lost' - by Michael Giacchino) and eventually you'll be asked to like a Facebook page, follow on Twitter, etc....and donate a few dollars.

Read more: The Quiet Place Project

OMFGDOGS.com

 

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Until now, Dr. Weird Web has ignored all of the weird animal sites across the internet. But the time has come to recognize one - ONE - site as an honorable mention for all the others out there. OMFGDOGS.com may be the most annoying of the animal sites out there. There are cat sites, more dog sites, and, yes, eel sites. None of them will be highlighted here. OMFGDOGS shows everything that is weird, amusing and annoying about the genre. Enjoy!

PS: If you are not sure how loud your speakers or headphones are set to, turn them down. You have a few seconds before the sounds starts blasting. The Doctor sees the audiologist Monday morning.

Read more: OMFGDOGS.com

Rainy Mood

 

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Claiming to be "The Internet's most popular rain experience", Rainy Mood shows a dark still image of a rainy street and an endless loop of rain sounds (along with thunder). There are sound machines which produce "white noise" to help people sleep, but Dr. Weird Web believes this is the only website offering a similar service. Makes one wonder if there's a "Sunny Mood" someplace out there... 

Read more: Rainy Mood

Pointer Pointer

 

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How often do you visit a website only to find a blank black page, with a frame drawn in the middle of it? Not often, right? If you did, you would say "this is Weird"...right?

Well, that's exactly how Pointer Pointer starts off. But then you get an instruction to "Please move your cursor". And when you do, this site gets even weirder!

If you are visiting Dr. Weird Web you are looking for something weird, so we won't spoil it for you. Just believe us - it's WEIRD!

 

Read more: Pointer Pointer

Humanæ

 

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What is art? Dr. Weird Web rarely thinks about topics this broad or deep. However, when he came across Humanæ he had to pause and think. That, of course, is what Angélica Dass wants the viewer to do: pause and think.

What is "race"? What difference does class bestow on one person over another? How deeply does ones humanity get reflected externally? Ms Dass is a Brazilian artist who has been working on this project since 2012. She clearly describes this as an "work in progress" and may not be concluded until the entire population of the Earth is so documented. She is taking portraits (they may even be classed as "sterile portraits" of volunteers from the shoulders up, with no clothing visible. She then matches the subjects skin tone along the Pantone® Color Identification scale. Are any two individuals exactly the same color? Apparently not.

Read more: Humanæ

Gone and Forgotten

 

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Over the years comic book superheros have come and gone. Some become bigger than life itself, while others just seem to vanish into the desk drawers and ink bottles of their creators.

Chris Ware is a comic book artist and he has put together a collection of stories about the comic characters who are "Gone and Forgotten". As he explains on the site:

Gone & Forgotten is a blog dedicated to the bottom of the comic book barrel; the Secret Wars IIs, the Kitty Pryde and Wolverines, the Green Teams and John Targitts and the one time Krypto swore like a drunken sailor on shore leave. 

This blog has been around in some form or the other since 1997 or so, meaning you owe it, like, ten birthday gifts. Some father you are.

While not scoring high on the humor chart, Gone and Forgotten is certainly a collection of WEIRD.

Read more: Gone and Forgotten

Empty States

 

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Empty Spaces is a weird collection of page layouts informing the user that there is nothing found...the "empty set" of results. The tag line "Delight users by designing the empty states" indicates their desire that designers and developers not just leave a default "Page Not Found" error for the user to decipher.

The simple layout allows for scrolling through all the page images, searching for a key word, or browsing through six categories segmenting the collection. An inspiration for designers and a collection of things for average users to wonder at...either way its weird!

Read more: Empty States

AI Weirdness

 

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AI Weirdness is a curated place to learn about the strange things happening in artificial intelligence. The hostess, Janelle Shane, is a bona-fide expert when it comes to AI. She's even done a TED talk on the subject. Of course, having "weird" in the title certainly gives this site an extra legitimacy score.

So, how weird can AI get? How about naming new colors (look out Benjamin Moore), word-smithing Valentine's Day cards (Hallmark can't be happy about that) and creating utopias of massive variety (is this a competition?). Regularly updated by Janelle, you'll want to return - or sign up for her email newsletter.

Read more: AI Weirdness

Hungry Girl

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Subtitled "Tips and Tricks...for Hungry Chicks", Hungry Girl delivers - and Dr. Weird Web is not thinking pizza. With a variety of recipes aimed at helping women win the battle of the bulge, Hungry Girl has a hip and casual approach to eating, dieting and having a good life. The power behind Hungry Girl, Lisa Lillien, admits she is not a nutritionist or a doctor. In telling her story, Lisa admits to being obsessive about food:

I love food because food is delicious. My mantra, as many of my friends know, is "I'm hungry!" Because I obsess over food, I learn about it, read about it, research it, dream about it. Nothing gives me a thrill like discovering a new low cal snack or assembling a no fat pizza! Over the years my food obsession has caused me to accumulate approximately a zillion diet and food tips, and because I am not only hungry, but also very nice, I want to share them with you.

With a daily email, a collection of weekend survival tips, videos, recipe make-overs, and a collection of books for sale, it appears that Hungry Girl has all the resources many women would need to reach their goals. The doctor is curious, however, about what makes these resources "hungry chick" only material. Would "hungry dudes" need to look elsewhere? Ah, another search term to look for!

Read more: Hungry Girl

Radiooooo

 

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Radiooooo.com can be the next big thing in streaming music...or the final straw between you and your roommates. In fact, you should write to the Doctor about what happens if you become addicted...but that's a different subject.

Using Radiooooo's front-page map you can select any country in the world and then click on a decade since 1900 and it will play something popular in that country during that decade. Wild!

Of course, Dr. Weird Web isn't interested in contemporary popular music, but something that was popular 100 years ago in, say, New Guinea is....well. WEIRD!

The site is currently in beta and is hoping for more content to be uploaded and cataloged. It reminds the Doctor of some of his college science experiments.

 

Read more: Radiooooo

The Candy Wrapper Museum

 

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If you can remember back to the 1970s, where Dr. Weird Web still thinks he is, you'll know that many things have changed since then. Pet Rocks came and went. Disco came and went. Bell bottoms came and went. But even through all those changes and the assorted fashion and social changes, candy has stayed a societal constant. Sure, some preferences migrated from chocolate and mint to sour balls and cinnamon. But the desire for something (usually sweet) to enjoy as a guilty pleasure has continued through it all.

Darlene Lacey didn't know what she was getting herself in back then. Here she tells her story to "The Chocolate Cult" Blog:

When I was a teenager, I was impressed by some older friends’ collections of beer bottles from around the world. I thought the idea of collecting and displaying them for their artistic qualities was quite interesting. I wanted to do something like this, but I was too young (and too broke!) to collect beer bottles, so I decided to start keeping something I bought all the time, candy wrappers. However, I didn’t want to just create a catalog of everything out there; I wanted to only collect wrappers that I thought had some interest or merit. Therefore, I came up with the concept to collect with an eye toward artistic merit, humor (as in “What were they thinking!”), and nostalgia. I aimed to collect not only the “icons” of the industry, but also the oddball candies that quickly came and left the shelves. 

Needless to say, wrappers from the 1920s to the present day make for a weird collection. And because it only exists on the Internet, it is certainly a place you'll want to visit.

Read more: The Candy Wrapper Museum

The Polapola Project

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The Polapola Project (Das Polapola-Projekt)

Dr. Weird Web has wondered, at various odd hours of the night, what it would be like to take a picture of a picture of a picture. At what point does the first picture disappear? What happens to the scene in the picture once the next oldest picture is removed? There have been rumors of such wonderings on the Internet and now we have found a weird one!

The Polapola project started in 1995 on a beach in Brittany, France, when Mark-Steffen Göwecke took the first picture. "On a beach I photographed with a the SX-70 a [P]olaroid showing sand and stones. Again the resulting picture was photographed with the Polaroid-camera. The distances in space and time became larger." That is how Mr. Göwecke describes this project. But the words do not do justice to the flow of picture after picture the site makes available. Much of the content is in German, but a brief English description of each picture is available by hovering over it. A "time-line" of all 262 pictures is displayed along the bottom of the page. Scroll along to see how each scene contains the photograph of the prior scene. The flash animation of the individual photos makes it appear to zoom in and out as you click the '<' and '>' symbols.

The last picture was taken in February 2014 and the project is "closed". But it is certainly a permanent addition to the Weird on the Web. If you visit the site, be sure to select the "Flash" version for the animation it offers.

The site also hosts several other artsy projects by Herr Göwecke, but the Polapola Project is plenty weird enough to justify a visit.

Read more: The Polapola Project

The Living Room Candidate

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What has happened in the last 50-odd years that changed the way the United States elects its President?  Television.  Television rocked the way politics works in the US probably more than any other country in the world.  That's because so many voters had television sets and so many different networks and local channels sprang up around the country to present different opinions and programming.

The Living Room Candidate, a web project of the Museum of the Moving Image, hosts a collection of campaign commercials from each presidential campaign going back to 1952 (Eisenhower defeated Stevenson).  Updated for 2016 to cover the Clinton-Trump campaign, each commercial is played on the screen with a commentary about the salient points of the ad.  If you have never seen any of the "I Like Ike" ads for Eisenhower, treat yourself to sixty-seconds of down-home 1950's kitch.

While the Museum of the Moving Image has several other projects that could be weird on their own (check out the Computer Space exhibit on video games) the standout here is worthwhile for any seeker of the webs weirdness. 

Read more: The Living Room Candidate