General Links

Perhaps a word here would be neccesary. I feel that too many web pages are just turning into lists of other pages, and content is not (usually) added. Therefore, I created this 'Links' section to counter that -- every link below will have at least a paragraph of description (hopefully), so that you don't waste your time traveling far and wide to see stuff that you weren't actually looking for. I have a really slow modem, and spending hours downloading pictures (which usually turn out to be advertisements) is not my idea of a good time. This page is absolutely devoid of graphical content, so those of you running Lynx, or a custom-built browser shouldn't have much trouble. When I was formatting the original HTML for this page I was careful to format the text in the same way that Lynx displays it, so it should (probably) be readible even with a text editor. However, if you are the kind of person that likes hundreds of links with incoherent names, try clicking right here to jump down to the addresses that I haven't sorted (much) yet. If you would send me the URLs (Uniform Resource Locaters) of the pages that you enjoy, I will probably add them in that section until I get around to viewing them personally. Thanks for your input.


My father Mark Zimmermann's Home Page.

Please check out the really cool FreeText information retrieval package for Macs. It saves hours of leafing through inventories of CD-ROMs. There is an interface written purely in C, but it is not very usable. If you are a Programmer type, the universe of IBM-PC users would probably greatly enjoy a port to a Windows-type environment. I believe that the sources are here somewhere, as well as his Shakespeare Stack project. Both of the programs here require a Macintosh and a newish version of Hypercard (3.1(?)).


Play-By-Email.com

http://www.pbem.com

This website has a long list of roleplaying games that you can play by e-mail (usually you give your address to a potential gamesmaster, who then selects several players out of the hordes of addresses s/he receives. A game usually continues to a decisive ending, or the gamesmaster gets tired and quits. During the games, general things are usually sent to the group of players as a whole, and then each player is informed of things that their own character sees or notices, there is conversation between the players, and they decide upon a common task to carry out over a period from a day to a month (for more complicated situations).

There is a rather long list of pending games there, some guidelines on play, and instructions for new gamesmasters. If you wait long enough, someone will probably appear who wants to play a game that you know, and you can contact them. I haven't done any of this, because I am still trying to get rid of an identifying signature that appears on all messages that I send (see below disclaimer for some reasons for being anonymous).

Well, I knew it would happen sometime. My Friend (see below Disclaimer) has found this link, and has signed up for one of the Dungeons & Dragons (C TSR) games that was advertised there. Watch here for more info on his experiences, if he has any that are visible.


DVORAK Simplified Keyboard

A different arrangement of keys which allows you to type up to 600% faster! I have heard stories that some guy who was in some war got some of one arm hacked off or amputated or something, and then he switched to some one-armed left-handed style Dvorak keyboard layout, and now he does something like 60 words per minute (that's one word a second, folks), which is practically twice as fast as he could do with QWERTY with both arms. However, your mileage may vary. I've only been using Dvorak for three days, and I've already made the transition and go faster than anything. However, if you've been using QWERTY for longer than 50 or 60 years, it may take you slightly longer (that is, about four or five days). If you actually believed all this, now is the time for me to sell you a bridge (go and reread the disclaimer above).

Try the Dvorak International official web site or their FAQ at http://www.cs.washington.edu/home/dylan/DvorakIntl.html. If you have an IBM PC, you can download a keyboard driver from Microsoft's ftp server, in the form of a DOS 6 supplemental disk. Their server is very active, so you might have to try several times. There is also something at http://www.ccsi.com/~mbrooks/dvorak/di.html

If you're running Windows then check out the keyboard extension in the Control Panel for all versions later than 3.0. There should be a "United States-Dvorak" style, with possible one-armed modes. In Win95, try "Control Panel:Keyboard:Languages:Properties:United States-Dvorak" or some such. You can also buy hardware adaptations, like a keyboard that reports "wrong" scan codes to implement a Dvorak layout at low levels. Some come with switches to let them change to QWERTY again, but who would ever want to? (See next paragraph.) You don't need that switch; take it out and use it in some other electronic project. You'll never change back again anyway after you try it.

I've found that it only takes about two hours to pry off all of the keycaps and move them to their new Dvorak positions, unless you drop some of the tiny springs that are smaller than the size of a human hair, and then you have to find them again, which is why it took me three hours and gave me an aneurysm. I advise first writing down the positions of all the Dvorak keys BEFORE you begin rearranging the keycaps. I did this by running my hands across the keyboard, typing each character in turn, going across the rows. Above all, good luck (and don't drop any of those springs; sometimes they kind of jump out when you take the keycaps off).


Anonymous Remailers

The rest of the links here were derived from links on the NARA page, which describes the Anonymous remailer concept quite concisely.

Anonymous Remailers are machines that will create a random-looking email address from which they will route the mail you send them. The address that they give you will forward all of the mail it receives back to your real address, so you can send mail through the anonymous address and the people that you write will not know who you really are. Some Remailers are one-way, only allowing you to send mail, unlike those described above. You might require the ability to edit your mail headers to use some of these, but I am not sure. These are useful when you want to prevent people you are communicating with from knowing who you actually are for a few minutes.


The Anonymizer

http://www.anonymizer.com

This web utility allows you to protect your privacy while you are browsing web pages. It kinda works, but is very slow, and displays ads on your screen above and below the "anonymized" pages. Now it implements a 5 minute wait unless you pay a subscription fee. Ugh.


Visit Origin Systems' Website

Origin Systems Inc.

This page is in both English and German (I think), and is the home of the company that sells copies of the Ultima roleplaying series. Origin Systems has been taken over by Electronic Arts! This link is only here because of a free game that they are giving away called " Transland" for the IBM 386 or higher.

Transland takes up 3 MB of disk space decompressed, and it is provided in a 1 MB compressed ZIP file. As a failed attempt at making a 3D, First-Person, Real-Time, Action-filled Roleplaying game, it works (sort of), with only a few fatal errors. One warning -- Don't try jumping onto anything that moves - it's usually fatal (for your computer; not for the player).

They did not remove the secret construction-set game builder from the package, and you can start it by typing "A" instead of "TL". I found that when in this 'construction' mode, you can press '/' (slash) to get some help (not that it is very useful).

I managed to deduce many of the commands before I found the help key, but even with the help, I still do not know how to fully operate the 'egg' or 'trigger' editors. If anyone finds out, I would appreciate the knowledge. I also don't know about any files that have ".lbm" extensions (but I suspect that some paint-type program uses them), and how to use the tile editor (although it is not very important).

As they do, I also do not assume any responsibility for what happens to you after you access and peruse this web page. None of the pages or links are my responsibility, and whether they are in good taste or not or have anything to do with what I claim they are is of no concern to me. By using this web page you agree that you are responsible for anything that happens to you by usage of the information or games contained within.


PGP

(Pretty Good Privacy, of Phil's Pretty Good Software), is a general purpose public-key encryption utility, but it is suprisingly hard to get. I advise looking around at MIT if you are in the US, and just doing a simple search from AltaVista if you aren't. Try to get a new version, if you can. Non-US versions usually seem to have more and better features, but are also rumored to be illegal for use in the US.

I had a very long passphrase to my old key, and because I haven't had occasion to use it for four years, I have forgotten it and am now unable to issue a proper key destruction command. So, please delete my old key if you have captured it and replace it with this one:

Type Bits/KeyID    Date       User ID
pub   512/AC74F1ED 1997/09/26 Merle D. Zimmermann <(!)chrosk@capaccess.org>

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.6.3i
Comment: Requires PGP version 2.6 or later.

mQBNAzQrCroAAAECAM/Q+CSdf19xBncZd87MfD8n+JGvl2SPqPYXGE0XmKeDps2s
om9i56lH1s+w0cO7ID6fqaMwnn6XT/dwlKx08e0ABRG0Kk1lcmxlIEQuIFppbW1l
cm1hbm4gPGNocm9za0BjYXBhY2Nlc3Mub3JnPokAVQMFEDQrCrpP93CUrHTx7QEB
w3EB/RSZg8tjorTNxw5KIdMwc0U7h1WxLK1pBwZnevoanboE8rHmN+pLwnLANWEB
g8v30ZWypuUipfVBi0MNkR6HxSE=
=Pyes
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

It is also available somewhere here ( link1 ).

And you can email me at !chrosk@capaccess.org . Please inform me of any errors or things that I have left out of this page. Thanks.


Altavista

http://www.altavista.digital.com/

My favorite Internet Search Engine. It has the fastest response time I have ever seen, and the coverage is excellent, besides having the fewest advertisments of all the engines I have visited (and the best logo), but alas, it has gone MegaCommercial. The logo is gone, replaced with a monstrosity of colour, and advertisements abound, although it still has the best coverage I have experienced in a while.


Link to index file.