These are Links

utilities for making the internet (and/or world) less annoying, one website at a time...
Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function...its like a little chunk of javascript that you can carry around with you and run BEFORE a given page is displayed. here are some of my favorite scripts:
BetterTube-- I think that YouTube is one of the greatest resources available on the internet, if you'd rather be watching TV. "I wanna see that time that Devo played "Satisfaction" on SNL, right now!" Boom, there it is (was...deleted for copyright violation). I don't mind the ads, i can ignore them as well as anyone. But I'd sure like it if there were no user comments. The concept of allowing users to leave comments is good in theory, as it fosters discussion and can help correct errors in the original article. BUT, it also gives idiots an equal footing to contribute crap. and nowhere is this is more evident than in the comments section of youtube. everytime I see someone write something along the lines of "OMG LOL UR FagZ n MAd SkillZ hehe" it makes a part of my brain fall off, and i get depressed. BetterTube resizes the videoclip, deletes ALL user comments, and allows the user to download the video if need be. Best of all, it doesn't just work on youtube--v5.00 currently supports 44 different video websites!
BoingBoing.net comment interceptor Same idea as the YouTube thing, for the opposite reason. Someone named Crash created a Greasemonkey script to make certain users' comments invisible. I just edited the script to ditch ALL users' comments.
Snopes.com Snopes is the antidote for well meaning (or, well, dumb) folks who forward stupid emails warning you of impossible viruses or silly urban legends. Very impressive compilation of pretty much every sort of urban legend, tactfully debunked, with citations. I kind of wish that visiting the site didn't leave irritating pop-ups from Casale Media on my desktop on closing the browser, but i suppose the Snopes people gotta eat, too...
The Straight Dope "Fighting ignorance since 1973 (It's taking longer than we thought!)", indeed. Very entertaining and informative.
This to That --Because people have a need to glue things to other things...what to use to attach (this) to (that).
Still Tasty -- How long will your favorite beverage or food stay safe and tasty? What's the best way to store it? The ultimate shelf life guide.
Animal Webcams at the National Zoo -- collection of webcams at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. My favs are the naked mole rat cam and the octopus cam. i've wasted whole mornings just watching these...
Chinese Jet Pilot oh boy, this is great. Basically the website for the Chinese Jet Pilot radio station on 365Live, there's plenty more to look at here. Check out the "Diversions" section: Ray Harryhausen Creature List (with vid clips), found photos, Randomly generated science fiction movies, much more!

electronics suppliers, surplus and otherwise...
The Electronic Goldmine surplus electrical/electronic/mechanical/other components. some of this is pretty arcane. some of its a little pricey, but it'd be tough to find some of this stuff elsewhere.
Alltronics all kinds of good stuff. decent prices, too.
Marlon P. Jones & Associates kits, some electronic components, but mostly larger building blocks, like power supplies and test equipment.
BG Micro kits and components. seems to carry a lot of the same stuff as mpja. good prices.
American Science and Surplus surplus electronic components, lab gear, telescopes, kits of all types. I'm lucky to actually have an AS&S store in town here, but much like the online version, its usually not good to go here looking for a specific item. But for browsing purposes, its fantastic. A 10-pak of UV-reactive plastic spiders for $2? Right on!
Small Bear Electronics lots of really hard to find electronics, mostly geared toward guitar effects components. I don't know where they find this stuff, cuz a lot of it isn't being made anymore.
Mouser one of the big dogs of electronics supply. good stuff, great prices, good customer support.
Digikey if Mouser doesn't have it, look here. *slightly* pricier than Mouser, but just as good re: selection and customer support.
Jameco my profs seemed to prefer Jameco to mouser and digikey, for some reason. good selection, usually pricier than the other two.

Synth DIY stuff
Cat Girl Synth Ken Stone designs really great modules, from "building block" type stuff like power supplies, VCAs, and LFOs all the way up to Super Psycho LFOs and Bi-N-Tic Filters. He does a good job of explaining how they work, and also sells high-quality PCBs.
Music From Outer Space Ray Wilson designed and sells (PCB for) the awesome "Sound Lab", an all-in-one, easy to build complete synthesizer. Also available: 1V/Octave keyboard driver, various filters, and the nifty "Noise Cornucopia"!
Synth DIY with PIC microprocessors Tom Wiltshire's well documented ADSR and LFO projects, both built around the cheap but powerful PIC16F684 chip. I'm sorta surprised there isn't more of this sort of thing going on. Maybe I should get on that.
PAIA Electronics Synth, and musical in general, DIY starts here. Very high Bang/Buck ratio. I learned how to solder by putting together PAIA's Fatman, 9700 series modular, and Vocoder kits (all of which are in this picture)...
Synthaholic's Electronic Music Site Scott G. has practiced (and developed) every Fatman mod known to humankind, and they're all documented here. also, some very useful information for analog design in general!
TonePad schematics and boards for cloning effects pedals. I'm gonna build me a Small Stone phase shifter someday...
The Electronic Peasant A site dedicated to building cool synth gear out of recycled junk. I've been a fan since I stumbled upon his ribbon controller project, simple enough that *i* could build it. and now doug blows my mind with his new banjo controller project! Holy Smokes!
Experimentalists Anonymous This site contains TONS of schematics and notes on various effects pedals, synth gear, and midi devices in their archives. Also contains a very useful spec sheet collection.

"Acoustic" DIY instruments: I use the quotes because some of these are amplified...basically I mean homemade instruments that *aren't* synths...
Cigar Box Nation everything you could ever want to know about Cigar Box Guitars, violins, banjos, and Diddly Bows. Plans, discussions, forums, videos, etc. I had no idea how developed this little subculture is. A really great site!
Ted Crocker talks about wiring pickups: One of the discussion groups from the cigarboxnation site, wherein Ted Crocker describes how he winds pickups, and answers questions.
Folkurban all kinds of good stuff...PVC woodwind and percussion instruments, guitar effects. etc. This used to be on geocities, so I was glad to see it make the transition to its own website after gc bit the dust.

Heroic Engineering-type People: The EE field isn't really known for artistic expression and creativity. These are folks who inspired me while i was struggling thru my EE undergrad, and still inspire me today.
Grant Richter What kinda lunatic gives up a promising career as a "real" engineer to design synth modules which are 30 years ahead of their time? My world is sure better for it. also see here for Grant's SDIY research.
Leah Buechley. Leah is a PhD student at University of Colorado at Boulder. Her areas of interest include electronic textiles and interactive sculpture. I first found out about her work while I was trying to put my ill-fated "game of life" project together...check out Leah's "Game of Life" T-shirt!
Dr. Mabuse...making Random Voltage Generators fun again! Also well known for being the coolest head in the room when cooler heads need to prevail...
Lady Ada...co-designer of the awesome X0xb0x (TB303 clone). She did her masters work at MIT in "social defense mechanisms". examples of this are a pair of glasses that darken whenever a television is in view, and a portable cell-phone free zone. Engineering school would have been fun with more folks like this around.

Funny Stuff ...daily sanity preservation
Look at this awesome dog
xkcd I really like this web comic, set in a strange universe where Unix admins, physicists, and Curt Halsey collide.
Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke "Marmaduke" is a horrible fucking comic strip, and creator Brad Anderson is such a terrible writer that very frequently, the daily strip doesn't even make sense. Fortunately, we have Joe Mathlete to explain them. Summarizing this has got to be a soul-crushing experience, so i don't blame Joe that his heart really isn't in this anymore...here's one from the good old days: "Brad Anderson, everything you create is cancer and madness!"
Nietzsche Family Circus pretty much the only way to make Bil Keane funny.
Garfield Minus Garfield Would the Garfield strip be improved much by simply removing Garfield from each frame? Oddly, yes. I was a little disturbed to discover recently that Jim Davis is a big fan of this site.
FAIL Blog sure, there are about 45 different sites called "fail blog", and most of the "fails" revolve around dick jokes and people getting hurt in stupid ways, and i find it as annoying as you do when people say "Fail!" or "Epic Fail!", but dammit, some of these are really funny.
You Damn Kid The Comic Strip for grownups about being a kid.

otherwise amusing and/or interesting
minuscule--a series of shorts from France about bugs. neat combination of CGI and "real world" footage. The link here is to one of the clips on youtube...a whole bunch of others are linked from there. the official page is here, though its all in French.
Mars Attacks!--archive of the infamous 1962 trading card set, along with a handful never released until 1994. why do i get a kick out of trash like this? Beats me...
The Wandering Jew FAQ--another one of those folklore things I find fascinating.
The Wilhelm Scream fascinating history of my favorite sound effect.

me me me i've been making little html pages here and there since the mid-90's, and in the process have managed to say/post some amazingly stupid things. Back then I was operating under the mistaken belief that i was both hilarious and some kinda genius. Fortunately I got over *that*. In the interest of decreasing my "Internet footprint" and regaining some dignity, I've been slowly stomping these little missives out as I find them. i rather regret that whole livejournal thing--I think my life only made for good reading when it was a complete trainwreck...once my life started moving in a positive direction, it was no longer all that interesting to read about (tho, this is true of most folks, but don't tell them I said so). I was hesitant for a long time to ditch my myspace page (actually, that's not my page...its some other "Lord Kelvin"...I never lived in Puerto Rico), as I managed to land an awesome wife because of it.
FWIW: Eventually i did get around to deleting that myspace page, but for purely documentary purposes, there is a copy saved here.

oh, and here's the esvc page, this multi-media extravaganza collective I'm a part of...