I've been meaning to post more lately, but alas life gets in the way. Regardless, I'm posting this selection of image related links which I've gotten a kick out of in the last week. I've always been fond of the proverb "A picture is worth 1000 words", and these images (or link to images) hopefully save us several thousand trips through spell checker.

First, a protester of the US invasion of Iraq, offers a jaded opinion via a protest sign of his own stance on the war.

I do have to follow up the aforementioned link with this link, which gives a vivid picture of the damage of the Iraq War.

The most interesting pictures of Seb Przd, and I'm going to spoil it for you! Somehow the artist has been able to apply what I call (and I borrow this from the old Kai's Power Tools plugin from Photoshop) "vortex tiling". Very Creative!

When I was a young fellow, I was always amazed at the sights of the Aurora Borealis (the "Northern Lights") that would appear in the evening and early morning skies over Alaska. And it would seem that photographer Dave Brosha was also, and has provided us all with this great collection of photographs. He is now the only one out there, as a quick "Live Search" reveals other great collections by Jan Curtis, Dick Hutchinson and Rolf Hicker.

British photographer Ami Barwell gives a glimpse into the public lives of some famous rock 'n roll musicians via her collection.

And lastly, this collection entitled "The Best" from flicker.com pro photographer "Stuck in customs". At first it may looks like these photos are actually drawn images, but I beg you to look a little closer. Given the precision of the lighting, I'd have to get a Photoshop filter, but despite that these are just simply gorgeous pictures!

Today, we have just some time killer links, starting with:

1. A Collection Of Useful .NET Functions C#
2. The iTunes Store RSS Feed Generator and the Top 5 Albums feed
3. From TechDirt: If You're Going To Kill Your Spouse, You Probably Shouldn't Google 'How To Commit Murder'
4. From USC: Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design
5. Still Sick, Still Wrong: Ten years of South Path by RollingStone.com
6. Murder, They Blogged from Time.com
7. Word of the Day: Fealty

In the world of band press releases (or at least limited blog postings), this article about my brother's band, "Wupt" from the Anchorage Daily News, is a hilarious read. I have to agree that maintaining a sense of humor in this day and age is crucial to one's sanity, and how could you not love a band whose tag line goes like this: "Wupt, starts with 'W' and ends with 'Yes, Dear'!".

"Some guys play poker or build ships out of matchsticks. This is our ship out of matchsticks," said vocalist James Davies, whose day job is working with air cargo.

Maybe the guys can get their collective balls back for a short northwest tour this summer!

Dudes and Dudettes, I got this mail in my junk box at work. I can't believe the testimonials. I'm not going to post the link for this product, but I did have to share the spectacular, and "real people" quotes.

"Satisfied Customers Testimonials"

Jimmy, 47, Male, UK - "What you claim is wrong. My sperm volume didn't increase by 500%. It increased by ZILLION %"

Sharon, Female, UK - "My husband decided to try SPUR-M, and the results are great! I just love it when it starts spurting out!"

Jose, 29, Male, USA - "I cannot believe how good my semen has become. It is a thick blob that shoots like a rocket. My wife says she can feel the force with which my semen hits her inside, which earlier she couldn't even feel. I don't know about other customers but I am lovin it."

M. Rosenberg, 41, NYC, USA,41 - "I always dreamt of shooting like a porn star and I can do it now, my girl cannot eat as much as I can shoot. My wife and I had been looking for a product to help with boosting male fertility. I am happy to say that test results have improved in the time I have been using Spur-M (2 months). Thank you for your assistance, and for the supply of Spur-M"

The Windows Portal blog has some great tricks and tips for Windows XP & Vista users. Among the pointers listed on this page, #7 is probably the most helpful for developers and IT professionals when troubleshooting weird scenarios on Windows Machines: "You can at last get rid of tasks on the computer from the command line by using 'taskkill /pid' and the task number, or just 'tskill' and the process number. Find that out by typing 'tasklist', which will also tell you a lot about what's going on in your system." And #16 is also a perf tweak that I've been using for years: "The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to appear, but you can speed things along by changing the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/MenuShowDelay from the default 400 to something a little snappier. Like 0."

DevShots.com pokes a little fun at Google, by using one of the many Google.com query string parameters to create a custom branded Search page. Just click the "title" area on the page, and it turns into an editable field where you can enter whatever text string you like, and the page will then create a custom Google-like branded search page (which actually takes you to Google, if you use it). This is actually sort of cool, and it's amazing what things you can find when you are looking for resources or e-learning.

Music Link of the Day: Song titles containing the word "motherfucker". Hmm. "cocksucker" is way less popular. I guess I'll stick with Thin Lizzy. Maxim Online also has this photo gallery of the "Sexiest Album Covers". And there is this little Geek-Rap diddy, with full lyrics!

And for those of you with Windows Vista, a great collection of desktop wallpapers can be found at this WordPress site. Snap.com also has a cool new link preview widget for sites like mine. If you "mouse over" any of the link here on Zillinois, you should see a small preview window. Probably one of the better DHTML (or AJAX, if I must say) widgets I've seen, that doesn't require anything more than client side javascript. Well, I must admit that the Windows Live Search gadget is a well done piece also.

I'm digging digital artist Paul Cooklin's Site also.

"Will Smurf for Food"

And more seriously, this headline from MSNBC.com "Justice Department: FBI acted illegally on data". Do I get to say "I told you so" yet? Well, do I?