I’m writing this during our lack of electricity and other civilized things we have become used to. I miss the Internet the most – except maybe for heat! Anyway, I went to the Library to research these sites, but couldn’t spend a lot of time on each of them. Hope you enjoy this strange mix.

FUN LITTLE GAME

Try to park this car. Use the four arrows on your keyboard, and the space bar for the brake. This is addictive! Also harder than it looks. Requires Flash player. http://www.107.peugeot.co.uk/peugeot.swf

ADVICE FOR FOLKS OVER FIFTY

This is a fun site about growing old. I’m sure you’ve seen parts of this elsewhere, but some were new to me. http://www.sticksite.com/oldfolks.htm

COOL TEXT

If you like to play around with fancy text, be sure to check this one. It has great glowing letters! Logos, animated fonts, even some on fire! You can make your words make an impression as they glow, pulsate, even burn! There are lots of fonts to choose from, too, and you get to choose the size of your letters. You create what you want and then download it as a .gif file. http://www.cooltext.com

PLACE THE STATE

This is an online puzzle that will really tax your knowledge of geography. The program puts up states at random and you have to place them on a blank map. The coastal states are easy, but the middle is almost impossible!

SUPPLY THE TEXT, IT GUESSES THE SEX

Watch in amazement as The Gender Genie analyzes text and then predicts whether the author is a man or a woman. Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Genie uses a simple algorithm to feign its psychic powers. I tried to trick it, but got a slightly higher female score than male. Don’t know how it works, but it’s fun. The longer the page you write, the more accurate it’s supposed to me. I wrote only about fifty words and it was still right! http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html