“Every item on JumbleTown is FREE to Take.”

It’s a set of forums where people post items they don’t want. You contact them and arrange to collect it. That’s it.

Obviously, I have no idea as to the quality of the stuff being given away, but at a glance there seems to be the odd item of interest. And obviously a lot of items of interest to other people judging by the amount of stuff which is now ‘Taken’ rather than ‘Available.

A couple of items I noticed (still available at time of writing!):

• An old Roland 16 channel unpowered mixing desk (Ballina).
• Excercise Walker (Cork)
• Excercise Bike and Tradmill (Dublin)

What a great idea.

UbuWeb functions as a distribution center for hard-to-find, out-of-print and obscure materials, transferred digitally to the web.

UbuWeb has no need for money, funding or backers. Our web space is provided by an alliance of interests sympathetic to our vision. Donors with an excess of bandwidth contribute to our cause. All labour and editorial work is voluntary; no money changes hands. Totally independent from institutional support, UbuWeb is free from academic bureaucracy and its attendant infighting, which often results in compromised solutions; we have no one to please but ourselves.

UbuWeb posts much of its content without permission; we rip out-of-print LPs into sound files; we scan as many old books as we can get our hands on; we post essays as fast as we can OCR them. UbuWeb is an unlimited resource with unlimited space to fill. It is in this way that the site has grown to encompass hundreds of artists, hundreds of gigabytes of sound files, books, texts and videos.

They have stuff like this seven minute long feedback loop by the Velvet Underground, a couple of films of Sam Beckett’s work, recordings of William Burroughs, and loads of other stuff… I just picked a few obvious ones, but there’s loads of stuff like Man Ray, Duchamp and god knows how many artists/poets/writers who I never heard of. Go have a look, it’s an impressive resource!

From their FAQ:

Can I use something posted on UbuWeb on my site, in a paper, in a project, etc.?
Sure. We post many things without permission; we also post many with things with permission. We therefore give you permission to take what you like even though in many cases, we have no received permission to post it. We went ahead and did it anyway. You should too.

I have no idea what the image is, but it’s from the site.

Check out 10 x 10.

From the site:

10×10™ (’ten by ten’) is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour, 10×10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10×10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life.

10 x 10 grabs the RSS feeds of some news sources and every hour it takes what it perceives to be the most important words, along with the images associated with those words.

It then serves up a grid of 10×10 images and words in a very nifty flash interface that is cute to explore and check out the news stories.

You can also browse through the history. It’s been around a while, but I only just found it!

If you don’t already regularly check out TCAL.net you really should. Todays excellent posts over on TCAL include:

The amazing staining cup - specially designed to stain in a pattern over time.

Henry Rollins Rant on Freedom and the Internet

New Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trailer.

All posted by Danger. What a guy.