August 22nd, 2001 - I've decided to give these old pages a new home. The content is old, but perhaps it is still useful.
![[Al's Place]](gfx/nonevil.gif)
Hello once again, and welcome to my Roots of Non-Evil page. Since all things should not be negative, this page is in response to my Roots of All Evil page which is much less positive than this page will attempt to be.
Below you will find my former Non-Evil, WebTV, which is still very cool, but since Microsoft has apparently purchased the WebTV network, I'm not so sure I like WebTV anymore. So, let's move on to a new Non-Evil.
Allow me to point you in the direction of some very interesting drink products:
Coming soon! A new caffeine flavored water beverage, AND a coffee/cola beverage! Ack!
Aqua Java - while in the grocery store today I found yet another caffeine water product, this time claiming to be Mountain Spring Water. Will wonders never cease?
Jolt Cola - with "All the Sugar and Twice the Caffeine", Jolt stands out as a true classic. Jolt recently celebrated it's 10th Anniversary and introduced new graphics for their packaging. They also dropped the "All the Sugar" part of their original slogan some time back for some reason. (Jolt uses pure sugar as opposed to "fructose/corn sweetener" like most other colas use.) The legal limit for caffeine in a soda is 72mgs. Jolt hovers right around 71, while sodas like Mountain Dew barely touch 50, and other popular sodas hit the 35 mark on average. For those of you who think Mountain Due is high caffeine, check again. At least one brand of orange soda has more caffeine than the Dew. If anyone has figures on the new Surge product from Coca-Cola, let me know how it stacks up.
Orbitz - rarely will you find a drink so totally unique that words barely describe it. Orbitz is probably the most interesting drink ever. Basically, they are clear colored fruit flavored drinks (such as Pineapple/Banana/Cherry/Coconut) with a rather unique gimmick. Suspened throughout the bottle are tiny gelatin balls that you can consume. They literally "defy gravity" as Ythey stay perfectly positioned floating in space. Trust me, you have to see this to believe it.
Krank2O - it's hard to take this item seriously, but I finally found some so I know it's a real product. Krank2O (K2O for short) is simply "crystal clear water and caffeine". I suppose this is for those bottled water drinking health nuts who need the extra energy. I haven't tried mine yet, since I generally detest bottled water, but I just couldn't resist stocking my fridge with these.
Water Joe - and to my suprise, the same evening I found Krank2O I found this. Water Joe is "the first natural artesian water with the caffeine kick of one up of Joe". Coffe, by volume, is much stronger caffeine-wise than Jolt is. If true, that would mean this bottle would pack more of a punch than Jolt. Amazing.
Blu Botol - out of the bunch, this is the only one without a web address on it's packaging. I really thought this was a joke when I first saw it, since it seemed they were promoting perfectly ordinary bottled water by talking about how neat it's "blue bottle" is. Well, it is a nice and nifty blue bottle, with a typical squirt sports-bottle type top, but what else is there to say about "natural spring water"? I list it here simply because I am not sure why it exists.
Fizzies - No home page here, but I just had to try this. Fizzies are little Alka Seltzer(tm)-looking tablets that you drop into ice water and they flavor it, similar to Kool-Aid(tm) but with a slight carbination effect. Not bad, and certainly alot easier than mixing all the powdered flavor with all that sugar!
All and all, I find my beginning collection of "alternative drink products" to be fairly diverse. There are a few others I'd like to check out, and I invite those interested to explore the links found at the Wet Planet Beverages site, which contains Jolt, Blu Botol, K2O, and two others I haven't found yet. Also worth checking into are some of the contests to win product and promotional items found on these sights. Good luck, and let me know if you find anything else interesting.
A WebTV Home Page exists to explain what I am rambling about....
Rarely do I see something so impressive that I have to immediately go out and rave about it on my website. Well, okay, maybe that does happen from time to time, but this one is different. Well, okay, maybe it's not different, but it sure is NEAT...
I found out our local CompUSA had the WebTV unit on display, so I went down to take a look. And what a look it was!
For those of you who don't know, WebTV is a "standard" for delivering the World Wide Web to television sets. The custom hardware involves a 100mhz RISC processor, custom graphics and sound, 33.6 modem, and upgradeable on-board system memory so the software will never be out of date. If you are reading this, you obviously already have some access to the WEB, so why would you be interested in a WebTV box? The same reason I am...maybe.
I have another computer I use and enjoy, and my PC laptop seems to be used for nothing other than e-mail and web surfing. For playing games, I have a game console that blows away anything I've ever seen on a Pentium. With that said, it turns out this $300 WebTV box can surf the web (as well as handling e-mail) FASTER and BETTER than my 486DX4/75mhz laptop which has 20 megs of RAM, Windows 95 and the latest and greatest deluxe version of Netscape.
I played with the WebTV and walked through it's samples. As soon as I clicked on something using the wireless remote control, it dialed into the server. The graphics are beautiful! Once connected, it had some built in sights but I wanted to go see things I was used to seeing and see how well this thing stacked up. After finding out how to display the on-screen keyboard, I was soon on my way.
Side note: The on-screen keyboard is a pain! Try entering a long URL one character at a time. Ugh. However, you can buy a $79 wireless keyboard made just for the unit, or buy a cheap PS/2 PC keyboard and plug that in (which is what I would do).
My site pulled up and looked GREAT! Pictures, links, background images, graphics, all in place! Even my MIDI file played sounding way-better than the ESS688 audio chip in my laptop's CD-ROM drive. Even on a 14" color TV using standard RF hookup, it was mostly readable. I imagine the Super VHS output must be VERY good. I navigated around and all went very well and fast. When a MIDI is playing, and you go to the next site, the song "fades" rather than cutting abruptly. As graphics load in, they "fade" in - really slick. The entire interface is amazing in both looks and ease of use.
Side note: I visited my Virtual Disneyland Main Street site and it was more fluid than on Netscape. I checked out the official Disneyland site with it's large graphics and image maps. Worked GREAT! The WebTV specs claim it supports "most" Netscape and I.E. 3.0 extensions, but I did find a few things it didn't currently like (such as Apple QuickTime VR). Oh well - what it does do it does do well! All the tables, tags, borders, animated GIFs, music, etc., came through fine!
Now, if you already have a PC and aren't on the web, maybe investing in one of these for the whole family to use in the livingroom on the big screen might be a better choice. You subscribe to the WebTV network and get multiple e-mail accounts and unlimited access time. Even better than a desktop PC, the WebTV box can silently dial into the network periodically and check for e-mail, then light up on the front panel to let you know it's time to check! Cool.
I most certainly will be adding one of these to my gadget collection in the near future (I already have a VideoGuide, which is another GREAT TV toy). I think surfing the web from the comfort of my livingroom is going to be much nicer than sitting in front of a PC screen at a desk.
Go check one out. It's way-cool... Pity the network is now owned by one of the two evil empires.
