EatonBear's SpyCam

One is immediately struck by the immense rainbow-hued title graphic.  Although barely legible, the graphic manages to draw one's attention away from glittering starfield background.  In an attempt to escape the ugly title graphic by scrolling down, the user is assulted by an inexplicably placed graphic of "the evolution of man."   This image depicts man's progress from simple ape to simple computer geek.   Perhaps funny in another context, the image here confounds.  The only piece of content that I could find was located at the bottom of the page and included a small shrine dedicated to Enigma's hugely unsuccessful third album.  This site combines artistic cacophony and virtual lack of content to produce a wonderful example of uselessness on the web.

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Buzz TV

The site employs deceptive uselessness.  It is pretends to be a webcam dedicated to watching grass grow.  The author announces that he's planted some seed in a patch of dirt in his front lawn.  Watch, he proclaims, as a lush green lawn grows in real time!   Those are the only two sentences on the page.  I was intrigued by the total uselessness of a grasscam, and visted the site in great anticipation. You can imagine my chagrin when there was absolutely no evidence of grass, dirt or a lawn.  There is only an image of some guy with a huge head of hair.  I mean huge.   The hangover he is evidently suffering in the picture is complemented by the sick brown background and lime green text.  No doubt the image will be different by the time you check the site out.  Just try to imagine my disappointment:  I looked for the grass and found only a hungover chia-pet.

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Crash Cam

This site brings to mind the worst nightmare possible to imagine.  Think of being stuck in a room playing Twister with Richard Simmons, John Tesh, Martha Stewart and Yanni.  Yeah, it's that bad.  The midi jukebox presents harmonious renditions of great tunes such as Unchained Melody, Stand By Me, Everything I Do I Do It For You, I Just Called To Say I Love You, and every single Whitney Houston song in existence.  Brought a tear to my eye ... a tear of pain.  The author proves his webskill by using every known javascript goody on every page.  Load time on my cable modem was a minute and a half.   To say that images are overused on this site is to employ massive understatement.   The dull grey background of roses doesn't blend in well with the non-intuitive mixture of South Park icons and flowery imagery.  News flash:  Cherubs and Cartman don't mix.  I can't blast the site on content since there is plenty of stuff accessible through the South Park navigation system.  Check out the author's drawings and you might as well play with all the cgi polls and quizzes.  I was personally entertained for hours with the mindless javascripted cursors.  The webcam is part of this site for no apparent reason other then it's another "cool" thing to have.   At least the midi files don't repeat endlessly. 

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Mastah's Live Streaming Webcam

I'm not sure what to say about this webcam.  For starters, the webcam never worked for me.  Secondly, even if it had worked, only 5 people can watch at a time.   Oooh, big audience.  The other big problem I had with the site is exemplified by the title of the main page:  "The Pimp Zone" .  This classy nomer is the classiest thing about the site.  I'm not one to pigeonhole or categorize people (like hell I'm not), but this site makes me think of some really really white computer geek from Wisconsin pretending he's a brotha from the hood.  Why does he use phrases like "frontin to da upmost" and "checkn my shi' out" ?   For the convincing reason that "dey already mo den enough web pages wit propa english an shi'..."  Ah yes.  Of course.  When asked the question why his site exists, the mastah responds "mainly for my web cam so all yall can get yo peep on what mastah is doin 24-7."  Brotha's don't say yall, hicks say yall.  Where the hell is this guy from?  Ebonics aside, the site at least maintains a color scheme and is easy to navigate.  Try the "Virtual Pimp" and have fun using the Javachat to talk with the mastah.  Too bad the webcams didn't work yoh.

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Monks of Adoration Chapel Webcam

Okay, look.  I'm not gonna bash the monks.  But their webcam is totally useless.  The various times I visited the webcam, all I saw was an empty altar.  I wanted to hear them chanting or watch them doing some...um...doing some...monk...things.  Yunno, monk stuff.  The style is "vanilla" and hardly warrants the word style, but there is content out the ass...er...wahzoo.  Check out the realaudio music.  Very soothing.  The Brother who designed this site (not the brotha, the Brother) surely knows his HTML, as evidenced by the use of some DHTML between pages.  I wish he'd made the site a bit more pleasant to view.  Anyway.  Whatever you do, don't check the webcam at night.  I was surfing and decided to sneak a peek and had the crap scared out of me.   The monks had a ghostly image of Jesus superimposed on the webcam image.  I mean, I'd had a whisky or two and I thought I was being ushered into heaven. 

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Chris Tiberius of ChrisCam.com

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