All off-site links will open in a new window.
Cell phone compatibility of off-site links cannot be guaranteed.
In this edifice of www.brumm.com, I have attempted to style outside links a bit differently. They are organized into categories, and rather than just showing a link with little or no comment (the easy route), I have tried to be more informative, and at least explain why I like the site, or give the site's own description if I feel I cannot write anything more useful than that.
I am not a really regular big web surfer, but still have, through the years, accumulated a number of bookmarks to places online I feel are either informative, useful, and/or fun. These encompass entire web sites, or specific pages within a site. Many of the choices will be interesting only to a limited audience. There are fewer political links than there would have been earlier, for my personal politics of today do not fit easily into any defined category, and I feel that no political groups really do an adequate job of addressing the limitations of a hard-nosed reality we all should address. If one defines "the personal as the political," which was a concept in the 1970s, many links still do have political overtones.
A composite index ("Link Index") on the right side navigation element above (it's sort of more or less right of the center) should help you get quickly to any specific link you may be looking for. The other links above in that same element are for the various categories of links, taking you to the top of that categories' page.
- Information on these links
- Help
Help
(links' pages)
Please report any problems you might encounter to me using this email link, or the link on the email icon at the bottom of any page's (lower) navigation bar.
The organization of the links pages is, I feel, fairly straightforward. The main navigation index appears on the main links page, as well as the other links' subcategories' pages. (It does not appear on the Item Index page). Links to the subcategories' pages are available on the upper right navigational toolbar:
The "item index" would be useful if you were searching for a specific link by person or category.
- brumm.com Site Information
The History of www.brumm.com
(Site Information)
The latest incarnation/redesign of the www.brumm.com web site was begun in September 2010.
It was a surprise to me that I even have attempted this. After some rather dire health concerns and major surgery in 2008, I haven't felt like attempting anything particularly time consuming and difficult, certainly not as stressful as web page design tends to become.
As the last couple of years have progressed, I do feel better, and there are so many things that are relatively new and fun to attempt with web pages. So I again got the idea to attempt this insanity. Many of these new things do things I would have liked to have done years ago, but the constraints and reality of the internet were much harsher then.
www.brumm.com was begun in 1996, and first hosted on a server in Fremont, California, at zoom.com. Later I transferred the domain to he.net (short for Hurricane Electric). Still later it was on a late friend's server space that she and her husband leased at he.net. When they decided to dump that expense, I tried a cheap and dubious hosting service for a few months. It proved to be a big mistake! My pages got hacked, and they wanted more to fix the "damage" so I could get back up and running than they were going to charge me for rental over 3 years. I moved again in 2008 to sonic.net, in Santa Rosa, California. It may cost a bit more, but it is not a fly-by-night operation like so many cheap web hosting services really are.
I am very much "pleased as punch" with sonic.net. They are one of the rare companies that have managed to stay around (at least) since the mid 1990s, remaining un-swallowed-up by the rush of big corporations into the internet fray. Sonic.net gets high customer satisfaction ratings. Indeed, I've only needed to call them once, and the tech support I got then was also excellent. This sounds like a commercial, but it isn't meant to be. So much of what passes for corporate culture these days is such a disaster, it's just a pleasant surprise to find oneself happy about any of them.
In The Blue Phase version of my web site, certainly as "useful" as they all have been, I hope to include a few things I put away in the back closet in the more recent versions. I want to dust some of them off, update, and re-upload. Probably that will happen over the course of time. I am also including, of course, a few things I have regularly kept going, and new versions of things as well. I hope you enjoy it. As I tend to have a fairly unique perspective on things at times, perhaps it will inspire people to consider some alternatives they never thought of before.
Report any errors or difficulties to me at brumm@brumm.com. Use that link or else the email icon on the (bottom) navigation bar on any page.
- brumm.com Site Information
About these Pages
Links Pages
http://www.brumm.com/links/index.html
http://www.brumm.com/links/friends-links.html
http://www.brumm.com/links/genealogy-links.html
http://www.brumm.com/links/html-links.html
http://www.brumm.com/links/index-links.html
http://www.brumm.com/links/like-links.html
http://www.brumm.com/links/music-links.html
http://www.brumm.com/links/predicament-links.html
(The various pages that lead to off-site links)
Many standard links to sites that everybody knows about will not be found on this list. If you haven't discovered Youtube yet, you must be an awfully new Internet user. My own surfing habits don't frequently involve returning to a lot of sites once I have seen them. I don't regularly read any blogs, but do hit upon some fairly more often than most I guess that indicates a trend....
If any of the links on this page do not work, I would be happy for you to report them to me at the email link on the bottom navigational tool bar.
- Copyright
- Outside Links
- My Short Biography
Dennis W. Brumm
Age: 59
(September 2011, while redesigning this site)
Height: I once was 6' 4½", but in the past years I've shrunk about an inch. When I was very young and silly, I wanted to be over 7 feet tall.
Shoe size: 13, though, since the Chinese have begun to make all our shoes, it seems to have increased to 14, at least sometimes. Some maternal cousins have upwards of 15 and 16.
Weight: Recently shrinking. If I write a rant on the American diet (and its sub-cults) sometime, I will explain what I've been up to.
Colors: Blue eyes, but sometimes bloodshot while designing web pages. Hair, grayer than ever, originally blondish, then brownish.
Family: My parents are both dead (my mother since 1967, my father in 1986). No siblings, so I'm an "orphan" these last 25 years.
Friends: I have many, and many good ones.
First memory: Apparently before age one. My mother had a bout will Bell's palsy shortly after I was born, and I remember seeing her face a bit "contorted." When I mentioned this once to my father, he informed me I couldn't possibly remember that, as I was too young. But, despite his naysaying attitude, I do. I remember bits and pieces of a 3rd birthday party, when my Uncle Paul brought me a used toy tractor to ride (like a tricycle) on the sidewalk. He'd taken off the rust and painted it, and fixed it up nicely. Many other very youthful memories.
Last memory: Typing the word "memories" in the above paragraph.
Where I've lived: New London, Iowa, until age 18, then Ames, Iowa, until age 25. and finally San Francisco, California, since then (1978). I've lived in the same apartment in San Francisco since 1980.
Travel: I had a touch of the travel bug when I was in my 20s. I went to Europe twice. I haven't been on an airplane since 1990, so I guess the bug was exterminated. Nowadays I am not the biggest fan of the airline industry. Global warming and all...
Health: I was a sick kid, getting a lot of colds, ear infections, as well as the usual childhood diseases. I missed a lot of school some years. By the time I was a teenager, this improved greatly, and I rarely get sick now. However, as I have survived 2 aortic dissections (see the "Bad News" Section), and since I have a titanium aortic valve and some plastic arteries, I wouldn't say I'm the healthiest human on the planet.
Hobbies: I spend a lot of time on my computer. It shows. I began an interest in genealogy in about 2000. It meshed nicely with the computer interest. I studied piano as a kid and some in college and have a great interest in music. Composed some for awhile, and was obsessed with making video once upon a time. I have one cat left (there were three just a few years ago); he is not a hobby but my good friend.
Other interests: I have an interest in where culture is going, and why. Additionally I have dabbled lately in evolutionary psychology, but I am not "adept" in knowledge of it.
Education: New London (Iowa) High School, graduated in 1970. Attended Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. No degree, all sorts of things happened during that period (see the gay liberation section of "Schools.")
Work: I have been on disability since May 1998 from the aforementioned aortic condition. Not working has kept me alive. I previously held a number of interesting jobs, ranging from janitor to chemical technician to the middle manager boss of ten folks in the accounting department of a produce company. I didn't expect or really want an early retirement, but thus crumbled the cookie. We can't always get or have what we want, even if your spiritual advisor tries to convince you otherwise.
Irritations: These change periodically. Presently they are cell phones in public (disruption of the commons), cell phones regardless of location (to some extent all digital addictive media, though I am an addict as well). I get pretty angry sometimes at the entitlement felt/exhibited by those who push baby carriages on local sidewalks and stores (baby carriages are the SUVs of the sidewalk). Often I get irritated by those who accept unfounded myth in the face of all evidence, and the rationalizations they make in the supposed reasoning of their beliefs. However, I have come to believe this latter trait is probably a natural human phenomena, evolved as such, and try to just let my irritation go about it whenever possible. I can still feel some astonishment without the irritation and get along better with the world.
- Information on these links
