By ROB PELKEY
Online Editor

Hey Rob,
Is it posible for me to take a picture from the net and make it my desktop background?
- Dolemite

Hey Dolemite,
Yes, you can.

If you have a PC running Windows 95, and you use Netscape: right-click on the image and select "Save as Wallpaper" from the menu that pops up.

Afterwards, right-click on a blank spot on the desktop and select "Properties..." from the pop-up menu. By selecting the "Wallpaper" tab in the dialog box that pops up, you can control the wallpaper settings - for instance, whether to tile or center the graphic.

If you have a Mac running Mac OS 8: hold the mouse button down on the graphic in Netscape, and select "Save Image to Disk..." from the pop-up menu.

After saving the file, open the Desktop Pictures control panel. Select "Pictures" from the list on the left side of the window, then click the "Select Picture..." button and open the picture file.

If you have a Mac running System 7: install Decor, this week's `Ware of the Week (see below). Save the picture file as above, then run the Decor application to select the picture to be displayed on your desktop.

- Rob.

Sites of the Week

The T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~gouge/twinkies.html

Put two science geeks and a case of Twinkies in a typical high-rise university dorm during finals week, and what do you get? This page shows the twisted results. Common dorm-room items are employed to put the cakes through a series of, er, "scientific" tests, including a "Rapid Oxidation Test", a "Gravitational Response Test", a "Radiation Test", and a Turing test (a test for sentience).

1001 Uses for Duct Tape
(Give or Take 851)
http://www.intranet.ca/~mdeabreu/ducttape.html

"Duct tape is like the Force: it has a light side, it has a dark side, and it holds the universe together." With that philosophy in mind, the Tim Allen/Bob Vila disciples behind this site present an anthology of ways to make the world better one roll at a time: "Great retreading for worn-out, shredded tires." "Patch up the hole in the ozone layer." "Tape your TV to the ceiling above your bed so you can watch it while lying down." "Cheap, ultra-effective toilet paper." "Put a little cologne on a strip and hang it in your car - instant air freshener."

Brittanica Online
http://www.eb.com:180/

Most people on campus seem to be unaware of the fact that Bates has a subscription to the online edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. In addition to a searchable, full-text version of the encyclopedia, the site includes an online Merriam-Webster dictionary.

I find this site is perfect for quickly looking up mysterious words or concepts, especially when you can't seem to find that dictionary or desk encyclopedia under those mountainous piles of papers and dirty socks strewn about your room.

Note that Brittanica Online is only accessible from subscribing sites (like Bates), and may not work for accesses from elsewhere.

Mac OS Rumors
http://www.macosrumors.com/

Mac fanatics, take note: this site brings you a daily dose of major news and industry rumors from within Apple and around the Mac computing world. Stories speculate on future industry moves, and offer sneak peeks at forthcoming hardware and software; sections of the site track progress on Apple's upcoming system software releases, including the ground-breaking Rhapsody operating system.

It's produced by Ryan Meader, a 20-year-old Falmouth resident who essentially skipped college to run one of the most popular Mac websites instead - like Tiger Woods' meteoric rise to dominance in the PGA, his story gives one the impression that one could be doing better things with one's life than killing time and brain cells towards a college degree. (Pardon me, that's my scorching case of senioritis doing the talking.)

This is one of the few sites I read every day; though Meader's rumor-based reports can be way off the mark with regard to what eventually materializes, it's an interesting and enjoyable read.

The Alternative Dictionaries
http://www.notam.uio.no/~hcholm/altlang/index.html

Now you too can spew obscenities in over 80 languages. My personal favorite is, in Afrikkans: "sit jou kop in die koei se kont en wag tot die bul jou kom holnaai." Translation: "put your head in a cow's vagina and wait until a bull penetrates your anus." A must for the international traveller.

'Ware of the week

Decor
by Francios Pottier; shareware, $10
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~fpottier/mac-soft.html.en

Decor is a program/system extenson combo that lets you display pictures in the background on your System 7 Mac's desktop. Handy for replacing that green pine-needle background with something a little more interesting, like panoramic pictures of the Rockies. Decor reads GIF, JPEG, and PICT files, and can choose at random from a set of background images. Note: at press time, the above address for the author's website was unreachable. You can also download the software from the Info-Mac HyperArchive; go to http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive.html and search for "decor".