“Serial Experiments Lain” is an Anime series consisting of 13 parts called layers.

The protagonist is Lain, a 13 year old girl, that at first doesn’t know anything about computers and doesn’t care about them, either. She begins to use her computer when her classmates tell her about a mysterious e-mail they all got. Gradually she dives deeper and deeper into a network called “The Wired”. She finds out that somehow there is a counterpart of her in “The Wired”.

This series - produced some time before the first Matrix movie - explores the same grounds as the Matrix but in totally different fashion. The series doesn’t try to answer all questions it asks and its conclusions are more logical than the ones of the Matrix movies. While Matrix is primarily an action film trilogy, Lain is a sometimes melancholic series with philosophic aspects.

I liked watching this series very much and recommend it to anyone.

Sebastian once showed me Ian’s Shoelace Site. Back then I thought it was funny and an example of what curious sorts of sites you can find on the web.

Some weeks ago I returned to that site and actually tried out Ian’s Secure Knot. You have to get used to it. At first it’s a bit of fumbling around with the shoe laces, but after a while it’s one of those hundreds of routines you execute daily without thinking about it. And this knot really works. Since I began tying my shoes this way I have no problems with loose shoe laces.