Some web sites I find
interesting, fun, informative ...or combinations of all three.

• Art  Updated: 1/8/09
• Bagpipe-related links on this page
• Computer-related  Updated: 1/7/09
• Contradance  Updated: 11/24/08
• Cooking (humorous)  Updated: 9/22/07
• Cooking (serious)
• Customer service info  Updated: 2/4/07
• Editorials  Updated: 1/8/09
• Environment  8/30/08
• Humor  Updated: 3/17/08
• Just for fun  Updated: 1/8/09
• Miscellaneous  1/7/09
• Music  Updated: 3/14/08
• Reference  Updated: 11/24/08
• Science-related  Updated: 1/8/09
• Videos  1/7/09

Art

• 25 Beautiful Macro Photos  11/24/08
• 50 Strange Buildings  11/24/08
• 50 Beautiful Examples of Tilt-Shift Photography  11/24/08
  From the website: “Tilt-shift photography is a creative and unique type of photography in which the camera is manipulated so that a life-sized location or subject looks like a miniature-scale model.” For more info, click here.
• “Caricatures of the Candidates”
  From The Washington Post. (Scroll down the page a little bit.) The political artist John Kascht describes “the inspiration behind his caricatures” of the major candidates in the 2008 primary elections for president. Seven videos, four to five minutes each. Interesting process; interesting analysis.
• Fireworks
• Homespun Magixx (“Papercraft models and such”)
• Industrious Clock
• Joseph Wu’s Origami Page
• Large-scale papercut art  1/8/09
• Sand art
• A sketch
• Spirograph  11/24/08
• String Spin Toy  8/30/08

Computer-related

• 7 reasons why HTML email is a bad thing
  Stop! Before sending me email that’s pretty—nice font, colors, bold face, italicized, and the like—read this. Thanks.
• Availabot
  This is actually pretty clever. I can see this being implemented in wood (the “puppet”), electromagnetic relay (the actuator), and silicon (the “smarts”) connected by USB. Wish I thought of it! Then again, I’m not an IMer. Watch the video.
• “Interface Hall of Shame”  1/7/09
  “The Interface Hall of Shame is an irreverent collection of common interface design mistakes. Our hope is that by highlighting these problems, we can help developers avoid making similar mistakes.”
• SpamCop
• Spam—CAUCE (The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email)
• Wooden USB memory sticks
  Why didn’t I think of this—and make millions?!
• Virus—CIAC (Computer Incident Advisory Capability)
  CIAC is part of the U.S. Dept of Energy. Unfortunately, this site’s virus lists and advisories are no longer updated, probably because the various anti-virus software vendors provide this info—complete and updated. This site has a page with links to those vendors’ websites. This site also has info about “Internet Hoaxes and Chain Letters.” Plus, this site has info about “high-risk vulnerabilities” to computers. This info is updated regularly.
• Vmths.com
  “Computer virus myths, hoaxes, urban legends, hysteria, and the implications.”

Contradance

What is contradancing?


• Contradance links worldwide
• a Contradance page
• Dance DB The Dance Database, by Ted Crane
• Dance Flurry Festival
  A wonderful “traditional music” weekend festival in Saratoga Springs, NY. Great music, great dancing (I go mostly for the contradancing), lots of jammin’, inexpensive, interesting workshops from teaching dancing to teaching calling to teaching music, and a wonderful group of people to hobnob with.
• the Dance Gypsy
• Kiran Wagle’s Contradance Page
• Men in Skirts FAQ
• Mill City Contra Dance (Manchester, NH)  11/24/08
• Monadnock Folklore Society
  Weekly (Nelson, NH), monthly (Peterborough, NH), and special dances and activities: Dates, times, pricing, directions, and such.
• NEFFA (New England Folk Festival Association)
• NEFFA Thursday Scout House contradances
  74 Walden St., Concord, MA; 7:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m.
• NEFFA Saturday Scout House contradances
  74 Walden St., Concord, MA; 8:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m.
• Seacoast New Hampshire Traditional Music & Dance (From Peter Yarensky)

Cooking (humorous)

• Cate’s Garage Sale Finds
• Company Cookbook
• Gallery of Regrettable Food
• Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974

Cooking (serious)

• Cooks Illustrated
• Epicurious.com
• RecipeSource
• Recipe*zaar
• Silver City Angling Club recipes (Aberdeen, Scotland)
• TopTastes.com

Customer service info

• Consumer electronics (CE) customer support from Techlore.com
  Site lists phone numbers and the web addresses (URLs) for company home pages, support pages, user manuals, service center listings, and FAQs, and support email addresses.
• gethuman.com
  Site lists phone numbers and procedures to get to a human being at customer “service” at various corporations, including automotive, credit card, finance, government, computer hardware and software, insurance, Internet, telecommunications, pharmacy, travel, and general shopping enterprises.
• Junk the Junk
  “How to piss off credit card companies and get away with it.”

Editorials

• Adbusters
• “Bush, Cheney Should Resign”
  MSNBC, Special Comment, 7/3/07: “Keith Olbermann questions Bush's actions in commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby.” Not exactly my style of oral presentation, but I firmly believe and support the argument, the accusations, and the editorial in general.
• “The Original Burning Bush Pocket Effigy Kit” and “The Burning Bush Pocket Effigy Kit for Demonstrators”
  Tough call: Is this art, editorial, or humor? Methinks: All of the above.
• “The Care and Feeding of The Press,” by the Internet Press Guild
  Required reading by all who claim to be public relations “professionals.”
• “The Cluetrain Manifesto” 95 Theses
  “We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings—and our reach exceeds your grasp.
       “...markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies....Most corporations, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.”
• Impeach Bush and Cheney (Website: AfterDowningStreet.Org)
  • “Resolutions Supporting Impeachment and Indictment—List of Those Introduced and Passed”
  • “Impeach FAQ”
  • “A Kit for Political Activism”
• The Kid From Brooklyn
  Same website as www.mikecaracciolo.com. If Andy Rooney swore, he might start sounding like Michael Caracciolo. Caracciolo’s site has dozens of videos of him editorializing on a variety of topics. He calls himself “a street guy”; yep, he’s coarse and foul, but also funny, topical, and often right on target.
• Memorial Ecosystems, a site about “natural burial”
  Okay. Maybe this link doesn’t belong in “Editorial,” except that I’m the one who’s editorializing. I like this idea. Would it be better to list this link under “Just for Fun”?
• Newt Gingrich's Class of ’94  11/24/08
• “Paul Newman Speaks Out Against Vietnam War (Flashback).” Time: 01:31.  1/8/09
• “Sarah Palin’s War on Science”  1/7/09
  By Christopher Hitchens in Slate.com, October 27, 2008. Subhead: “The GOP ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning.”
• “Ultimate guide to pairing alcohol and literature: Read, drink, and be merry”  1/7/09
  By Michelle Kerns in Examiner.com, October 20, 2008.
• “What is a Whole Community? A Letter to Those Who Care for and Restore the Land”
  By Peter Forbes from The Center for Whole Communities (Fayston, VT). Well-written and insightful, this paper argues for a more holistic approach to the conservationist movement, including a more far-reaching view of “the goal” based on values. Interestingly, this approach has everything to do with affecting and managing change, business and process reengineering, and catalyzing forces—issues found in more than just the environmental and conservationist movements.

Environment

• Ask Pablo. (Salon.com)  8/30/08
• Ask Umbra. (Grist.com)  8/30/08
• EarthTalk. (E Magazine.com)  8/30/08
• Global warming resolutions
  “Shareholder groups hit GM and Ford with global warming-related resolutions.”
• Green Latern. (Slate.com)  8/30/08
• The Green Life. (The Sierra Club)  8/30/08
• How clean is the electricity I use?. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)  8/30/08
  “Power Profiler will: Determine your power grid region based on your ZIP code and electric utility; compare the fuel mix and air emissions rates of the electricity in your region to the national average; dDetermine the air emissions impacts of electricity use in your home or business”
• Lights Out!
  Saturday, March 28, 2009, between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. local time wherever you are.

Humor

• Assisted Computing Facilities
• Color Pencils Reviewed
• Darwin Awards
• Dialectizer ... and... ValleySpeak
• Disturbing Search Requests
• Furby Autopsy
• Home for Brains A spoof on Amazon.com
• HotAIR: Annals of Improbable Research
• I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue
  “The perennial antidote to panel games... chairman Humphrey Lyttelton ensures that disorder prevails.” Click here for the “officially unofficial” website for ISIHAC.
• Last Page on the Internet... and... shutting off the Internet
• Peter Gilstrap/Jesus of the Week
• Jesus Dress Up!
• Less Obvious Laws of the Universe
• Music (sort of): “Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz” and “String Quartet No. 556(b) for Strings In A Minor (Motoring Accident)”
• My other VAX is a VAXbar
• Portable rotary phone
• Turn Off the Internet
• Stick Death
  Sick, warped, but funny....if you go for that sort of stuff. Large downloads.
• visit4info “Funny TV Ads, Adverts, TV Commercials”
• Warning Labels
• What American accent do you have?
  Thirteen easy questions. For me, the results were “spot on.” There are a bunch of other quizzes at this website, on interesting, important, and inane topics.
• The Yankee or Dixie Quiz
  Twenty easy questions (with information about each of your responses). My result: “49% (Yankee). Barely into the Yankee category.”

Just for fun

• Birthday calculator
  I particularly liked the statistic relating how many US ounces of water can be boiled by the number of candles on your birthday cake.
• Civics quiz  1/7/09
  I was surprised how well I did. I didn't pay much attention during “civics” class. (In my day that was “social studies” or “history.”) Two of my answers were stupidly wrong; I wasn’t paying attention. My score: 28 out of 33 answered correctly: 84.85%.
• Click Anywhere to Draw  1/8/09
• EarthCam Cam sites worldwide
• Do You Deserve Your High School Diploma?
• Find your Dewey Decimal Section  11/24/08
  Pull down “Quizzes.” There are other fun/whacky quizzes there as well.
• HEMA Department Store
  HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam. Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands. HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany. In June of this year, HEMA was sold to British investment company Lion Capital.
       Take a look at HEMA‘s product page. You can‘t order anything and it‘s in Dutch but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens...
• How Fast Are Your Reactions  6/16/08
  Test your reaction time with this special test. The Highway Code says the average driver's reaction time is 0.75 seconds, or 1 car length for every 10 mph.
• Ken’s Virtual Drumkit
• JigZone On-line jigsaw puzzle
• The MegaPenny Project... and... Smashed pennies
• The Million Dollar Home Page
  Wrote Steve, a college friend, “Why didn’t we think of that?” Read the FAQ.
• Online drum set
• The Pew News IQ Quiz  1/7/09
  “You correctly answered 9 out of the 10 possible questions, which means you did better on the quiz than 80% of the general public.” So much for an informed electorate. (Btw, in that one wrong answer, I overestimated how many casualties in Iraq.)
• Traveler IQ Challenge
• Visited states in the U.S.A.  11/30/08
  Create your own map of what states you've visited in the United States (or the world, or India). Here is my map.
• Wacky Uses of things
• Weird Place Names
  A “Spiegel Pub Quiz” from Spiegel Online International, publishers of Der Spiegel. My score: Two out of ten... wrong. I guess hitchhiking around Europe in 1981 paid off!
• What does your phone number spell?
• Yosemite webcam

Miscellaneous

• “15 Infamous Top Secret Bases & Compounds From Around the World”  1/8/09
  From Pro Traveler.
• Airline traffic simulation: Windows Media Player version or Quicktime version.  1/7/09
  “Here's a viewing of aircraft movements around the world in a 24-hour period... Amazing. Look how air traffic increases during daylight! And look at the North Atlantic highway: mostly eastwards at night and westwards during day light...”
• “Alarm Your Yard Sign to Prevent Theft & Vandalism.”  1/8/09
  By craigf in Daily Kos, October 18, 2008.
• “Behind the signs in Times Square.” Time: 04:05.  1/8/09
  By Jen Carlson in Gothamist, Arts and Events, June 4, 2008.
• “The Civil War In Four Minutes.” Time: 4:12 or so.  1/7/09
• “Dismantling the World's Largest Gantry Crane.”  1/7/09
  From Dark Roasted Blend, July 6, 2008.
• I-35W St. Anthony Falls Bridge  1/7/09
  This is the bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis that collapsed on August 1, 2007. The new bridge, detailed in this website, opened on September. 18, 2008. Click on “Construction Photos” and “Visualization,” at the very least.
• “Life of a Brown Paper Bag.” Time: 02:00.  1/7/09
  Seasons greetings from Albuquerque Convention & Visitor’s Bureau.
• “The Measure of a President.”  1/7/09
  By OPEN N.Y., a design studio, in The New York Times, October 6, 2008. Height and weight of presidential contenders.
• “The Worst Building in the History of Mankind.”  1/8/09
  By Eva Hagberg in Esquire, January 28, 2008.

Music

• Animusic “Pipe Dream”
• Old Time Radio
• Playa Cofi Jukebox
  An online jukebox with “The top 100 songs from the golden years of popular music—plus more of our musical heritage.”

Reference

• All My Faves (“a visual directory that includes the best sites in each category”)  6/16/08
• Archive of Misheard Lyrics (Kissthisguy.com)
• BuzzWhack (“dedicated to demystifying buzzwords”)
• Choose to Save
  Check the calculators on this site. They’re not just about saving for retirement. There are calculators for financing an automobile, college, and leasing equipment; starting a business; home equity and home mortgages; life insurance; “What will it take to become a millionaire”; and stock evaluation.
• Currency Converter
• Dictionary & thesaurus web reference tool
• Do It Yourself household hints
• Dow Jones Industrial Averages since 1974  11/24/08
• eHow Site explains how to do things
• GPS info
• Laurence Hutton Collection of Life and Death Masks  11/24/08
• Merriam-Webster Dictionary
• Radio-Locator
• OneLook Dictionaries
• Roget’s Thesaurus
• Salary/Relocation Calculator
• This to That Info about glueing things; uh, glueing this to that
• Ultimate Silicon Valley Slang

Science-related

• Acme Klein Bottles
• Astronomy Picture of the Day  1/8/09
  Beautiful pictures. For example, on July 20, 2008, “A Dark Sky Over Death Valley.”
• Bizarre Stuff ...that you can make in your kitchen
• Britney’s [Spears] Guide to Semiconductor Physics
  Hey, whatever it takes folks, given that the U.S. populace and its government would rather spend tax dollars on its military rather than its educational infrastructure.
• Brothers Chudnovsky (Nova profile) (Nova TV series profile)
  “The story of two brilliant mathematicians, a unicorn, and a homemade supercomputer.” Check out all three links. See also The New Yorker article (March 2, 1992), “The Mountains of Pi,” by Richard Preston
• BugBios (Insects on the Web)
• Constants and Equations
• Earth Science 3D Paper Models and Toys
  From the California Geological Survey
• Exploratorium: ExploraNet
• Froguts.com (virtual frog dissection)
• Game of Life (math and artificial life)
  Check out the various demonstrations. (Java required.) And check out the links at the end (“Other Wonders of Math”).
• How Stuff Works
• Human Space Flight (HSF)
  Click on Skywatch 2.0 for “‘applet’ [that] uses up-to-the-minute data from Mission Control to project the path the spacecraft will make across the sky [above you].”
• Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics
• International Space Station
  Visibility data at Sky & Telescope. Click on “Observing,” then “Almanac.” Or click here.
• Long Bets (accountable predictions)
• NASA satellite tracking
  Click on the “tracking” link. Then either the live 2D Java tracking map or, even better, the live 3D Java tracking display.
• Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
• Ron Patrick’s Street Legal Jet Powered Beetle
  “Beetle” as in the car.
• Rosetta@home  1/7/09
  From your computer, help “determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins.” See my BOINC project statistics.
• SETI@home (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
  From your computer. (For terrestrial intelligence, you’re on your own.) See my BOINC project statistics.
• Secret Worlds: The Universe Within
  “View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until... finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.”
• Stonehenge: Moving Big Rocks
  “Wally Wallington has demonstrated that he can lift a Stonehenge-sized pillar weighing 22,000 lbs and moved a barn over 300 ft. What makes this so special is that he does it using only himself, gravity, and his incredible ingenuity.”
• The Official String Theory Web Site
• Terraserver.com earth photos, such as your house, from space
• The Why Files “The Science Behind the News”

Videos (YouTube and the like)

• The Back-of-the-Envelope Design Contest: We asked readers to sketch their own visions for the George W. Bush Library.”
  From The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 7, 2008.
• “Historia de un letrero” Time: 5:55.  1/7/09
  Original video; short story winner of the Cannes Festival, 2008.
• Playing For Change: Song Around the World “Stand By Me” Time: 05:27  1/7/09