Links
Some good (at least decent) web sites to visit about crap I'm interested in. Links open in new browser windows.
Categories: Christian Resources Music Current Events Computer-Type Stuff Academics Electronics/Radio Space/Astronomy Photography Miscellaneous
Christian Resources
- Bible Gateway. Various translations of the Bible (mainly Protestant) in several languages.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church. Full text of the second typical edition (that's Catholic speak for "this version has revisions").
- Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Classic Christian writings including translations of the early Church Fathers.
- Codex Sinaiticus. A digitized copy of a Bible from the 4th century containing the oldest extant copy of the New Testament. Very cool.
- e-Sword. Free Bible study software for Windows (unfortunately no Mac). Comes standard with the KJV. Other translations available for download including the Vulgate, Greek New Testament, Septuagint, and Douay-Rheims.
- John Lennox: Talks. Video and audio talks by John Lennox, professor of mathematics in the University of Oxford and writer and lecturer on the relationship between science and the Christian faith.
- New Advent: Catholic Library. A collection of various Church documents including some harder-to-find papal writings.
- New Revised Standard Version. Pretty decent translation. Widely used among scholars of all stripes.
- Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition. One of the few English versions that translates Luke 1:28 correctly.
- The Vatican.
- USCCB Committee on Divine Worship—Documents. Lots of good stuff, but the liturgical calendars are particularly useful, especially for those of us who pray the hours.
Music
- LilyPond music notation software. The tag line says music notation for everyone, but unless you are a geek, it simply will not make sense. I am using it with LaTeX on the Mac (see "Academics")
- Little Piano. A neat little app that turns your computer keyboard into a piano. It's good for those of us who want to pick out a tune when we don't have access to a real piano.
- Loudon Wainwright III. Writer and performer of such classic songs as "Dead Skunk," "B Side," and "Drinking Song."
- Moleskine Music Notebook. I don't have one of these but it looks like a good idea.
- Musica Sacra. The Church Music Association of America—good resources for Gregorian chant.
Current Events
- Fora.tv. "The world is thinking," even if what it's thinking may be stupid. Especially interesting for me have been Ben Stein and Dinesh D'Souza. (BTW, I've had better luck downloading their podcasts than watching the videos from the web site.)
- La Nación. Noticias de Argentina.
- Link TV. Sometimes it's good to see what the rest of the world is really thinking, right or wrong, which isn't usually the same as the propaganda presented by the U.S. mainstream media.
- Noam Chomsky. Interesting viewpoint on the world. A must-read is his book with Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent.
- Ron Paul 2012--Restore America.
- The Economist (print edition). News and analysis from across the pond.
- The New York Times (today's paper). Quite possibly the most important newspaper in the world, for better or worse.
- The Washington Post (today's paper).
Computer-Type Stuff
- Basic vi Commands. Believe it or not, I'm starting to really like vi. I like vi so much now that I actually downloaded a Windows port of vi....
- Bjarne Stroustrup's homepage. Speaking of C++, here's the guy who created it.
- C/C++ Reference. Complete language reference for standard C and C++.
- Common Fonts to All Browsers.
- Common UNIX Commands. Suggested by a reader Sarah, this page is more than just commands; there are quite a few resources here.
- ConTEXT Programmer's Editor. Lots of code highlighters to choose from. There's even one for Progress 4GL (don't worry--I'd never heard of Progress either until I had to work with the bloody thing).
- Crontab reference. Cron isn't complicated but I don't use it often enough to remember it all.
- Cygwin. A Linux-like environment for Windows.
- Free Software Directory.
- High Point University, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.. speaking of patron saints....
- HP-UX Commands.
- Mastering the VI editor. more good vi stuff
- perl-cgi. a perl tutorial from the John B. Smith, professor of CS at UNC
- PHP Manual (English). PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (yes, a recursive acronym) is a wonderful thing.
- pronunciation guide for unix. all the silly little slang words like bang, splat, sharp, and hook are explained
- PuTTY. A Free Telnet/SSH Client for Windows
- St. Isidore of Seville. Actually, yes, there is a patron saint of computer programmers. According to this web site, he invented something similar to a database in the sixth century.
- Vim - the editor. This is vi-improved, and there's actually a port for Windows. I've downloaded it and am currently using it to add this link to this page. (Still beats the heck out of emacs.)
- w3schools.com. Great stuff on html, css, etc.
- WebChart Control for ASP.NET. Extremely easy to use, absolutely wonderful control.
- Windows API Reference. work with your (not-so-?) favorite OS
- WinSCP. a GUI SCP client for Windows.
Academics
- Dynamic Periodic Table.
- Getting to Grips with Latex. While rubber grips fairly well, that's not the latex this guy is talking about.
- LaTeX. a typesetting program (not a word processor) for true geeks.
- MacTeX. Port of LaTeX I use on the Mac.
- MiKTeX. A good port of LaTeX for (dare I say it?) Windows.
- Wolfram|Alpha. I have no idea what the name means but this is the absolute coolest online math tool ever.
Electronics/Radio
- AC6V Radio Page.
- Build an Apollo Guidance Computer in your Basement.
- Circuit Symbols. I can never remember if the straight side of the capacitor symbol is the anode or cathode (and, quite frankly, whether the anode and cathode are positive or negative).
- Hans's Site. Radio, Electronics and Computing Projects.
- Mouser Electronics. Another electronics distributor.
- Newark In One. Electronic component distributor.
- Radio Frequencies—North Carolina (radioreference.com).
- Rick Andersen's Simple Home-Built Radio Page. Radio seems pretty cool to me these days. Hams communicated with people around the world before the Internet existed....
- Short Wave Frequency List.
- Tesla Down Under. Cool stuff to do with Tesla coils.
- Transistor Logic Gates. Simple logic gates wired up with transistors.
Space/Astronomy
- Amateur Observatories. Examples of small, backyard observatories built by amateur astronomers.
- Astronomy Picture of the Day. A new picture of something space-related every day. Sometimes they get a little nerdy and over my head, but most of the time the pictures are breathtaking.
- Clear Sky Clocks. Find out when your sky will be clear and dark enough for observing.
- HubbleSite. Pictures, data, and a wealth of other stuff about the HST.
- Jack Horkheimer Star Gazer.
- Monthly Sunrise Sunset Times.
- NASA. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They do cool stuff.... Really cool stuff.
- NASA Skywatch. Find out when the International Space Station and other earth-orbiting satellites might be visible in your area.
- NASA TV. If, like me, you don't have a satellite dish, you can watch NASA TV online. Yaaaayyyy!
- Neil deGrasse Tyson. The only astrophysicist I've ever read that I completely understood.
- Orion Telescopes and Binoculars.
- Plot of the Inner Solar System. A plot of objects that orbit the sun between Jupiter and Mercury.
- Project Mercury. The USA's first successful manned spaceflight program.
- Satellite Orbit Tracking. Track the orbits of various satellites in real time.
- SETI@Home. SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
- Shuttle/Space Station Orbit Tracking.
- Sky and Telescope. Good astronomy magazine.
- Space Weather. News and information about the Sun-Earth environment.
- Stellarium. free open source planetarium software (works pretty good as a star chart too)
- Sun and Moon Data (daily).
Photography
- Adorama on YouTube.
- Calibrize. Free monitor calibration software for Windows (I know...Windows, yuck! yadda yadda yadda).
- My gallery at photo.net.
- My photo.net community page.
- NPAA Business Calculator.
- Onexposure (1x.com). Another photo site. A bit more artsy-fartsy than photo.net.
- photo.net. According to the web site, a community of photographers. Upload, rate and critique photos; read articles, reviews, etc.
- The Zeltsman Approach to Traditional Classic Portraiture.
Miscellaneous
- 52 Projects. Need to find something to do?
- AirNav. Detailed info on airports around the world.
- Animation v. Animator. Ever feel frustrated?
- Badge-A-Minit. Make your own buttons with their button makers. They're a piece of cake to use and the parts are pretty inexpensive. If you're less than creative you can even buy pre-made button designs.
- Cape Fear Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau. If they ever film a Dawson's Creek reunion episode/bad TV movie, I may visit to try to catch a glimpse of Katie Holmes. (Well, since Katie creeped out on us with Tom Cruise, maybe I'll settle for the Railroad Museum.)
- Crosscut Saw Company. I bought the 4.5-foot one-man and got an extra handle. If you buy one, don't expect it to come sharp from the factory. A dull saw is properly termed a "misery whip."
- Declaration of Independence. You know, the founders didn't have too much to complain about given that the colonies belonged to King George. He did what any king would do. (BTW, the U.S. maintains a standing army in over 100 countries that don't belong to us.)
- Fat-Pie.com. Animations and stuff by David Firth. Check out "Salad Fingers". Creepy.
- Greensboro Grasshoppers. the hometown (well, close enough) minor league team. They beat the Kannapolis Intimidators 4–1 last night!
- How to tie a Windsor Knot.
- Jazz Jackrabbit. the original DOS executables for Jazz Jackrabbit
- Matt Cuda. Another good friend with the initials M.C., Matt and I worked together and played in a band together. Lots of good theological discussions.
- Moleskine Notebooks. One of the greatest journals I've ever used. I use a 5.25in x 8.25in hardcover to keep my notes at work.
- Mt. Mitchell Weather. Mount Mitchell State Park, Burnsville, NC Weather Station.
- Mt. Mitchell Webcam.
- NC Geological Survey Maps.
- New Yankee Workshop. That Norm's a friggin' genius!
- North Carolina Shakespeare Festival. A non-profit (yes, by choice) organization dedicated to keeping classical theatre alive in my home state. They put on great shows every year. Check one out.
- Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Read them online.
- The End of the Internet. Had to happen sometime.
- The Most Useful Rope Knots for the Average Person to Know.
- TNT Fireworks. Pretty darn good fireworks. We've been using them for the last few years. Good show.
- United States Constitution. Full text of our nation's founding document which we have largely abandoned in the years since it was written. Includes all the amendments.