Really Neat Places
This is a page for some of the neato places I've stumbled onto. I'll provide a short blurb on what the site is all about. And this will be for the really kewl stuff I've found. I haven't listed them in any particular order, except maybe the order I find them.
Index
The first stop is a TV show called Life on the Internet that airs on the Discovery Channel Canada. I normally tune in to it on Saturdays at 12:30 PM MST/MDT, but you'll probably have to check the local TV listings. This show isn't so much about how to use the net or get on it, or other techie things about the Net. It's more about the culture of the Net, how people live and function on the Net, and the people/software celebreties that make up the Net. For example, an episode that recently aired was about that popular e-mail program Eudora, and featured an interview with Steve Dorner, creator of Eudora. Try it out and tune in to the show if you can.
The Physics Unbound project is an attempt to produce a dynamic, on-line physics textbook started by Mark Linderman. Each of the chapters in the textbook are written by himself, or by others who wished to make a contribution. There are sections on classical mechanics, condensed matter, and astronomy, and more to come. It's really very kool.
This link seems to have disappeared. If anybody knows where it's moved to, please mail me.
Have you ever been on-line, and found yourself suddenly needing a map? Well, if you're looking for an on-line map of the US, try the TIGER Map Service page provided by the US Bureau of the Census. The map starts you off around Washington DC, but lets you move anywhere by supplying a longitude/latitude location or by supplying a city name. The server then comes back with a map which you can zoom in or out. You can also move to a different location on the map by clicking on a spot. You'll then get a new map centered on the place you clicked on.
Shuttle Web is a pretty kool place. Here you can find out about the latest shuttle mission, the crew and the experiments scheduled. What makes it even neater is that you can get images and movies from the mission too. You can even track the position of the shuttle as it orbits. You can go through the entire mission step by step, from countdown to landing. This, IMHO, is a well put together site, and definitely worth looking at.
Are you an amateur astronomer type? Or interested in astronomy, but don't know what you're looking at? Need a starmap but left your book at home? Check out the starmaps you can get online from Mt. Wilson Observatory. This is a great place. You enter all the information for the map you want via a form. Tell it the time you want a map for, your location (or longitude and latitude), and you'll get back a Postscript file containing your star map which is just as good as any you'd get in an astronomy book. You can even specify magnitude lmits for the stars and ask it to draw in the constellations.
This is exciting stuff. A probe sent to Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system finally reached orbit on Dec 7 and dropped an atmospheric probe to discover its secrets. At NASA's Project Galileo page, you can find out the latest happenings, download images, find out the history of Galileo and all sorts of other neato information. The JPL site can be pretty busy, so you might want to try the mirror site instead.
The NLM's Visible Human Project is quite the impressive venture. A whole series of CT (computed tomography) and MR (magnetic resonance) images and photographs from head to toe of the human body. From here you can have a look at some of the sample images from the project provided by the NLM, or you can check out some of the things people have done with the data from the Visible Human. Some of the more imperssive ones are Marching through the Visible Man/Woman and the NPAC Visible Human Viewer, a Java applet for browsing through the Visible Human.
On-line publishing. Seems everyone's doing it now. There are magazines that are available only on-line, and an increasing number of print magazines which are starting to provide on-line versions of their material. And the best part of it is it's free! This selection of on-line magazines may not be exactly to your liking or taste because it's a list of the online publications that I've found which caught my eye. Yahoo has a long list of magazines you can check out if these don't thrill you.
Entries marked by a (*) only have their table of contents available.
Access to Physics in Medicine and Biology is restricted.
The Tech Support Tales page is a pretty amusing one that I found plastered on Yahoo's Pick of the Week. Wacky tales and horror stories about the technically inept. Check it out, have a laugh.
The Usenet Address Service is a searchable database of e-mail addresses at MIT which (as you may be able to infer) has been harvested from Usenet. Chances are, if you've ever posted to a newsgroup, you're probably in it. The search is pretty quick too. And once you've found a match, clicking on an address takes you to a number of different sevices that are probably associated with that address. For example, you can finger the address, or look it up in a CSO nameserver if one is available.
The IP to Latitude/Longitude site is a pretty nifty place that I found a while ago. You enter a host or domain name or an IP addres, and it returns the physical location of the site you're searching for. You get the latitude and longitude, city, country (if available) and you can even check it out on Xerox's PARC Map Viewer (another neato site)
Amazon.com, touts themselves as the world's largest on-line bookstore. Their selection is pretty impressive, and prices even better. Many of the titles on their Top 50 lists they discount 40%, and many others are discounted 10%. And they're even able to dig up many hard to find or out of print books for you too. Their catalog is filled with informative descriptions of the books, and reviews by the author, publisher, and readers. Check it out. Be sure to visit Barnes & Noble too, a recent entry to the on-line book business is worth checking out too.
Need to get somewhere? Need directions to your destination? Planning a trip and want the fastest route? Just head to MapQuest, tell it where you are and where you're trying to get, and back comes a map and directions to your destination.
Those of you who have ever read any Winnie-The-Pooh will love this webified version of Pooh Sticks. And if you don't know what Pooh Sticks is, stop by and find out! While you're at it, register and play a few games.
Join the effort to crack the RC5 encryption algorithm. It's a contest sponsored by RSA to break a 56 bit RC5 code. The people at distributed.net have written a small client that downloads blocks of keys and tries to crack the code. You can join a team, or go it yourself. Make use of your computer's idle time and crunch a bunch of keys.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters. Simply the site to go for the latest in geek news. Infinitely customizable (almost) to get all the geek related news you want.
Ok, now this is a really kool one. From your eye in the skynet, see how traffic is flowing on the Net. Want to see how Net traffic in Australia is doing? How about North America? How's it been for the last day? week? month? Get it all here! You can even check on the status of the major routers. I discovered this site from a posting at /.
Eugene Mah
eugenem@ix.netcom.com
Last modified: Tues Oct 7 18:08:15 Eastern Daylight Time 2008