The mandatory links page

Okay, here's the links page. Updated to include links to a few Podcasts I like, which is odd, because I usually don't like new ideas. Podcasts on the other hand allow almost anyone to get their opinion out in speech, rather than text, which is a great idea.

I also removed a few defunct links and added new ones, etc. etc.

Favorite Handy Type Links

Computer Related
- Search Engines and Programs
  - Acronym Finder. It finds out what acronyms mean. (For reference purposes, PCMCIA stands for People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms, and TLA stands for Three Letter Acronym.)
  - Dogpile, which does not feature piles of dogs. (Unless of course you search for piles of dogs.)
  - Download.com, or Download.cnet.com, or cnet.download.com, or cnet.com.download.com.com.com (Or whatever they decided they wanted to be called this week.)
  - Google, arguably the best search engine that ever existed, and certainly the cleanest layout.
  - Mamma, a good metasearch site.
  - This was a link to WinMX, but the RIAA killed it. Nice going guys.*
  - I should include a link to Limewire, even though I don't find it the best I've ever used, it's a fair alternative to WinMX. Just don't download anything you don't have the rights to, OK?
  - Yahoo!, one of the first categorized search programs around, still very good at its job, although now becoming a little feature encrusted.
- Messenger and Communication Programs
  - ICQ, an instant messenger program that was around long before the others... sadly now owned by ~~that bunch of t~~ AOL.
  - Yahoo! Messenger, the free messenger thingy from the company who's name is on the box. (Sadly in version 6, more feature encrusted, uglier, and less functional than ever before, now with fiber.)
  - MSN Messenger, description as above. (Including the feature encrustation bit.)
  - Google Talk. Google's entry into the IM world. Works with a Gmail account. VERY good voice quality, much better than Yahoo.
- Other Software
  - Photofiltre, an excellent free photo editing and effects program, not as complex or resource hungry as the like of Adobe PhotoShop, but not as expensive either, and easier to use.
  - XVI32, a free 32 bit hex editor from Christian Maas. Unlike a lot of similar tools, this will edit ridiculously large files with ease. (A 1Gb file on a P III with 192Mb of RAM is doable with this tool.) If you don't know what a Hex Editor is, then you probably don't need one.
- Podcasts.
  For now, I am including this in the Computer section of my links, as most of my favorite podcasts are computer related. Should this change later, I will move it to the miscellaneous section. I am including links to the podcast's parent site and the URL for subscribing to the RSS feed. I strongly encourage you to visit the podcast's homepage, often there is much more in depth information and links related to the podcasts.
  - To receive podcasts, you can either go to the podcast's homepage, or (preferably, once you decide you like the podcast) subscribe to its RSS feed. To do this you'll need a podcast aggregator, I use and recommend iPodder. It's open source. Open source is good.
  - For those of you who describe yourselves as typical PC users, there's The Typical PC User. Victor does an excellent job of dealing with... well, things the typical pc user needs to know. The podcast URL is http://typicalpcuser.biz/tpcu/wp-rss2.php
    Copy and paste this URL into your podcast application to subscribe.
  - Dr. Bill, The Computer Curmudgeon. Anyone who describes themselves as a computer curmudgeon probably has strong opinions. Dr. Bill certainly does, but I agree with a large number of them. Whether this should scare him or me more, is open to debate. Podcast at http://podcast.thecomputercurmudgeon.com/
    Copy and paste this URL into your podcast application to subscribe.
  - BoagWorld. A web design podcast by people who do web design for a living. The URL to subscribe is http://feeds.feedburner.com/boagworldpodcast
  - Of course, your views and likes won't be the same as mine, so you may want to go to Podcast.net and search in your favorite subject area.
- General Information and Reviews
  - The Register, current home of the BOFH and source of many amusing IT stories.
  - The home of the BOFH's earlier existence...and other good stuff.
  - Dan's Data. Dan's review site, if it's good, he recommends it, but he pulls no punches, if it sucks, he tells you it sucks. That's rare these days. Plus, he's Australian, but I don't know if that's rare.
- Operating Systems
  - If you want a Unix based operating system that *isn't* Linux, try FreeBSD.
  - Do you like DOS?... if so, try FreeDOS.. it does what it says on the box, it's free, and it's a disk operating system.
  - Want to try a linux version that boots from a live cd and doesn't need installed? Thus not affecting your existing installation of RedmondWare. Try DamnSmall Linux (DSL).
  - If you want a copy of Linux, LinuxIso.org is a good place to start.
  - ~~The Borg Empire™~~.. I mean Microsoft™. Yes, that's what I meant.
- Reference Pages and Resources
  - 2 Bone's link checker, it's useful, it's Canadian. I used it on this page. (The first 2 of those things are good by the way, the third... well the links work right?)
  - Digits.com, who provided the free and highly configurable hit counter on some of these pages.
  - The WorldWide Web Consortium's HTML markup validation service.
  - The WorldWide Web Consortium's CSS validation service.
  - List of CSS bits, very useful when just starting out with Cascading Style Sheets.
  - A list of RGB color values.
  - The Any Browser Campaign. Trying to make the web more accessible.
  - Need a boot disk for [Insert name of Microsoft 'operating system' here]? Don't have the right verison to make one? Head this direction.
  - Dan's information site on lots of internet stuff.
  - See the web as it used to be at DejaVu for old web browsers, or Archive.org's Wayback Machine for old copies of web pages.
  - FOLDOC or Free Online Dictionary Of Computing.
  - Snopes, useful for researching those emails you get about someone who is collecting a world record number of Niemann-Marcus cookie recipes or something.
  - Ever had Windows™ complain that it lost a DLL?... this is where you'll likely find its replacement.
  - Geektools. Tools. For Geeks.
  - Gibson Research Corporation. This guy may be a little paranoid, but his site is useful and informative too... it's also the home of Shields Up!, the thing that scans you and tells you your firewall's broken. Or alternatively that your ISP is blocking ports. Both useful to know.
  - Sam Spade. This site allows user friendly access to a number of network tools that can be used for many purposes, there's also a downloadable version that I highly recommend.
- Security Resources
  - Symantec's Security Response Site, useful for the latest virus risks etc etc.
  - Grisoft, good free antivirus software for Windows™
  - Lavasoft, purveyors of fine antispyware solutions to the masses.
  - Spybot, purveyors of yet more fine antispyware stuff.
  - Trend Micro's Housecall antivirus site, will scan your pc for known viruses, trojans, etc. although be warned, it may take a long time on a dialup connection, at least the first time as it has to load their applet. (Thanks Koby)
- Miscellaneous Computer Related Stuffs
  - UserFriendly.
  - /. nuff said.
  - Digg a new (in 2004) site for technical news that is driven by the users.
Places I have lived
- Southampton I was going to say something mean technically about this site, but actually the site coding is fine... wow.
- Oshkosh, Wisconsin. There is also a community site.
- Littlerock, California. It's small, it's close to Palmdale.
- Cambridge, Ohio, a site I rant on about at some little length on this page.
- I stayed for a while in Woodstock, ON, Canada, and also in Embro, ON, Canada.
Telecommunications Related Links
- Companies
  - Vonage, the 'broadband'* phone company. These guys do Voice over IP, meaning basically you plug an adapter in, plug your phone into the adapter, and use your internet connection to make phone calls, thus saving mucho $$$. They also have a UK site.*note, I do not like the term "broadband"... it fails totally to describe anything. If you have a T1, say "T1", if you have ADSL, say "ADSL", if you have cable, say "Cable"... it's not difficult.
  - A T & T. Remember them?
  - BT, that 'phone company I used to like. Until their internet section decided censorship was just dandy with them.
  - OfCom, aka the Office Of Communications. Oftel used to regulate the UK telecomms industry. Now these guys do. (Shouldn't they actually have a .gov.uk domain?)
- Private organizations and individual sites
  - The Telecommunications Heritage Group, a group of enthusiasts who are dedicated to preserving telecommunications history from the old days. In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. (With copious apologies to the late lamented DNA).
  - Bob Freshwater's site has excellent information on almost everything you could want to know about British Post Office telephones.
  - Even more telephone information is available at telephonesuk.co.uk, a site run by Mike Fletcher.
Reference
- WikiPedia, the world famous (or infamous depending on viewpoint) encyclopedia you can edit if you find a mistake or if you know more than they do. It's a part of the even larger and more wideranging WikiMedia Foundation. Even given the fact it's subject to weird entries due to openness, it's surprisingly accurate on most topics, however, treat with caution.
- Dictionary.com, A Dictionary. Dot Com. Heh
- Or you could try Wiktionary, a user editable dictionary, from the same people who bought you WikiPedia.
- Acronym Finder. (It finds non computer related acronyms too ya know.)
Miscellaneous Links (I think I spelled that right)
- Internet Freedom, it's what you pay your ISP for. Accept no censorship.
- Southampton University, where I worked for the first couple of years of my adult life.
- The homepage of the European Union. (I wanted to put in a link to a .int domain, ok?)
- NATO (or OTAN if you parlez Français.)
- The United Nations. Phew, 3 .int domains in one links page, do I get an award now?
- I know I linked to it already, I don't care. Douglas Adams
- The Electrical Contractor site is useful, I mainly go there for the discussion forums though.
- Mike "Mad Dog" Adams.
- Encaustic art is a novel approach to art. I like it :-)
- The ever famous Computer Stupidities page at Rinkworks.
Personal Pages
- My former girlfriend has a site. (Actually she has several, hellifiknow what she's doing with them though)
- My friend Kat has 2 sites... 1 and 2... some people just have to be different...
- My friend Stacey also has 2 sites, one for her rabbits and one for her graphics design.
- Remo William Coon
- My friend Cheryl has a page about her Silky Terriers here
- This Page belongs to Artic, someone who I am also lucky to count as a friend.
- My friend, Pegasus Of Gold has an emotes site for Yahoo! Messenger
- I have 2 great friends in Yahoo Chat that I had not seen for ages, LawDog1369 and RN_n_NC_1 but they showed up and gave up the addresses of their websites gladly.
- Cheryl, a friend of mine from Oregon has a her Cavy site here
- My friend Patrick runs Wolfpack Alpha
- Many of these links begin "My friend" don't they? Anyways, my friend Tab has two pages one and two. Heh.
- Glenda has her site too, and she didn't even ask for a link.
- Song Wolf Farm
- Look, Mason Blake made it into the world:-)
UnLinks (that translates as "not links", the UN link is up the page somewhere.
- A very good Friend of mine is Luv, she doesn't have a page yet, but I have to mention people.
- Ok, I also have to mention Zorch, but he don't have a homepage, so no linkmire.
- I Have to mention my friend Barefoot_in_the_Grass or she will cry.

*"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

Hey, I'm entitled to my opinion.... till the RIAA manage to get that law changed too....

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Last Modified 2005-11-21