Brian’s Favorite Websites
News
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| Google News | A computer generated compilation of current news stories from many sources |
| New York Times | The web site of a famous American news paper |
| Reuters | The web site of a well known British wire service |
| Washington Post | The web site of another famous American news paper |
Reference
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| Google Language Tools | Translate web pages or text from other languages |
| Google Maps | Generate maps and driving directions. If you haven’t do so already, check out “street view”. |
| Grand dictionnaire terminologique | A French-English/English-French dictionary of technical terms by subject. The granddictionaire does not contain general vocabulary or non-technical meanings. |
| IP2Locations | Provides approximate physical location and internet service provider for an IP address |
| Merrium Webster | The Merriam Webster Collegiate dictionary on-line |
| Wikipedia | A surprisingly good and extensive encyclopedia editable by anyone |
| Word Reference | A dictionary of English to Spanish, French, or Italian |
Other
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| Jay Leno’s Garage | Jay Leno has one of the world’s best private car collections and drives nearly everything he owns. Mr. Leno has published videos of many of the cars in his collection on this site. |
| Friends of Carl | Carl Griffith would send excellent dried sourdough starter to anyone who sent him a self addressed, stamped envelope. The people behind this website keep his mission alive and give the address to obtain your starter. Mine has made a lot of good bread. |
| Me 262 Project | The ME 262 project builds and flies full-scale reproduction WWII era jet fighters. |
| Electronic Frontier Foundation | EFF supports the legal defense of electronic privacy and traditional fair-use provisions of copyright law against increasing encroachment by big business and government. |
| Aiken Railroad Depot Reconstruction | The Aiken Railroad Depot Reconstruction project is in the process of rebuild the historic passenger terminal in Aiken, South Carolina, USA for use as a small museum and event venue. |
| The College Car | The College Car is a new web site by an officemate of mine offering free advise on how to buy a used car. |
Cycling and Shopping for Bike Junk
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| Bike Nashbar | My default bike catalog. Nashbar carries most major brands of parts, clothing, tools, and accessories as well as moderately priced Nashbar branded products. |
| DiNotte | Manufacturer of very lightweight LED headlights using off-the-shelf AA Ni-MH batteries. I am comfortable riding at night at 25 to 30mph and in traffic with the single LED, 200 Lumen model. |
| Performance Bike | Similar to Nashbar. I generally check both before ordering anything. |
| Tree Fort Bikes | I got a good deal on a heart rate monitor here and was impressed with the website and streamlined ordering process. I will check them out again in the future. |
| Issaqueena’s Last Ride | Information about a hundred-mile, 8500 vertical foot ride starting from Walhalla, South Carolina, USA every May. |
Engineering Resources
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| McMaster-Carr | A well organized catalog of industrial parts, materials, and tools that ship very rapidly. |
| NIST Webbook | Chemistry data, including thermodynamic and transport properties of a various of pure substances |
| Watlow | Stock and custom made electrical heaters for industrial or laboratory applications. |
| MathWorld | Great reference material on mathematics provide by Wolfram Research, the makers of Mathematica software. Articles are complete, accurate and well written with extensive citation of sources. |
| Eric Weisstein’s World of Physics | Another free resource from Wolfram Research. |
People
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| Howard Garner: Cascade and Western Rail Road | Some folks “run trains” while Howard Garner manages a miniature rail road in his basement. Howard has some outstanding scenery. |
| Robert M. Seel | The web site of RMS Architecture, an architectural firm in Clemson, SC owned by my friend Rob Seel |
| Richard Nichols | The web site of Nichols Electronics installers security systems, fire alarms, closed circuit TV, and other data infrastructure in Anderson, SC. This company is owned by my friend Richard Nichols. |
| Engineer Sighted | How Observant is a blog by a friend from graduate school. |
| Jay Carter | This guy came to Aiken for a performance of Messiah. He is great and there are some free recordings on his site. |
| Miss Manners | Good advise and fun reading! |
| Paul D. d’Entremont | Dad’s photo gallery. |
| Ted D’Eon | My dad met Mr. D’Eon on his most recent trip to visit relatives in Nova Scotia, Canada. He has many nice photographs of local wildlife, scenery, powered hang gliding flights, and travel. |
| W. Randolph Chitwood | This guy did a valve repair on my heart using minimally invasive techniques. This video of Dr. Chitwood at work is also worth seeing. |
Computer
I have a separate page listing recommended software.
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| CACert | CACert is a free non-profit provider of encryption certificates |
| Google 3-D Warehouse | A repository of user contributed models for Google Earth and Google Sketch up software |
| SourceForge.net | A great place to find new open source software. |
| Firefox Addons | Many software extensions for the Firefox browser |
| SS64 | A repository of information on Windows XP command line commands and Linux Bash commands. |
| dyndns.org | A dynamic DNS service which is free provided that you use one of their domain names (not your own). |
| Down for everyone or just me? | A tool for getting an independent opinion as to whether a particular website is functioning. |
| Black Viper’s Win XP SP3 Service listings | If you run Windows, chances are that you have a lot of services running that you don’t need. Black Viper has the best list of service descriptions that I have seen and has kept it up to date. |
Organizations of which I am Part
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| Central Railway Model and Historical Association | My Train Club |
| Clemson University | I attend Clemson University. |
| Fort Hill Presbyterian Church | Fort Hill is my church in Clemson, SC. |
Places to See in France
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| Chemin de Fer du Vivarais | A narrow gauge steam railway south of Lyon. |
| The Louvre | The official web site of the museum, including good photographs of most of the works of art. |
| Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace | Among the highlights of this museum are a disassembled French ICBM and exhibit on the launch facilities and two Concordes. |
| Musée Henry Malartre | The oldest automobile museum in France. Most of this museum comes from the private collection of Mr. Malartre who collected some of the earliest automobiles as they were headed to scrap in the early 20th century. Among the extensive and unique offerings are the first front wheel drive car and a 400hp armored Mercedes parade car used by Adolf Hitler. There are also extensive bicycle and motorcycle collections from the late 19th and early 20th century. |
| Château de Versailles | The official website of the Château. I never though when I toured Biltmore that I would see anything that made it seem like a country shack! |
Public Domain Resources
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| Mutopia Project | This project distributes public domain sheet music |
| Project Gutenburg | Free electronic copies of public domain books |
| Project Gutenburg: The Sheet Music Project | This project appears to be just getting started, distributes public domain sheet music in a variety of digital formats. |
| Sheet Music Archive | The Sheet Music Archive distributes public domain music in the PDF format and is fairly well developed. |
| Library of Congress on Flickr | The library of congress photo collection, posted in hopes that citizens will tag these images with additional information |
| National Map | The National Map can display various layers of GIS information from the U.S.G.S. |
| National Atlas | The National Atlas consolidates a lot of U.S.G.S. data into maps which can be viewed, downloaded, or ordered in print. |
| U.S. Geologic Survey | There is a tremendous amount of public geographic data accessible from this site. |
Comics
| Name | Comments |
|---|---|
| Baby Blues | |
| Close to Home | |
| Dilbert | |
| For Better or For Worse | |
| Fox Trot (Sunday Only) | |
| Frazz | |
| Get Fuzzy | |
| Pearls Before Swine | |
| PHD Comics | A sometimes disturbingly accurate picture of graduate school! |
| Zits | |
| Calvin and Hobbes (rerun) | My all time favorite comic strip, now avaliable as daily reruns. |
| Fox Trot (rerun) | Since going to a Sunday only format, Fox Trot reruns are avaliable. |
Radio
The orange icons in the “RSS” column of this table are links to RSS podcasts. Although you can probably open these in your browser, they are really designed to be used with a podcasting tool which will keep your computer up-to-date with the latest mp3 files from this source. The most well known such tool is iTunes. I use Juice.
| Name | Comments | |
|---|---|---|
| Car Talk |  |
Great call in radio program about car repair with slapstick humor. Podcast: Weekly, Sat. Afternoon, 50min. |
| All Things Considered | NPR’s afternoon news program. It covers a mix of national and international news. Listen online, weekdays. | |
| BBC: Global News | |
A compilation of highlights from the last 12 hrs of BBC World Service news. Podcast: 30 min., twice per weekday, 8AM and 8PM GMT. |
| KWAX | A classical music station from Eugene, Oregon. Listen online. | |
| PRI: Marketplace | |
A summery of the day’s financial news, mixed with stories of more long term interest. Podcast: Weekday evenings, 25 min. |
| Talk of the Nation | |
A NPR call-in radio show about stories in the national news. The Friday show (Science Friday) covers a broad range of news relating to science and scientific public policy. Podcast: 2 hr, weekday afternoons |
| The World | |
A program on world news by Public Radio International with help of the BBC World Service. Podcast: 50min., Each Weekday evening |
| Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! | |
A humorous radio quiz show regarding the week’s most interesting news. Podcast, 50 min., Weekly, Saturday evening |