The big ol' list of links
Let's face it, you're only here for the links, so here they are, categorised in a moderately ordered fashion:
- Blogs
- Computing
- Entertainment
- Geek Stuff
- Good News
- Internet Phenomena
- Meteorology
- News
- Photography
- Shameless Plugs
- Travel
- Words and stuff
Blogs
Blogs I read / subscribe to / pretend to read in the hope that people think I'm intellectual
| Southampton Vineyard Blog | Thoughts & opinion from the southampton vineyard team - the ramblings of those with too much time on their hands, and from some of those who have just enough time on their hands |
| Stop The Traffik Blog | With updates on the latest in the fight against people trafficking |
| BCS: Unqualified Remarks | Examining the issues beyond and between the IT community - usually faintly amusing |
| BCS: Count Pixel | What's hot and what's not in the gaming world - opinions of someone old enough to remember Doom |
| Left4Dead Blog | News from the developers of quite simply one of the best games, ever. |
| Bad Science | Thoughts and opinions from Ben Goldacre - science journalist for the Guardian |
| BBC - Ethical Man | Looking for new ways to be environmentally friendly and ethical in daily life |
| Rob's Blog | Rob and I go waaaaay back |
| Michael's blog | All-round amazing chap, doing amazing things in amazing places |
| Kay Bowen | Explaining to the world how one goes from being a regular Bitterne shopper to triathlete extraordinaire |
Computing
Places to buy, learn and neat bits of software
| Novatech | Great company to buy bits from - friendly, been around for years and generally good prices |
| Overclockers | Essential place for the modern computer gamer - selling top-notch gear at knock-down prices! |
| PC Buy It | Great prices (and a "no dead-pixel" guarantee) on Dell monitors |
| W3Schools | Learn how to write HTML, Javascript, SQL, XSL and many more internet technologies. In easy to learn steps and with a good reference for when you just can't quite remember what the function's called! |
| Plusnet | They provide my ADSL, they're cheap, efficent and if you sign up using this link - they'll give me money! |
Entertainment
Cartoons, games and random other bits to keep bored fingers entertained
| Dilbert | A part of my daily browse, and (almost) always amusing - use this link to avoid all the junk that comes with the cartoon |
| Pearls Before Swine | A bit like Peanuts for the modern era - often sarcastic, occasionally cringe-worthy, but the crocs from Zeeba-Zeeba-Eeta are always entertaining |
| xkcd.com | "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language" - fluctuates between ones I don't understand to things that I nearly injure myself I'm laughing so hard. My favourite is #435 |
| Sodaplay Constructor | A really good fun little toy which allows you to make & play with wireframe models |
| Nexus War | An online - text based - computer game. Sounds weird, but it's great. |
| Death Star Battles | Great little game - use gravity to shoot missiles in space |
| Portal: The Flash Version | A faithful 2D remake of the fantabulous 3D computer game. The cake is a lie |
| Sheppard Software | Great games - my favourites are the geography games - can you remember where all the countries in Europe are supposed to go!? |
Geek Stuff
Links for the ubergeeks
| NT Passwd | Fantastic password reset & registry editor boot CD - helpful if a machine's registry is too corrupt even for safe mode |
| Clonezilla & System Rescue CD | Good for recovering data from damaged hard drives, or just migrating from one PC to another |
| LogMeIn | Fantastic remote control software - essential for helping out that distant relative with computer problems |
Good News
Christian resources and places of worship
| Southampton Vineyard Church | My Church. If you want some LoudFunkyGospelLifeChanging stuff, then come along! |
| Mercy Vineyard Southampton | The other Vineyard church in Southampton - never been, but I've heard it's great |
| Biblegateway | Fantastic online bible resource - including many different translations |
| Pray as you go | Daily podcast of meditative thoughts |
Internet Phenomena
Those things on the internet that lots of people don't know about, but are just too good to miss!
| The Internet Archive - Wayback Machine | You give it an an address, and it'll show you the samples it's taken of that website... in the past - be warned, very old versions of some websites are just terrifying at how cheesy they look |
| Internet Archive - audio project | A huge collection of all kinds of audio - varying from people reading books to Grateful Dead concerts - and including "The Perfect Ending" somewhere in between |
| Google Calculator | Type into Google any mathematical expression, including using complex numbers and constants (e.g. e ^ (i * pi)) and it'll give you the answer! It also converts between different sets of units (e.g. speed of light in furlongs per fortnight) |
| The Internet Movie Database | I'm always amazed at how many people I meet don't know about this. Here you can look up any film or TV program, find out who was in it, and what else they've been in - great for when you're going "oh they were in...umm" |
Meteorology
The weather - lots of conflicting opinions... who knows which will be right?
| Metcheck | I find this to be my most-viewed forecast, as it gives an amount of (likely) precipitation in mm, so you can tell if it's going to be a flood or a trickle |
| Met Office | Theoretically the authority on UK forecasts, however I've found them to be wildly out in the past! |
| BBC Weather | The Beeb's forecast is theoretically provided by the Met Office - but it doesn't always say the same thing... go figure! |
News
News websites I read / recommend.
| BBC News | It's the BBC, they're the best, they're British and part of my daily (if not hourly) browse! |
| The Register | Sarcastic, cynical and all about computers |
| Slashdot | So geeky it makes The Register look mainstream |
Photography
Stuff relating to photographs / photography
| Flickr | fantastic photo sharing website - free for low-volume users |
| fd's Flickr Toys | Great tools for playing with your photos on flickr |
| Photobox | Great website for getting photos printed on to regular sized prints, and posters etc |
| DP Review | Camera reviews website - good for checking out the latest gadgets! |
| moo.com | Amazing company who print 'moo mini cards' and business cards, and a variety of other cool things - including getting your photos direct from flickr |
Shameless Plugs
It's the old game of "if lots of people link to it, it'll improve the google page rank, so I'll link to things for my friends/relatives in the hope of giving them a tiny boost"
| Pamela Evans - author | My mum's website, providing all sorts of useful information about her Christian books and teaching resources. |
| get2dom.com | Dominic wants me to put lots of links to his website so when he 'ego surfs' he finds himself at the top of Google!! |
| borngifted.com | A chic baby products company run by a former colleague of mine, by having a link to her site, it improves it's popularity on search engines! |
| Tricycle Tunes | Live laptop looping trio based in Southampton, UK - friends of mine and excellent, excellent music |
Travel
All those things you need to have easy access to when thinking about travelling
| Google Time Zones | Just type in "what time is it in Tijuana" (or wherever) and Google will tell you |
| Google Currency Converter | Or just type into google "10USD in GBP", and marvel at the wonderfulness |
| Agoda | Great website for finding discount deals on hotels |
| LastMinute.com | Grab a last minute holiday! |
Words and stuff
Helpful references for lexical thingummajigging.
| Dictionary.com | An online dictionary, great for looking up words as long as you can spell (it does have some ability to correct your mistakes) |
| Thesaurus.com | No it's not a dinosaur, it's a place where you can look up words that mean similar things |
| Wordsmith Anagram Generator | Neat little anagram generator, very quick to produce thousands of alternatives |
| The wordsmyth's crossword solver | The best crossword solver on the 'net (that I've found!) |