Favourite Sites

Many links are dead. I’m slowly cleaning them up.

National Gallery of Australia You may want to start with Margaret Preston's prints.

QI Clips from the BBC TV Series. Quite interesting. Click Hello on home page for another taste.

Monty Python On Line Possibly the best MPFC site in the world. For you, the executive version.

WebMuseum Paris High res prints suitable for framing.

Earth Station1 Sound library. Aural retentives, lend an ear.

A fit of Asterix for all we Gallophiles.

Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) Your daily mystery tour of the cosmos with an astronomer guide. The stars are our home. Pop back for a visit now and then! (All those carbon and hydrogen atoms that are the building blocks of our minds and bodies were formed in just one place - stars!) The Calendar link is a great way to choose earlier images.

My all-time favourite web site. In a similar vein, my favourite iPhone/iTouch app is Space Envi Deluxe. It draws on APOD. Pick a year’s collection then run it in slide show mode, accompanied by Maurice Jarre’s “Building the Barn”, and feel the lump in your throat. I expect pairing some Rachmaninov, say his Vocalise, would bring tears to the eyes of any sentient human. The Vocalise alone could do it of course but the combination would be irresistable.

Encyclopedia Mythica Stuffed if I could remember who Apollo's dad was the other day. This site let me sleep.

The Captain James T. Kirk Sing-a-long Site Let this be a warning, in case you're famous one day.

Apollo Lunar Surface Journal Listen to audio as you read transcripts. This site is a gift to posterity.

12 Steps to Not Thinking Is heavy thinking ruining your life?

This Day in History History Search Engine too.

2001: A Space Odyssey My favourite movie. Among many critics' Top Ten. A 133 minute Rorschach test. … Another 2001 site Ever notice how in all the debates about machine intelligence the example of HAL is always drawn upon?

Paul Robeson First to sing at the (unfinished) Sydney Opera House - to a lunchtime gallery of its construction workers. If God were to sing, he'd sound like Paul Robeson. A courageous champion of peace and social justice ahead of his time, his voice was proud and sad, world-weary but wise. Said to be one of the 20 th. century's most influential figures.

The Joseph Campbell Foundation The mythologist who made the transcendent transparent. Before he died a few years ago, his scholarship was infused into the Star Wars trilogy. (It's largely missing in the latest movie. Apart from Qui-Gon Jin's calm dignity, characters and the storyline lack depths common to the great myths and legends. Perhaps it's a problem of having to introduce so many characters within the space of 2 hours that may be resolved in the next two movies.) Time magazine article by Bill Moyers - his apostle.

It's … another Monty Python Flying Circus site. But before Python, before you possibly, there was …

The Goon Show An archive from those crazy folks at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Internet Movie Database

For Animal Lovers Mary had a little lamb. Seems she could have got 5 years in Long Bay.

All Music Guide Useful resource with lots of interesting info on a variety of genres.

Leonard Cohen Files A not half bad poet. And then there's that low-down room-rumbling voice.

Online Surgery See live and recorded surgery. Win free cosmetic surgery. "Surfing the Net one day and next thing I knew I had these huge breasts," says one entrant. Lucky fella.

Art Archive From Hals to Hockney. Michelangelo to Magritte. Titian to (Okay, enough now.)

IQ Test Your big chance to see just how smart you are.

The Darwin Awards Amusing, tragic and inventive ways to meet your maker.

Astalavista Best crackz. Better than Oscar. 'Nuff said.

Harmless Strategies Prevent being tracked and the misuse of all that surprising amount of personal info hidden on your machine. If you download lots of programs, find out about Trojans and eliminating them.

Kubrick Multimedia Film Guide Mostly images and sounds from Kubrick's films. You want more? Try Internet Movie Database link above.

Chankstore Free Fonts For fontaholics. One of the better sites. Caution: Windows' labouring becomes stertorous once it starts lugging over 1,000 fonts! And you may die before it eventually boots up.

Where did we go in Australia? 100 Australian Web sites most accessed by Australians last week.

Web 100 Reviews and ranks the Web's 100 'top' sites in several categories. So too 100 Hot websites.

Stupid criminal tales Sound advice based on street cops' experiences like remembering to re-fuel the getaway car and not asking someone you rob, who has no cash, to write you a cheque in your real name.

http://llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk/ The longest Web address on the Net. What the name of this small town means and lots of crazy facts about it. A site from those wacky Welsh. I think they're messing with our minds. I find myself having to drop this word into a sentence every now and then. 'Twas llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch and the llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch did llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in the lanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. See what I mean.

Tickle me Elvis Need a lift? This does the trick.

AbsoluteTrivia.com Fas-kin-ating facts. Keeps trivia buffs like me amused for hours. Add your own.

Dress Up Games Page Using paper doll techniques, see how Bill Clinton looks in dreadlocks. Give the Queen a makeover. Best of all, build Michael Jackson's baby.

Shakespearian Insulter "Thou thing of no bowels thou!" From: Troilus and Cressida. (This is where that English Dept. rep at Faculty meetings gets his lines from. Now you can joust on equal terms.)

Australian Libraries Gateway Discover Australian libraries. With links to national library exhibitions and to the National Library Treasures of Europe. Check out the National Library of Australia's new, faster access to its research and information database.

Chatter Bots (Chat robots) I remember talking to Eliza 'the psychologist" on the university mainframe in the early '70's. After a little while I felt compelled to tell her she was crazy. She just kept reflecting though. But now … well, see how far we've come! Shallow Red, while commercial and certainly no HAL 9000, is an example of the advances to date. Ask it to play a relaxing Samba while you chat.

Funtrivia More trivia to amuse your friends down at the pub. (While you're there, remind them of this bit of trivia: bar-top bowls of peanuts, when tested by a path. lab, contain an average of 16 different samples of urine!)

Favorite Poem Project A touch tacky in places and nationalistic (American site of course) but otherwise tasteful with many good choices. Listen to "This is just to say". Before I discovered this site I was the intellectual equivalent of a 98 pound weakling. I would go to the beach and people would kick Byron in my face. (Not my quip - a twist on a favourite line from "Dead Poets' Society'")

Useless Knowledge Yet another trivia site. The vocabulary builder and a few other goodies set this one apart.

Metagrid Need access to more news from all around the world? Here are links to over 4,000 newspapers and magazines for you to browse as you curl up in bed with your laptop on a Sunday morning.

Stuff.com.au Australia's first online auction site. If you really want that autographed photo of Elvis, then watch the clock and bid big before it goes.

Hubble Space Telescope Refresh your sense of awe and wonder with the most beautiful and exciting astronomical photographs of all time. Start with Hubble's Greatest Hits from the last eight years. High res images lie behind the thumbnail pics. While you are waiting for them to download meditate on this: If our galaxy were the size of Australia, the solar system would be no bigger than a cup of coffee. Earth would be smaller than a grain of sugar. I wonder, where would the edge of the universe be?

Currency converter All world currencies catered for. Handy for Internet shopping.

Pig Latin Converter Orksway a reatray .

Another Pig Latin Converter. This one converts whole web pages. This would not have helped me in 3rd year Latin (nothing would have) but it's a hoot.

The Dialectizer This crazy site converts text into dialects from Cockney to Jive - Recognise dis? "1: In de beginnin' God created da damn heaven and da damn eard. 2: And da damn eard wuz widout fo'm, and void; and darkness wuz downon de face uh de deep. Jes hang loose, brud. And da damn Spirit uh God moved downon de face uh de boozes. 3: And God said, Let dere be light, dig dis: and dere wuz light. Man! " Fry mah hide! 'S Coo' bro. Slap ma fro.

Feral Cheryl Australia's answer to Barbie. No anorexic, dumb blonde with big boobs this one. From Nimbin to you - she comes with no accessories, apart from tats and a bag for her dried herbs (herbs? … yeah, right!)

ABC News ABC News and weather with links to relevant ABC TV programs. Keep up with Local/regional news as well.

BBC News News from around the world in text , audio and video from the Beeb.

The New York Times Some of the world's best journalism is now free, once you register.

vTuner.com Search for the best Net connections to radio stations all around the world. Specify type of station or preferred country.

Windows to the Universe Popular earth and space sciences website.

The Galileo Project See the very latest from this mind-blowing mission to Jupiter and its moons. Screw Mars! Let's go to Europa! The next deep space mission should land on Thera or the pack-ice where it could drop a melting probe fitted with a camera and perhaps say hello to other life forms beyond Earth - after all it's only good manners that we should try to get to know the neighbours. And it’s our best chance to answer the Question of the Age!

Sing-along. Fun for the whole family.

The Onion. Check out the horoscope page of this newspaper that makes the National Enquirer look like the New York Times.

Artcyclopedia The definitive guide to fine art on the Net. There are no art sites more comprehensive than this one with links to over 5,500 artists. Also dabbles in photography, architecture, installations, and digital art. Plenty of features to read and a mammoth guide to art galleries word-wide. There's the prestigious Artcyclopedia Top 30 where some big names battle it out for the top spot of the art charts.

Space.com All the news on space that's fit to print. Movies (launches and landings of space shuttles), missions, maps - you name it. Chat with fellow propellorheads and be the first to know about new projects. Check out Area 51 (takes the piss outa those wacky UFO conspiratory theorists.) Alright it's the year 2000 and Moonbase Alpha was not up and running by 1999 but there's still plenty bodly going on up there  in space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Curious creatures aren't we? Sorry, but there's nothing down here. 