Links Archive
Where older links go when I find new ones for the parent page.
Note that this archive lists links alphabetically by title, rather
than in order of original posting.
Most recent additions: June 2007
360TV.com
This is in the department of "six impossible things before
breakfast". The company's product (still in prototype stage at this
writing, but heading toward an IPO) is a 360-degree-viewable
television system -- put it in the middle of a room or a conference
table, and everyone sitting or standing around it will see the image
head-on. It isn't "holovision", but it's one of the most
fascinating TV technologies I've seen.
Another Shirt Ruined - The
Amelia Peabody Page
For those interested in Egyptology and/or murder mysteries, this
is the official site for Elizabeth Peters' series of archaeological
mysteries starring Amelia Peabody Emerson. Lots of information
about the books and the author (who also writes as Barbara Michaels
and Barbara Mertz), as well as a host of interesting links.
Antiques
Roadshow Online
Ever wondered what that thingamabob in the attic was, or whether
your childhood toy truck was worth something to a collector, or if
the Genuine Handmade Persian Rug you bought at a going out of
business sale was really handmade in Persia? That kind of specific
question can't be answered over the Web, but the home page for this
popular PBS series may help you figure out where you can get
answers. There's quite a bit of useful information here, even
during periods when the show is in reruns.
Aunt Candice Foods
Fair warning here: I have not actually tried the goodies available
from this site. I mention them because they're in an interesting
and evolving product category -- goodies tailored to the dietary
needs of those with inconveniently basic food allergies. (Several
friends of mine fit this description.) That's a daunting task: how
do you bake cookies without wheat, gluten, dairy, or soy
ingredients?
If you do try these, let me know what you think.
Black Gate
A new quarterly large-format magazine devoted to fantasy fiction
in the classic mode. Publisher John O'Neill has rounded up new or
largely unknown works by some of the genre's most admired or
respected names (Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner) to get the
project off to a solid start, and is also working hard to recruit
and showcase newer talents.
Cat Diary
I neither own nor am owned by a cat, but I still enjoy the
reports supplied through this site and its associated free weekly
newsletter. The Big Owner is a Portland radio personality, who has
been sharing the contents of his cat's secret journals with
audiences and e-mail readers for several years now. (If the cat ever
finds out, he may be in serious trouble.)
Chronology Of Written Star Trek Fiction
And you thought Sherlock Holmes fans were detail-oriented!
Herewith an unofficial but highly intelligent effort to put nearly
every Star Trek tale ever professionally published into one grand
calendar.
CoinSite
I ran across a childhood piggy bank not long ago, and after
shaking most of the loose change out of it went hunting for good
coin-collecting resources on the 'Net to see if I had anything
really impressive. This is one of the best I found (though the
price guides at www.pcgs.com are
more detailed).
Do You Know Where Your Yak Is?
Hooper's Yak Ranch
McRoberts Gourmet Foods
Yaks
The joke is "tastes like chicken", but in fact yak tastes not
unlike buffalo (or bison, if you're being technical). Herewith a
quick overview of the art, science, and merchandising of yaks and
yakburgers.
Food Reference Website
This turned up during my yak hunt. I didn't find a recipe for
yak, but there's a lot here to sort through -- basic information
about almost any ingredient you can imagine, recipes for a great
variety of things other than yak, and many other items of
food-related news and trivia.
Hamlet: the Text
Adventure
If you like your Shakespeare spun inside out and sideways, you'll
appreciate this endeavor for its literary cleverness. If you have
fond memories of Zork, Colossal Cave, and "a maze of twisty little
passages, all alike", you'll appreciate the clean, classic execution
of this exercise in old-fashioned gaming. And if both are your cup
of tea, you've got a rare and very silly treat in store.
The Internet Movie Database
Trivia heaven for movie buffs. A good source of information on
new and upcoming movies, the distinction for me is the ability to
prowl through (and search!) a sizeable database of film credits, so
that you can find out what else your favorite scriptwriter has done,
who the second assistant director of The Mummy was, and which
of your old college classmates has appeared in a major feature film.
KryptonSite
One of my current guilty pleasures is the new TV series
Smallville, chronicling the life and times of Clark Kent as a
high schooler who hasn't yet put on the cape and the big red S. This
isn't the official network site for the show, but they've got a
sizeable and well-maintained collection of information about the
show, the cast, and the associated mythology.
The Magic Castle
This legendary mansion is home to one of the world's foremost
organizations of magicians, and only members or their authorized
guests are allowed in. But even those of us who are merely longtime
fans of folk such as Houdini, Blackstone, and David Copperfield can
get a glimpse of the club's attractions and offerings via the
Castle's Web site.
Mary McCrank's
I first ate at Mary McCrank's when I was maybe four years old --
by which time it had been in business for over 50 years. It's still
there (though Mary herself now supervises from the great beyond) and
still as good as ever. If you don't believe me, ask USA Today,
which rated the place one of the nation's best.
The Mars Society
Quite a lot of content here even for visitors. Although the
society is SF-friendly, it's really a scientific organization
devoted to supporting research and exploratory ventures related to
the Red Planet. My guilty connection: I was a finalist in a
competition the society sponsored in 2000, in quest of an official
anthem.
The Mini-Mizer
Indulge your interest in art and your passion for Lego blocks with
this amusing site -- an online Flash engine that lets you create a
self-portrait in Legonium. Multiple versions provided, one of which
has "Easter eggs" for liberated grownups and one of which is safe
for toddler-types.
Missing Money
No, this isn't the "you saw it on Oprah" people, or one of the
outfits that sends out annoying spam offering to connect you with
long-lost wealth for a fee. This site, which doesn't charge for
access, is a search database maintained by a coalition of government
lost-property offices from states around the country. The site
design is cluttered and semi-annoying -- including an occasional
popup -- and is somewhat limited in that only thirty-odd states are
actually hooked into the master database. Then again, they can link
you even to the state offices that aren't participating, and the
free-ness of the service is a strong attractor.
Muppet Central
"It's time to make the music, it's time to light the lights...."
and it's time for Muppet fans to spend a nostalgic hour or three
browsing the aisles of this field guide to all things Muppetational.
Narbonic
Mix one part Dilbert, one part Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
and one part For Better or For Worse, and you begin to
approach the utterly bizarre wackiness that is Narbonic. One
of a new breed of comic strips created and published exclusively on
the Web, Shaenon K. Garrity's saga of mad scientist Helen Narbon and
her semi-fearless minions is consistently, brilliantly warped. It's
also better than 90% of today's newspaper strips, not excluding some
of the Big Names. [The strip is now complete, but the entire
multi-year run is now being re-run with "Director's Cut"
commentary.]
Noreen Doyle
Don't be deceived by the austere, plain-spoken design -- Noreen
is an articulate, colorful, and many-talented individual, as you'll
discover once you penetrate the unassuming exterior and reach the
interior of the pyramid, um, Web site. The Egyptological-fiction
bibliography is a superior resource, and then there's the
embroidery, and the Greek photo-tour....
Oregon Blue Book
The state of Oregon has been publishing printed Blue Books,
containing thorough basic reference information about the state (by
no means limited to details about its government) for many years.
Now the resource is available online, and there's lots of useful and
interesting material included.
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
One of my regular summer vacation spots. Located in scenic
Ashland, Oregon (and it really is scenic, I'm not just saying that
for the cliché value), OSF offers a varied repertory of some eleven
plays over a nine-month season. My father still talks about the
modern-dress Julius Caesar set in the Middle East, complete
with Uzi-toting terrorists guarding the house doors during the
soliloquies. Order tickets early, as the summer season sells out
almost at the drop of a feathered cap.
The Original Home Page
of Robert W. Service
Back in the good old days (said the writer, who'd be thumping a
cane if he had one), men were men, women were women, and poetry by
gosh RHYMED! And the patron saint of poetry that by gosh RHYMED
was, is, and always will be Robert W. Service, whose ballads of the
Yukon and its colorful characters show a command of sound and lyric
rare in the annals of verse. I was delighted to discover this site,
collecting a wealth of information about the poet as well as a good
many of his works.
Pacific Seafood
This one was a surprise. After coming across the second-best
clam chowder in the known world (after my grandmother's, of course)
at a little storefront seafood counter on the pier at Bay City, a
little town on the Oregon coast, I went looking for the store's Web
site. What I found was a big seafood company with facilities
from Alaska to Fresno. (Fresno?) Be advised that this site is
fairly graphics-intensive.
Patron Saints Index
Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief -- whatever your profession
or calling, there's probably a saint whose business is looking out
for its practitioners, and here's a convenient reference to tell you
just who among the veritable horde of saints in the canon has his or
her watchful eye on your affairs.
Psi Phi's Star Trek
Book Database
As the Baker Street Irregulars are to Sherlock Holmes, the
operators of this site are to the Star Trek novel franchise.
If you're a follower of the books based on -- and more recently,
extrapolated from -- the various TV series, this is an invaluable
resource, with complete information on books past, present and
future.
Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel
Adam West
Back to the Batcave
Batman: the Animated
Series
Translating comics to TV is a strange business, especially when
you're talking about Batman. How else do you explain showcasing one
of the comics' darkest characters in both a supremely silly
1960s TV serial and a sharp-edged 1990s animated series with
astonishingly dark overtones?
Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers
of America (SFWA)
This isn't just a site for SF writers -- the SFWA site has
evolved in the last year or so into one of the most information-rich
writers' sites anywhere on the Web, with advice and resources that
both readers of SF and writers working in any genre will find
useful.
Soundamerica
Looking for obscure TV theme songs? Sound bites from your
favorite old cartoons? This site has enough content to keep you
surfing long after the cows have come home, been milked, and gone
out to pasture again. And they're mostly in .WAV format, which makes
them accessible even to many of those with minimal-power computer
dinosaurs.
Static Machines
Here's a site for anyone who's ever had aspirations to be a mad
scientist. (Disclaimer: Play safely -- I'm not responsible for
anyone or anything you may happen to electrocute, and what you see
in animated cartoons is not an accurate representation of
what happens when you get zapped.)
Stump the
Bookseller
The worst thing that can happen to a bookaholic is to have the
title and/or author of a favorite book fall out of your head.
Luckily for the Web-enabled, we can fall back on the groupmind
hosted at Loganberry Books, where hundreds of lost plots have been
tidily indexed for those of us with scattered memories. If your
particular lost treasure isn't among those already listed, a mere $2
fee adds your stumper to the list. It's most exhaustive for kids'
books, but other odds and ends can be found as well.
Tangent Online
The online incarnation of Tangent is even more
encyclopedic than its printed predecessor, providing reviews of just
about all of the major sources for short fiction of a
science-fictional or fantastic persuasion -- including some of the
emerging Webzines. Though counted a fanzine for Hugo award
purposes, it's as professionally run a journal as you'll find in the
field.
The Theban Mapping Project
Another Egyptology site, this time purely historical. This one
is run by the archaeological team presently excavating "KV5", a
huge, labyrinthine tomb built for the many sons of Ramses II. The
well-designed site includes photos of many other tombs, an extensive
reference list, and enough useful links and pointers to keep you
reading for years.
Tillamook Cheese
Actually, my favorite Tillamook dairy product is the ice cream --
but Tillamook Cheddar is known nationwide for quality and getting
more popular all the time. If you get to the Oregon coast, do stop
in at the factory and take the self-guided tour, where you can watch
blocks of cheese wend their way through a maze of conveyor belts
worthy of Rube Goldberg. (And get samples!)
Tom Smith Online
The SF world knows Tom first as a wickedly brilliant musician,
creator of such insanity as the Rocky Horror Muppet Show and
I Want to be Peter Lorre. But he's also a smart and reliable
movie critic, an avid game hound, and a wizard of several sorts of
obscure computer lore. Kick back, have fun -- but watch out for the
307 Ale.
Toon Tracker - Finder of
Lost Cartoons
On one hand, this site is an argument for the proposition that
some people just have too much spare time. On the other hand, if
you're trying to recall who "Savoir-Faire" was, or what animated
character's trademark exit line was "Scatter.....ZOOM!", this is the
place to look. (Yes, the Toon Tracker knows both answers!) Episode
guides, vast compilations of theme music and video clips, and all
manner of reference material on toons old and new.
Toon Zone
A news-site devoted to animated television and film of all kinds
-- clearly indispensable for those of us who never outgrew our
interest in superheroes, Bugs Bunny, and other denizens of the Toon
Zone. (I learned here that Jackie Chan Adventures will be
back for a fourth season of new shows. Hooray!)
University
of Michigan Virus Busters
There are several sites around the Web that keep track of the
semi-infinite ways in which e-mail incarnations of Chicken Little
attempt to convince you that the sky is falling and your computer is
doomed. This one is my current venue of choice -- anytime I get a
panicked note from someone insisting that a virus is on its way to
turn my hard drive to jelly, I check here first. So far, the hard
drive is still hard....
Violet Books
Since I originally bookmarked this site, it's shifted emphasis;
now it's less a specialty bookstore (though you can still get a
catalog) than a reference resource focusing on vintage supernatural
and adventure fiction, compiled by award-winning author Jessica
Amanda Salmonson.
the virtual sharyn november
The hostess of this site is a very recent virtual acquaintance --
by way of Karawynn, as it happens -- but I was immediately impressed
by the amount of useful and interesting information you can find on
her site. If most people's Web pages are virtual living rooms, this
one is a virtual library.
WOPR.com
Recommended less for the (very useful) MS Word shareware add-on
utility available here than for the Web bulletin board for which the
site is a portal -- one of the best sources of Windows &
Microsoftware tech advice I've found anywhere in cyberspace.
Woody Leonhard has mostly moved on, but the Lounge and the suite of
email newsletters linked here remain excellent.
Writers Guild of America
If you're among the millions who dream of writing the next
Shrek (or the next Finding Forrester, or the next
Toxic Zombies), here's where you look for a host of useful
information on How Hollywood Works for writers.