Useful Reference Links / Travel Related Links / Everything Else

Useful Reference Links:

The Car Talk website.  Home of the infamous Tom and Ray Magliozzi (also called Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers) from National Public Radio.  An entertaining place to go for questions and answers about automobiles.

City-Data.com.  Statistical information and profiles of thousands of U.S. cities.

Find A Grave.  A site that helps you find out where all the bodies are buried.  Search its enormous database of final resting spots of famous and not so famous people from around the world.

The Focus on Photography website.  An online tutorial for taking better pictures.

The GasBuddy website.  User reporting of gas prices in different cities across the U.S. and Canada.  More U.S. related gas pricing info is available the U.S. Department of Energy's FuelEconomy site, and the American Automobile Association's (AAA) Fuel Guage Report site.

How Stuff Works.  A website that attempts to explain life, the universe, and everything.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration site.  The government agency behind the U.S. National Weather Service.  Great starting point for U.S. weather related info.

Photo.net.  Serves as an online community for photographers to share their work and learn.  Includes equipment reviews, user galleries and forums, and more.  For full access, registration is required, and frequent use may incur a subscription fee.

Photography Tips.  Kodak's advice on taking better pictures.

The Recent Earthquake Activity Maps.  Shows the location and magnitude of recent seismic activity around the world.  Clicking on a circle on the map reveals additional information about the seismic event.  Updated every minute.

ReligiousTolerance.org.  An excellent resource on different world religions, and the belief systems associated with them.  Not a flashy site, but certainly a thought-provoking one.  Offers remarkably objective coverage of controversial topics.  From the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.

The San Francisco Bay Wind Patterns Page.  Shows the direction and intensity of the winds across the Bay Area.  Updated hourly.

The Theoi Project.  An online guide to Greek Gods, spirits, and monsters.

The Urban Legends Reference Pages (a.k.a. Snopes.com).  This site identifies popular stories that are often believed as strange but true, and analyzes them.  Another good site in the same vein is The Urban Legends Archive.

Volcano World.  History, news, and information about volcanoes and volcanic activity around the world.

Wikipedia.  One of the web's oddest developments, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

Travel Related Links:

Google Earth.  Google's free 3D mapping program of planet Earth and the celestial universe combines satellite imagery, road maps, and other geographic information with its powerful search engine capabilities.  Fee based versions providing a greater level of detail are also available.

Google Maps.  Offers interactive city street maps of the United States and Canada, sometimes accompanied with satellite imagery and street views.

Microsoft's Bing Maps is a worthy competitor to the aforementioned Google Maps and Google Earth.  It combines 2D and 3D imagery and ups the ante on Google's aerial photography with birds eye views from different directions.

Bay Area Hiker.  Offers info and advice on hiking trails around the San Francisco Bay Area.  Includes extensive photo tours, user forums, and hiker related links.

The Boulevards website.  A travel guide of cities in the U.S. (mostly) and other cities around the world.  Includes descriptions of selected cities and their offerings.

Elena's Kiddofspeed website.  A young Ukrainian woman documents her haunting motorcycle journeys through the restricted zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site.

James Brennan's Michigan Historical Markers site.  Covers over 1300 historical sites in the state of Michigan with photos and commentary.  An incredible effort, very nicely organized and presented.

Mexico Cruise.  A travel information site for visitors interested on Mexico vacation destinations.

The National Park Service website.  A vast site with information about and links to the National Parks of the United States.  Also offers information, links, and articles on selected historic sites, wildlife, geology, and more.

The Open World Hotel Discounts and City Guides website.  This has a strong slant toward the hotel industry, but it still provides some useful information about several of the world's most visited cities.

The San Francisco Pictures site.  Offers over 60 virtual tours highlighting the wonders of California's most historic city, once affectionately dubbed "Baghdad by the Bay".

PlanetWare.  A free guide to world travel.  Includes a diverse and extensive collection of travel pictures.

Kevin Kelm's Underground Paris website.  A virtual tour of the catacombs of Paris.  In 1785, the abandoned portions of these ancient limestone quarries became the final resting place for millions disinterred from the City of Light's overflowing cemeteries.  Not your everyday tourist attraction.

The Virtual Cave.  An excellent guide to different cave types and their unique geological formations.  Offers an extensive list of caves across America that are open to the public.

Everything Else:

Atlas Obscura.  A compendium of the world's wonders, curiosities, and esoterica.

Glenda Moore's CatStuff website.  Feline humor, graphics, tales, games, and enough ailuromania to give one paws.

The Internet Archive.  Use their Wayback machine to to a historic view of any website they have archived over the years.  Often they offer the only record of a sites that are no longer online, although more often than not the archive copy will not be complete.  The site frequently appears either completely offline or seriously bogged down, so try again later if this link isn't working well for you now.

The New Scientist website.  The online component of a rather fun British science magazine.  Provides news and engaging articles on scientific topics, and often giving a glimpse of science outside the United States.

Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird.  Official site of the syndicated news column that covers a few of the stranger news stories each week.

Our Earth as Art.  Downloadable e-book from NASA that features arty satellite views of our home planet.

The Skeptics' Society and Skeptics Magazine site.  Features insightful, thought-provoking articles on controversial subjects.  Only selected articles are available for free viewing on the site.

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