Random links I like:

Useful Local Links

• Places I've lived:
  • Presently: Silver Spring, in Montgomery County, Maryland.
  • 1999 - 2004: Norton, MA
  • 1996 - 1999: Somerville, MA
  • 1992 - 1996: Cambridge, MA
• Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
• Tennis Center at College Park
• Montgomery County Tennis Association
• Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless
• Westfield Montgomery Mall
• I do cardio kickboxing here: Champion Martial Arts
• O'Hair Salon & Spa in Gaithersburg, MD
• Hiking and Biking Trails
  • Maryland's Parks, Forests, and WMAs, with lots of info on hiking trails.
  • Written Overview of Park Trails in Montgomery County, MD, by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission
  • College Park Area Bicycle Coalition, with map of mid-Maryland bike trails
  • Bike Washington, the Recreational Bicycling Guide to the Washington DC Area
  • LocalHikes: a site where you can enter your zip code and find hikes near you.
  • WV Trails: hiking, biking, skiing, horseback trails in West Virginia
  • C&O Canal Bicycling Guide
  • The Northern Centrail Railroad Trail, converted for biking and hiking in Maryland
  • The Mount Vernon Trail, for biking and hiking from Washington, DC, to Mount Vernon
  • Western Maryland Rail Trail, for biking and hiking
• Hiking and biking in other areas
  • AllTrails with hiking trails throughout the US
  • Shenandoah National Park in Virginia
  • Luray Caverns, a complex of underground caverns near Shenandoah National Park.
  • Pennsylvania State Parks
  • Allegheny Valley Trails Association
• Restaurants
  • Trattoria Alberto, a Northern Italian restaurant in Glen Burnie, MD.
  • Old Ebbitt Grill, a restaurant in downtown Washington, D.C., with great burgers and other food.
  • 2 Amys, a Neapolitan pizzeria that has the best Neapolitan pizza we've eaten since returning from Naples.
  • Facci, another restaurant serving really good Neapolitan pizza.
  • McGinty's Public House, in downtown Silver Spring, MD.
  • Daily Grill, a restaurant in downtown Washington, D.C.
  • Mamma Lucia, a small, local chain of good Italian restaurants
  • Cristina Ristorante Italiano, in Wheaton, MD
  • Golden Bull Grand Cafe: looks a little worn down, but they have wonderful crab cakes!
  • The Outta the Way Cafe, offering simple dinners and sandwiches.
  • Armand's Pizza menu
• Massachusetts area links
  • Boston Hiking Guide
  • Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization, which plans future development of highways, surface roads, and public transportation in the Boston area. They have lots of documents about future plans and other useful info.
  • MassParks: Massachusetts Forests, a list of state parks in Massachusetts, with trail maps and other useful info

Generally Useful Links

• TheSmithsonian Institution has all their museums on the web
• The Census Bureau is now on the web
• The Whyfiles, the science behind the news.
• Slashdot: nerd news
• The Internet Archive, which stores web pages. Some are from 1996! It also has netnews archives, including some landmark posts.
• The Integrator, which uses Mathematica to do symbolic integrations of whatever you want
• Project Vote Smart, which lets you look up who your elected officials are.

Cool Simulations

• Construct funny machines from weights and springs at sodaplay.com.
• Hyperspace Star Polytope Slicer, to help visualize 4-D surfaces in 3-D

Funny Oddities

• News of the Weird
• An online gallery of recent hacks at MIT
• Here's a really cool asciimation of Star Wars: A New Hope
• Urban Legends Reference Pages
• Every saying you ever wanted translated into Latin
• I'll bet you never thought about how many times you used doorknobs.
• Protect yourself from mindreaders with an aluminum foil deflector beanie
• The Gallery of Obscure Patents
• Flo Control, an amusing webpage detailing how to make a cat detection device to control a cat door
• Science Made Stupid, a very funny site that "explains" science
• Dumb Laws in various states and countries -- some are even substantiated
• Location Earth Dog Tags in case you're worried about being abducted by aliens.
• Engrish.com, which has examples of Engrish (humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising) from around the world
• Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics
• Peep Research, experiments conducted on Easter Peeps
• The Museum of Hoaxes' Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Times
• The Borowitz Report, a daily satire piece
• Molecules with Silly or Unusual Names
• Directions to Mordor
• Spam used to make poetry
• i can has cheezburger: funny candid pictures of cats with humorous captions
• Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos, by wired.com
• Skytopia: Greatest Optical Illusions Pictures
• Opitcal Illusions and Visual Phenomena
• The MegaPenny Project, which helps you visualize huge numbers using pennies. Go here to see what 100 billion pennies would look like.

Educational

• Plagiarism: What It Is and How to Recognize and Avoid It, from Indiana University
• James Randi Education Foundation, an educational resource on the paranormal, pseudoscientific and the supernatural. He debunks a lot of psychics and other kooks.
• Climate change: a guide for the perplexed by New Scientist
• Bad science, a column in the UK Guardian Unlimited exposing the misrepresentation of science in the media
• SciVee, a site where scientists upload videos describe their work in journal articles. Right now, seems to be mostly biology and chemistry.
• The Periodic Table of Videos, which has short videos on each element in the periodic table
• Understanding Science by Berkeley
• The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Cooking, Nutrition, Diet, and Exercise

• CalorieKing, a calorie counter
• Foodfacts.com, which has lots of nutrition data
• Diet-Data.com, which has lists of nutrition facts on most foods
• Food Calorie Counter by Ladies' Home Journal.
• Face the Fats: lots of useful information different types of fats and how much you should be eating, by the American Heart Association
• Epicurious: The World's Greatest Recipe Collection
• CooksRecipes.com
• Keeping Food Safe During An Emergency by the USDA
• Paula Z's Exercise Video Reviews
• videofitness.com: Consumer Reviews
• Stretching: The Truth: New York Times article on how warm ups should include dynamic stretching.
• Experts: Don't stretch before exercising, a 2010 USA Today article
• Dynamic Flexibility and Mobility, a series of dynamic stretching exercises from JMU
• Cmpendium of Physical Activities Tracking Guide, giving METS for various activities.
• Knee Exercises, for strengthing and stretching muscles associated with the knee to relieve knee pain.
• Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome: A Review and Guidelines for Treatment. Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome seems to by synonymous with chondromalacia.
• Strength Training: understanding your nervous system will lead to muscular strengthening

Cat Stuff

• What Color Is My Cat? by a TICA Allbreed judge.
• Feline Behaviors: Why Does My Cat Do This?
• Feeding Your Cat: Know the Basics of Feline Nutrition by Lisa A. Pierson, DVM
• BANR Petdoor: Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats, which has a brochure you can download about feeding cats. The information is from a report made by the National Academy of Sciences.
• FLUTD, Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease, by Long Beach Animal Hospital

Other

• The official Calvin and Hobbes webpage. Also, a list of Calvin and Hobbes links.
• Amazing satellite images of natural disasters.
• Find out about earthquakes happening right now around the world.
• Long Bets, which takes large bets about major future events
• JigBoxx, an online jigsaw puzzle store
• The Chorallaries of MIT, who have the lyrics to the Engineers' Drinking Song.
• GeoURL, where you can look up webpages based on locations physically close to you. Check out my neighbors.
• Reference sheet for natbib usage for LaTeX
• Geocaching: find the geocaches near you
• Ark Angels, a pet sitting company in Lexington, SC, which is run by a friend's mother
• JibJab, with musical political parodies
• Licorne, amazing images of the French nuclear weapon test codenamed Licorn in 1970.
• How to Follow the Curly Girl Method for Curly Hair
• Asimov's Science Fiction magazine website
• Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine website

avondale@astro.umd.edu