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 Coalition for the Homeless
• Hiking and Biking Trails
  • Maryland's Parks, Forests, and WMAs, with lots of info on hiking trails.
  • 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
  • Shenandoah National Park in Virginia
  • Luray Caverns, a complex of underground caverns near Shenandoah National Park.
  • Pennsylvania State Parks
  • Allegheny Valey 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.
  • 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
• 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 Institute has all their museums on the web
• The Census Bureau is now on the web
• A useful mapping web site: MapQuest
• 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.
• A satellites applet at the University of Colorado at Boulder; click and drag on the window to create new satellites, with velocities based on the length and direction of your drag
• 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
• You Can't Do That on Babylon 5!
• 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
• Society for DNA Free Food...worried about genetically-engineered food? Just think about food with DNA contamination!
• Spam used to make poetry
• Cats hosted by Knitemare: funny candid pictures of cats with humorous captions
• Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos, by wired.com

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 Unlimitied 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.

Cooking, Nutrition, Diet, and Exercise

• 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

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 lyrics to theMIT Engineers Drinking Song, courtesy of The Chorallaries of MIT.
• 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
• Avalanche, a game on Yahoo
• JibJab, with musical parodies of Bush and Kerry
• The Woo-Woo Credo: How to be an Internet Woo-Woo
• Pass the Pigs, a game with pigs as dice
• Quick Summary of Feline Chronic Renal Failure
• What Color Is My Cat? by a TICA Allbreed judge.

avondale@astro.umd.edu