Cool Web Sites
by Don Singleton
Tulsa Computer Society
From the April 1999 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter
The words to: A Great Day For The Irish, Danny Boy, My Wild Irish Rose, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover, Harrigan, The Unicorn, That's An Irish Lullaby, I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen, Sweet Rosie O'Grady, Galway Bay, Sidewalks Of New York, Cockles And Mussels, Rose Of Tralee, Peg Of My Heart, Peggy O'Neil, MacNamara's Band, A Little Bit Of Heaven, Mickey, Mother Machree, The Bowery, Clancy Lowered The Boom, How Are Things In Glocca Morra?, It's The Same Old Shillelagh, Who Threw The Overalls In Mrs. Murphy's Chowder?, Mary, It's A Grand Old Name, The Parting Glass, Galway Bay (Parody Version), Irish Rover, Leaving Liverpool, All For Me Grog, The Holy Ground, Kelly Of Killann, Roddy McCorley, The Mermaid, A Nation Once Again, The Patriot Game, Reilly's Daughter, I'll tell Ma, The Black Velvet Band, The Wild Colonial Boy, The Wild Rover, That's How I Spell Ireland, An Irishman's Dream, Erin, You're Wearin' a Wonderful Smile, Old Maid in the Garret, The Rising of the Moon, Rosin The Bow, Mr. Moses Ri-Tooral-i-ay, The Bold O'Donahue, The Parting Glass, Seven Old Ladies, Courting in the Kitchen, Henry Me Son, Waxies Dargel, Fiddler's Green, and The MoonShiner
Original art for St. Patrick's Day, If you can't find it here, you must not be Lucky!
Postcards and fun.
The holiday explained. What's the religuos significance of the day? Why is pink associated with the holiday? Why bunnies? Get the answers here.
Discover the real meaning of Easter; explore silly, sensible, and serious links in this unique parody for the entire family.
Read Easter stories and legends about Christ, the dogwood, the lily, the butterfly, and more.
Activities, games, recipes, customs and stories surrounding Easter. A good resource for classrooms.
Makers of Faberge-inspired egg purses. The site features egg history and trivia, and Faberge egg information.
Directory of Christian Web sites related to Easter and Lent. No bunnies, just the Good News.
Journey through scripture, art, music and essays which reflect on the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus.
Ever wonder why the sky's blue? Answer: "Scattering of sunlight is roughly proportional the fourth power of the frequency." At least that's what the so- called Mister Dr. Whiz has to say about it. Another gem of wisdom from Dr Whiz, to the question "where do most duck-billed platypus's live, what do they eat, and how do they go about doing so?" the answer was "Chicago and St. Louis. Most try to get by on a light diet of vegetables, fruits and grubs. Platypus have always kept a low profile in American society fearing the same type of prejudice and violent outbreaks that have plagued them in Europe for so many centuries. As a consequence you rarely seeing a platypus at a fast food restaurant, bowling alley, or movie theater. Occasionally, however, a platypus couple will go out on a Friday night and throw caution to the wind - splurging on a steak and lobster dinner before an evening of wine and dancing. (This hints into platypus mating rituals which is beyond the scope of this answer.)"
Your may make fewer trips for Chinese take-out after dropping in at this orientalfood.com site.
An expanded ShawGuides may be the first place to look if you're searching for a creative learning program. Offerings range from cooking and writing to photography and tennis; drop-down menus make the search quick and easy.
Looking for something that's just as fun and cute as a pet rock -- but soft and fuzzy? Consider a dryer lint pet.
And now for a gem of a site -- literally. It's called Gem of a Story and it takes you through an interactive tour of emeralds, aquamarines, diamonds, opals and more. From the Smithsonian.
Build yourself a virtual aquarium -- in full motion, if you have a Java- enabled Web browser. And then get tips on how to build and care for a real- life fish tank.
And now for our don't go here on an empty stomach category: What seems to be the Web's first full-fledged Virtual Autopsy site. From Britain's Leicester University, it warns of graphic material. And that's not an understatement.
ScreenThemes, a free and popular downloadable screensaver/wallpaper program, is now Windows 98 compatible. The starter pack includes seven images; additional packs will cost you.
Anyone who's new to the Web is bound to experience that lost in cyberspace feeling. The ICYouSee Guide, brought to us by the Ithaca College Library, offers an antidote. Includes learning links that even some veteran Web surfers will appreciate.
Political junkies will find a huge assortment of useful links -- including candidates, parties, issues and interest groups -- at Politics1. It boasts that it's non-commercial and non-partisan.
Sick and tired of those way-perky motivational posters? Take a sanity break at a site that features "demotivational" pictorials. As in: "Failure -- when your best just isn't good enough.
Take a break from that tedious human babble and chat with a friendly bot. Go ask A.L.I.C.E. (a.k.a., Artificial Linguistic Computer Entity) and see what she (it?) says. All you have to do is type.
Golf game not what you wish it could be? (For example, you use a scientific calculator to total your scores?) You're in good company at this Bad Golf site. Which describes itself as a place "for the golfer whose handicap IS golf."
Consumer Advice, including special reports on long distance phone rates, gas deregulation, fake wood siding, and Roth IRA, plus an archive of Recent Clark Howard reports on WSB-TV such as: what you can do when a hair cut turns into a hair emergency, protection is your responsibility at storage facilities, what to do when your contractor won't finish the job, getting bogus credit card charges removed can be tough, do your homework before car shopping, and buying a used car
Broadcast Live on the Internet Monday - Friday 2-5pm Central time.
If you're a student or parent with questions about college, this site from the Coalition of America's Colleges and Universities aims to help answer them. A guide on how to prepare, choose and pay for college.
Need something to rant about? Life's Little Annoyances provides a long list of things that threaten to drive you nuts. And you can submit your own, too.
Examples:
- You drink from a soda can into which someone has extinguished a cigarette.
- You slice your tongue licking an envelope.
- Your tire gauge lets out half the air while you're trying to get a reading.
- A station comes in brilliantly when you're standing near the radio but buzzes, drifts and spits every time you move away.
- There are always one or two ice cubes that won't pop out of the tray.
And now for the finalist in our first-ever please-don't-do-this-again category: The Furby Autopsy site. You should not visit if you are in any way squeamish about exposed circuit boards.
Heard about the "shampoo cancer warning"? Or how about the "dueling quotations" between Ken Starr and Bill Clinton? Welcome to the world of Web hoaxes.
The National Consumer Law Center is a nonprofit corporation founded over 25 years ago at Boston College School of Law. Includes info on such things as credit reports, telemarketing scams and avoiding second-mortgage frauds.
And now for our ever-popular hard-to-believe category: Yes, some people actually like being lost in cyberspace. To prove it, these folks set up a categorized list of random links. Music and movies to pets and sports.
"Read about how people are deceived, bandwidth is clogged and your friends are terrorized." No that doesn't come from Ken Starr's report. It's about "horrifying" Internet chain letters.
Smithsonian Magazine presents an interactive Kids' Castle. Learning/fun channels range from animals and sports to history and science. It includes message boards, photos and articles.
Not new, but nonetheless nifty. It has all kinds of useful book info--reading lists, by genre, author, series, sequels, or Oprah; an "If You Like This, You Should Like These" file, and a set of about 1500 book reviews.
SJCPL's alphabetical listing of public libraries with homepages on the World-wide Web.
All sites are arranged in one alphabetical listing by the name of the public library or by the name of the city in which the library is located (e.g., the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County will be found under 'Charlotte').
From the Perry Castaneda Library at the University of Texas at Austin. Over 230,000 maps, including an outline map of counties in Oklahoma (71K), and a historical city map of Tulsa in 1920 from the Automobile Blue Book (137K)
This guide attempts to list all of the world's countries, and many of its islands, with a pointer to the local time in the region. Times quoted as UTC offsets do not consider Daylight Savings Time. Except for the Pacific and Caribbean Islands, islands are often included with either the sovereign country listing, or with the nearest continent.
Searchable index of Familiar Quotations
Nobody has all the answers when it comes to parenting, but at ParentsPlace.com you can get all kinds of advice from experts and othr parents on fertility, pregnancy, health, ages/stages, fun things to do with a baby, toddler, preschool, kindergarten, grades 1-3, grades 4-6, or preteen/teen.
The largest community for Christians on the 'Net. Featuring great resources for men and women of all ages, and FREE services - e-mail, live chat, forums, events directory, movie reviews, search, games, news feeds from Reuters, radio, and more!
Say Thank You, I'm Sorry, or Congratulations through the Internet to a friend or loved one with a free electronic greeting card. You can create every aspect of the card from the animated header to the music that plays along with the card.
This site helps to accomplish what parents have been trying to do since the beginning of time, getting kids to eat their vegetables. With games and trivia, kids learn the value of fruits and fegetables in a fun way, and parents can learn how to pick and store fresh fruits and vegetables.
The trouble with most search engines is that they bring you too much stuff that's not germane. If you want your search agent to cast its net just so, come here. On the other hand, what even more sophisticated bots are doing in, say, medicine, is positively eerie. As the Buddha said, "deeds are done, but there is no doer thereof."
Bots and Intelligent Agents will allow you to do routine tasks in an automatic function thus allowing you greater time for the more important things at hand.
The United States Postal Service 10 Most Wanted Posters. Have you seen these men?
Everybody loves clowns, right? Not on the Web. Here's a site that has everything from anti-clown poetry and screensaver to a Punch-A-Clown game and chat room.
- Paint Estimator
- Cost of Carpeting Calculator
- Wallpaper Calculator
- Tile Estimator
- Compare Furnace Efficiencies
- How Much Insulation?
- Boardfeet Estimator
- Wallboard Estimator
- Concrete Estimator
- Water Softener Estimator
- Square Foot Estimator for Windows and Doors
Find FREE Christian Materials like Books, Clip Art, E-Mail Cards, Inspirationals, Midi Music, Nature Gallery, Poems, Recipes, Software and much more...
Sign up for a "Weather Magnet" which is a display you can put on your web page which shows the current weather for your city, plus provides a link back to weather.com.
This Web site offers a sophisticated analysis of startling biblical prophecies concerning the future and the new millennium fast approaching. Fullysdocumented. New ideas, e.g., new proof for pre-trib Rapture; Antichrist from Lebanon; military crisis for Israel before the pre-trib Rapture.....
Homeowners contemplating a caving-in wall or two and those thinking about adding new rooms or remodeling in a big way should check out Installing Drywall. The site is designed for the do-it-yourselfer looking to save some dough but still do a good job drywalling, spackling, and finishing. The first section, "Selecting Panels," is pretty much a sales pitch for the products of the company that sponsors this site, but you can still figure out what thicknesses and types of drywall you need and go out and buy any brand you like. The rest of the advice -- which includes information on the tools you'll need, joint compound, recommended screws, how to measure and estimate quantities, how to put the stuff up on walls and ceilings, and how to repair what you already have -- is fairly commercial free, easy-to-understand, and extremely helpful.
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Tulsa Computer Society 2/16/99
Don Singleton, President
djs@ionet.net