This is just a collection of links I find interesting. Check back, because I keep adding to this list from time to time.

Astronomy
Looking up at the stars...
Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)	Incredible astrophotographs, updated daily. Pictures from latest and greatest telescopes, as well as contributions by amateur astronomers. Explanations and lots of links to other sites, too. NGC 1300 I am fascinated by these Hubble photographs of distant galaxies. Consider the sun, a typical star. Now take a moment: think that the light that made these pictures came from so far away that the individual stars are just a blurry haze of light; each pixel in the picture might contain the light of thousands of stars... V838 Monocerotis Beautiful stellar nebula that perplexes astronomers. Some recent activity in the area has them wondering what's going on there. Growing V838 Mon Hubble Heritage Project shows how this light echo has been visibly growing. Think of it like a giant 3D ripple in a pond. Full moon rising Wow... nice shot of the moon rising over Greece. (Not all the pictures are of deep-space objects... ;-) Starry Night A beautiful starry night panorama over the Sahara. Map of the Universe This one is cool; much like the "powers of ten" video, this zooms out from earth to the edge of the known universe. It's claim to fame, though, is that everything is shown in the right place in relationship to everything else. Stormy Volcano An impressive picture of the Icelandic volcano that sent ash over Europe. Fish-eye view... ...of the center of the galaxy. This shot is clever in a number of ways. Lightning in Athens Another fascinating terrestrial shot: lightning strikes in Athens. Little Prince Earth? More Fun with Fisheyes. A great shot of the Australian sky near Parkes Radio Telescope dish... Interactive Parkes ...along with the following fun interactive site (linked to from APOD, too.) Day-glow Saturn Interesting view of Saturn, capturing it's planetary aurorae. Saturn's One Ring Following one of the links of the Saturn APOD above eventually gets you to this rather cool video. Okay, so they "cheezed it up" a bit with the LOTR references, but still informative; put out by the folks at Spitzer Space Telescope ... Discovery's Final Parting An earth-based time-lapse ("star-trail") view of Discovery parting from the ISS for the last time. Discovery's Final Parting (video) Here's a you-tube video of the same picture as above, where Discovery separates from the ISS for the last time. Shuttle Pre-launch movie An excellent time-lapse video (from some pretty spectacular angles!) of the several days of preparation the shuttle goes through prior to launch. It doesn't just start at 10-9-8-7...
Hubble Heritage Image Gallery	Just some of the images that the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has taken over its years in space.
Clear Dark Sky	What's the weather going to be like tonight where you live? Excellent tool for seeing how good the seeing will be tonight. ... San Rafael For example, this is what the seeing will be like in San Rafael, California.
Bad Astronomy	A great site for debunking a lot of bad astronomical (astro-comical?) blunders. Look up arguments against not only flat earth, faked moon shots, and the dubiousness of astrology, but (my favorite) the bad astronomy that appears in the movies.... and he's right up the road at SSU.
Blew Moon	There was always something disturbing (to me, anyway) about the definition "Blue Moon" ... you know, the second full moon in a month. (In younger years, I thought it was the second new moon... ;-) So it was an interesting discovery to learn that this is not the definition... at least not the original definition. Our "modern" definition is actually a mis-interpretation originating in 1937. Interesting. Blue Moon Folklore Even more interesting is how the meaning of the phrase has shifted over the past 400 years, from "an absurd proposition" to "an improbable event" to "a melancholy mood" to its present (and probably transient) meaning of a second full moon in a month (something which isn't really all that improbable... now, a blue moon in February: that's improbable!) [Page recovered from The Wayback Machine]
Your Sky	Here's a cool app from Fourmilab in Switzerland: provide some basic lat-lon info, and a few other tidbits of info, and you can see what's in the sky above you.
Future Timeline	Fascinating, and in many ways a bit creepy. See the future projected from now until the end of the physical universe (about year 10100...) The more near-term future may be a bit of conjecture, but not that improbable.
Language
Etymology Online	Where did that word come from? It's fun tracing a word or expression back to its original meaning.... ...for names Same sort of thing, but for names. EL Easton Another etymology site... (another fallen flag, immortalized now on the way-back machine.) Actually, Eva seems to have moved to a new site aimed at English Learners, but it's the etymological essays that I liked in the old site, hence the links here. Take Our Word For It Here's another great little site that offers etymologies for many common words and phrases, and an assortment of other word-related information. So, is it pronounced PEE-kahn or puh-KAHN? ;-) Word Detective Another etymology site, explaining where certain idioms and phrases came from.
Wordnik	Here's an interesting site, a sort of "Google meets the Dictionary", folding together definitions from major lexicons, instances of use (especially contemporary references, such as from blogs) and cross-referential items going beyond the vanilla "synonyms and antonyms"... hmmm...
lexipedia	Here's a fun site (in beta as of this writing) that shows words in relational trees. Think of it like a visual dictionary, where various spokes from the central word show definitions for the word as a noun, verb, adverb, etc. Fun to play around with (though still a bit rough around the edges.)
World Wide Words	Another collection of etymologies, this one with a decidedly British spin.
Language Miniatures	A collection of curious topics on the English language. Some are fun, others thought-provoking. Worth a read. (Let's hear it for Rolo-Pifla!) Note: original site has gone down, so the link now takes you to the Way-Back Machine.
Poems	You could argue that the epitome of language is the poem. Here are some of the classics. Literary Terms So what the heck is an enjambment anyway? RhymeZone If you fancy yourself a rhymester (or even a poet) but have rhymer's block, this is a cool site that may help get you out of that quandary. (PS: yes, they in fact have seven examples of rhymes for orange...) Shakespeare Okay, before you go rolling your eyes and saying "(sigh) Shakespeare" ... check it out! There's some really great stuff in there! ;) More Will Plays, summaries, history, quotes, and more.
Storm	A nine-minute beat-poem by Tim Minchin, replete with enjambments and all manner of devices, about a particular (hypothetical) dinner party, and two opposing points of view... (Warning: while thought provoking, parental guidance suggested, for use of one or two words George Carlin once riffed on.) The movie ...which is soon (2010) to be turned into a movie. Fun. ...Finally Released A year (April 8, 2011) overdue, but worth the wait. Check it out! ...based on... Mr. Minchin's "nine minute beat poem" (live performance)
Errors in English	Wanna learn URself some good habits?
Guide to Grammar and Style	Another useful guide, with an interesting perspective on things, and nicely interlinked.
Eggcorns	These are fun mis-uses of the language... even the term itself illustrates the concept: eggcorn was what somebody thought how acorn was spelled. There's mindgrain for migraine, and... well, you get the picture.
Mondegreens	Of course the topic wouldn't be complete without tossing in some mondegreens as well. Here's a bunch of 'em in Christmas carols.
List of Homonyms	Alan Cooper's (rather exhaustive!) list of homonyms... if you've ever wondered which of sight, site, or cite to use, (or ade, aid, aide, or your, you're, etc..) this is the site for you! (Just be sure to cite it as a reference in your bibliography...)
Dictionary of Idioms	The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, in the repository of Googles scanned books. We use idioms every day, often without knowing that they're idioms (until we have to explain one to a non-native English speaker ;-) ... this is a great collection of English idioms.
German	Deutsche Welle (German TV) offers downloadable lessons for learning German, including audio. Pretty cool stuff.
German-English dictionary	Like the name says, the dictionary of English to German and German to English
Latin Dictionary	amo, amas, amat, etc... How To Latin's a bit more complicated than English (no kidding?) so a few tips on how to look things up might be in order. Perseus Online Library Perseus Online Library includes many Greek and Latin works, and a searchable dictionary. Study Guide Some study notes by Dale A Grote on Wheelock's Latin.
HanBar™ Lexicon	Okay, a bit of self-promotion here, but I developed this Chinese/English tool because I needed something like it, and there wasn't anything else out there. (Five years on, there's still no equal! ;-) Learn Mandarin The associated site, with some learning games and sound assist.
Zhongwen.com	This is a really cool site, made all the more so since you don't need to install Asian language fonts to visit it. It helps demystify Chinese Han characters, and in general is quite interesting.
Japanese phrases	Some practical phrases for getting around in Japan
Babelfish	Of course, an online translator is handy, even if it doesn't always do a perfect translation. With a nod to Douglas Adams, AltaVista (well, Yahoo now...) provided this fairly useful tool. What Happened to Babelfish Yeah, as is often the case with pioneers, time moves on and passes them up. AltaVista is another fallen flag, and Yahoo now doesn't even forward the link to their translation service. How quickly history is forgotten. Brenda Barron looks back at the innovation that BabelFish represented way back prior to the beginning of the millennium, the challenges it faced, and why it eventually lost out to the competition.
ProZ	This is another cool site, a go-to place for all sorts of translations. Not the automated BabelFish as above, but real people helping each other: it's sort of a translator's watering hole (and the place to visit if you need to hire translation services.) Interesting!
Anagrams	Clint Eastwood ≈ Old West Action? Try it!
Project Gutenberg	"Your Free Digital Library" -- thousands of downloadable books: classics and other works (many of which the copyrights have expired and are now in the public domain.) Read them online, on your mobile device, or e-book device.
OpenLibrary	A cross between the ultimate card catalog and "imdb for books"... a clever open project with a goal of "one web page for every book."
A Disagreeably Facetious Type Glossary	..."for the Amusement & Edification of People Beginning a Love Affair with Fonts". Sure, you may know that the little doo-dads on the ends of strokes on a serif typeface like Times are called Serifs, but have you ever wondered what the hollow of an O or the horizontal line in an H are called? This short glossary -- more of an anatomy lesson of letters -- will be useful in understanding typography. (Another fallen flag; now archived at archive.org... donate to them to keep these relics alive...)
Railroading
Marin County has quite a vivid history in terms of railroading. While the iron doesn't shine anymore, it's left its mark here.
NWP	Another fallen flag, now found on archive.org. Some historical photographs of the Northwestern Pacific, or as it was sometimes known, the "Nowhere in Particular" railroad.
NPC RR	The predecessor to the NWP was the North Pacific Coast Railroad, at least in Marin and Sonoma. Many innovations happened here, including being one of the first electrified lines in the country (as well as No. 21, below.) NPC in Fairfax One of the NPC's stops: sleepy Larkspur. NPC History Many lines that used to run through Northern California were gathered up into the NWP. County of Marin's account County of Marin's page of NPC and "Riding the Railroad in Marin County" was taken down, but again Archive.org comes to the rescue. (Show them some love for the good that they do.) NCRA An effort to bring rail back to the old NWP line More History Locomotive No. 12 One of the original locomotives still exists, in original livery. (Note that the California State Railroad Museum has changed domains, so this is from the wayback machine...) California State Railroad Museum This is the new domain for the CSRM... nice, but shame on them for not preserving the old link... Cool URIs Never Change. Caboose No. 2 Also still around is one of the cabooses from the line
Bully Boy	The first time I saw No. 8, "Bully Boy", I thought cool! Turns out there were a few Mason-Bogies running elsewhere, but Bully Boy had quite a reputation in these parts.... ;) Mason Bogies What's a Mason-Bogie? Here's some more info. Mason Bogie Paint Not just built to be hard workers, Mason wanted his locomotives to be "good lookers" too, and bogies like the Bully Boy were brightly painted machines. (From archive.org)
Steam Dummies	Here's another little novelty... a tiny 0-4-0 steam engine clad in a small "coach" frame. Originally done to keep horses from being spooked by the loud noises of steam locomotives, these eventually became the precursors to things like "doodlebugs"... and of course, a bunch of them trundled along right of way in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. Dummy Profile Here's one in profile Dummies for Dummies A short primer on steam dummies. Another Specimen A good photo, though this is of a line on the other end of the country.
Steamlocomotive.com	A great site with history and evolution of the steam locomotive Wheel Arrangements So, was a Pacific a 4-6-2 or 2-6-4? (Or, what are those funny numbers anyway?) Cab Forward One of the local phenomena (Okay, not Marin County, but in California) was the cab-forward.
SteamLocomotive.info	Another site of interest for steam fans.
Steam Locomotive Animation	Ever wonder how all those gears and wheels made a steam locomotive move? This is a great little site with a really useful set of animations...
Steam Loco Family Tree	An interesting "family tree" of steam (at least in the US) in terms of wheel arrangements. The number of wheels and axles under a steam locomotive wasn't just for looks: there were very practical motivations for them....
First Cab Forward	I mention cab forwards, because the classic SP Cab Forwards were likely inspired by a quaint little invention here in Marin County...
Geared Steam	Heislers and Climaxes and Shays, oh my! Real work-horses, and a number of oddities, too.
xxactraxx	I've gotten back into the Model Railroading hobby and this place is a dream-come-true! Ever wanted to lay your own track, but thought it was too hard? This stuff makes it easy, and fun!
McKeen Motorcar	An idea ahead of its time a hundred years ago, it still looks unusual. The McKeen Motorcar was one of the evolutionary spurs in the development of light rail. Termed the "wind splitter" for its sharp front end (the term "streamlined" only came into use decades later) its outlandish shape (compared to other vehicles of the time) seems inspired by nautical design. Typical of things ahead of their time, the technology wasn't quite up to the concept, so these futuristic vehicles were somewhat unreliable... and even to this day, unique.... McKeen Postcards McKeens in San Diego and La Jolla.
Link and Pin Couplers	The period between 1870 and 1915 saw a huge number of inventions dealing with coupling of cars in a train. Before then, there were versions of what was called "link and pin", after, there was the knuckle coupler. But for almost fifty years, interchange between 'roads was an exercise in exhaustion if not frustration.
Mt. Washington Cog Railway	On the other end of the country, here's another railroad oddity, a railroad not driven by wheel, per se, but by cogs -- achieving a grade of up to 34 percent (steep, for railroads!)
Online Train Simulator	Ever wanted to be the engineer of your own train? Take your pick of a half dozen or so Japanese lines, with these online flash-based sims. You can even toot your own horn... Fun!
Travel
Electrical Outlets Worldwide	I guess if there's one thing that makes the world go 'round, it's Electricity. When going in-country abroad, it's a good idea to know what sort of plugs you'll find there... ;) more Electrical outlets A bit of history on this page, as to why all this 120/220 volts, 50/60 hertz stuff. Hmmm... the US could have gone with 220 instead of 120, but because we already had so many 110 appliances when the rest of the world didn't, we were stuck. Electrical outlets Just another table of outlets
Four Essential Travel Phrases	This site is fun. Really! Four essential travel phrases (and not ones you would think) in (almost) every language, and a few conlangs.... Including Klingon
Where the hell is Matt?	Stumbled on this the other night; clicking on it by accident, actually, I started to watch what I thought was some jerky home-video. Then this guy starts to dance this goofy dance. And then it got interesting. Fun! A must-see. (If your internet connection supports the bandwidth, check out the high-def version -- (the link is the bottom of the video screen.) His website If you're curious, you can see more...
Strange Maps	What's travel without a map or two. Well, these aren't exactly ordinary maps. Take a gander! 50 States, 50 countries Here, the names of the 50 states of the United States are replaced with the names of countries having the same GDP. Map of the Internet? This clever sketch shows a map of online communities, with size and position indicative of population and proclivity. Fun. Exclaves of West Berlin Most of us older than a certain age remember "West Berlin" as an "island of democracy" in the sea of Soviet East Germany. What wasn't well know was that it wasn't just a single "island." There were "Exclaves" of western land sprinkled all around Berlin.
Friends' Links
Friends and acquaintances that have their own sites.
PierceThorne.com	Pierce's site is the place to go for some wry commentary about things in general. (Psst: don't let the secret out, but under that prickly exterior, he's actually a pretty nice guy! ;)
WoofD2	Washington Owners Of Flying-Disk Dogs, or "Woof-D-two", is run by a friend of mine up in the Puget-Sound area of Washington.
Vaughan Architecture	A high-school friend of mine's web site. We're just getting him set up, but he's having fun with it.
SirensInSanity	A friend's site he set up for his wife, who is a professional belly dancer.
HotRods By Lew	Another site we got set up for a friend; he does hot-rod and other restoration.
Morning Sun Child Care	Excellent childcare in Marin County, including bilingual Mandarin immersion.
Democracy Talking	Former Autodesk CTO, colleague, and visionary, Scott Bourduin, hosts "The Conversation" -- a forum for returning sense to the political discussion. Not particularly partisan, but an effort to counter the extreme polar and divisive nature of politics today, Scott's site is a breath of fresh air. (Site was formerly Restoring Integrity
SolarFX	A colleague's foray into solar energy production; this website chronicles his experiences in having solar photo-voltaic panels mounted onto his roof.
The Software Craft
Having been in the industry for a long time, I've watched it evolve... quite a bit, actually, usually for the better (but it has not always been a "monotonically increasing" evolution.) A personal passion is the part of the craft that seeks to improve things as a whole.
Static Analysis	I've often said "there are two kinds of people: those who love Static Analysis, and those who don't know what it is!" Coverity I'll confess to liking Coverity, a blatant bias from having worked there. But for good reason: Coverity's pro-bono scanning service for Open Source projects has helped improve the quality of many OSS offerings (and not just finding entry-level "code smell" level defects, but serious logic bugs.) CodeXM Static Analysis is very useful in finding bugs in logic, but can be a mind-bender to understand how it works: we all know how literally computers follow instructions, so any imprecision in what a code checker looks for can be a problem. My team developed the Code examination tool CodeXM to make it simpler to understand and write useful checking tools that augment what Coverity's internal checkers find.
MISRA	Do you know how much of your car is controlled by software? Hint: quite a lot. And with self-driving vehicles, it should be no surprise that reliability is the cornerstone of safety. The Motor Industry Software Reliability Association is part of what makes vehicles today more reliable.
testRigor	One of the areas I've seen evolve the most in Software is that of testing. In the beginning, it was an informal after-thought ("Hey, I wrote this cool tool, and ran it a few times. It seems to work, so here it is"). It then became a dedicated adjunct to the software development organization; nowadays, QA organizations are frequently as large as the development organizations they assure the quality of. Thing is, writing (and maintaining) a comprehensive suite of tests is difficult. Moreover, errors and omissions can prove catastrophic. To address this, many tools and a number of methodologies (like TDD and BDD) make the process more rigorous. This is all great, but these require a lot of expertise and expense, and business leaders often chafe at the expense of what is essentially a "non-revenue" activity. So imagine that nowadays you can write tests in plain English and having those execute...
Et Cetera
Other stuff, mostly fun, usually interesting.
Patent 6836886	Well, after a few years of red tape, this finally came through!
AutoCAD Easter Egg	Ha! Somebody found it. I wonder, though, if they figured out the keystrokes to get it, or if they just hacked the resources... ;-) (Hint: If you've still got Kirkland, it's in the AutoCAD Today feature!)
Wikipedia	This site is maybe one of the coolest out there... free online encyclopedia, in Wiki format... NABOB Too cool! I've been Wikipedia'd... But wow, that was a while ago! Archived Wikipedia deleted the entry back in 2007, but it lives on in the WayBack machine.... Mattering NABOBs Just for the record.... French Version While the English wikipedia site has taken down the entry, it seems that the French version has really gone overboard and taken the matter to new heights ( ... if you'd rather, read the translation.) Published? Oh boy... it even made it into print... whodathunkit?
FIND1701	Another bit of archeology... way back when, in the early days of PC computing (1989) when viruses were relatively rare, we could write single-purpose fixers, like this one, that undid the damage of the "1701" virus.... (another fallen flag; redirected to archive.org)
Strandbeest	Theo Jansen's kinetic sculptures: wind-powered sculptures that walk, and even interact with their environment. strandbeest.com ... even more vids at the home site... (much of the site is in Dutch, though.) strandbeestmovie.com ... here too.
Wolfram Alpha	This is an interesting site; not exactly a search engine, per se, but rather interesting... more like a computational engine. The kinds of queries you can give it are fun. Oh, and yes, it does have the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
April Fool's	Just kidding... ;)
Introducing iDea	iPod, iPhone, iGuess trend lemmings abound everywhere. But I like the original, the iDea!
James Burke's Knowledge Web	An interesting on-line interactive tool to illustrate connections: chewing gum to Newton, for example, or Mozart to Helicopters. If you thought Wikipedia was a time sink, try this.
Y10K	Some bright soul with too much time on his hands really is looking to the future. You think Y2K was bad, just imagine the trouble rolling over to the year 10,000 will cause. (Interestingly, the authors didn't post the date that they published the paper using the notation that they're proposing... ;-)
When Frogs Fly	Cute parable of corporate ineptitude; maybe pigs won't fly, but frogs?
Mostly Harmless	Don't Panic! The BBC has this clever Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy site online. Okay, it's not really about the galaxy, but contributors from around the world have been posting stuff on it. So grab your towel and have a look.
Snopes.com	"I heard that a friend of a friend of so-and-so says that..." Um, probably not. This site is a really useful one in figuring out what's myth and what's not. I strongly recommend folks poke their head in on this site before swallowing what could be the latest bit of internet fiction... ;)
File Formats	Cool site. Sort of a "pocket guide" to a bunch of geeky information. ;-)
Causes of Color	This is a really nice site that deals with all sorts of ways in which "color happens."
Color Blender	This is a cool little site to help you come up with a color scheme; pick one color, and five other complementary colors are generated based on your choice. Vischeck Clever on-line tool to help you design graphics to be "colorblind-friendly"... simulates Deuteranope, Protanope, and Tritanope color deficits. Useful part of Section 508 accessibility testing.
Online Graphing Calculator	Graphing calculators are cool, but what's really sweet is that this one is written entirely in Javascript to run in your up-level browser! Yes, you can do dynamic graphics in DHTML!!!
Sorting Algorithms	Clever animations of the various major sorting algorithms. Gives you a pretty clear indication of why Bubblesort is so sloooow... ;-)
Bookmarklets	While we're in the Javascript frame of mind, here's a cool site showing some design fore-thought with respect to javascript and bookmarks... cool little "installable apps" that do useful things, and they're free.
Hacker Jargon File	The "official" (albeit de-facto) dictionary of computerese. With technology being a fact of life these days, journalists would do themselves and their readers a favor by reading and correctly using the terms. ;-) True Definition of Hacker Personally, I'm most galled by the way hacker has taken a negative connotation, mostly by casual conflation with other terms that are, in fact, antithetical to what a hacker really is... read this for the clarification. Geek Power Steven Levy's article at Wired.com, on the old-style (ie, real) hacker, as idealist and social influence.
xmlGeek?	Are you an xmlGeek?
Commodore PET Alive	It's been a long while, but oh the hours I spent in front of my PET. I can still see the "*** Commodore BASIC *** 7167 bytes free"...
Good Eats	I don't much care for cooking shows -- you know, they're standing there behind a counter... "and now we're going to fold in a little heavy whipping cream, then..." Blah, blah, blah. (And I really don't need some portly idiot telling me how to "kick it up a notch"!) But Alton Brown's Good Eats is different. Quirky, eccentric, and intelligent, taking time to explain why things are the way they are. I also like the creativity he puts into his shows: where else can you find a show on cooking that opens with a parody of... Poe's poem "The Raven", you know: "Once upon a mid-morn dreary, as I pondered with eyes quite bleary..." One fan page... Here's the whole site. Somebody took the time to recreate all the Good Eats transcripts. Yeah, that's dedication. (Now, would AB say "get a life"??? Well, I don't know, but it's certainly Good Reads.) AB's page Alton Brown's own site. Questions answered, and goodies available... yup, including that kosher salt cellar....
Dihydrogen Monoxide - DHMO.org	Proving that there's a sucker born every day, this site pokes fun at some people's relative ignorance of chemistry and a willingness to believe something just because it's written. Let's see: dihydrogen means 2 hydrogens; monoxide means one oxygen. A regular sheep in wolves' clothing, this H2O...
School of the Renaissance Soldier	As a veteran of a foreign (well, historical) war, this is of passing interest... We be soldiers three... (Fallen flag, and while it moved, that too has gone down; thanks to archive.org)
Elizabethan Era	A great starting-off point for information about that period in world history.
New Life for Dead Hard Disk	This is clever. If your hard disk has gone south on you, here's something clever you can do with it... turn it into a wall clock!
Puzzles	Just some interesting brain-teasers, and an optical illusion or two as well.
Clever UI	Takes a lickin' and keeps on... well, just read it.
200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 minutes	If you ever thought statistics were boring, consider probably that it's how they're presented that makes them so: dessicated numbers and arcane formulae. Here comes Hans Rosling to the rescue with this very impressive video on 200 years of health and wealth...
Odd Busses	Some interesting pix and vids about busses...
xkcd	Really clever (techno)humor hidden behind stick-figure drawings. Watching Clouds Not quite sure if he's serious in this one, but it's almost poetically profound... I could see doing this. Tiniest Open-Source Violin Pretty much my response to "gee, why don't you have a [pick your favorite social media] account?" ... oh, like you didn't see that coming? ;-) Map of the Internet The actual map referenced in the Strange Maps link above. Shows the distribution of online communities then... ... revisited ... and "now" (2010) where Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have grown to tremendous proportions. Map of the Internet (IPv4) A similar map showing the IP address allocation... Tic-tac-toe The "optimal" moves for playing tic-tac-toe, all illustrated in two boards. Explain xkcd Just in case one (or more) xkcd comics are a bit too arcane, here's an unrelated site that crowd-sources explanations, so ponder no more the mystery of any given xkcd. ;-)
Bay Area Quake Map	USGS real-time map of earthquakes happening here in Quake Country. Beware the red boxes. ;-)
Fastest Camera	This may be one of the coolest videos around: TED speaker Ramesh Raskar demonstrates a rapid-pulse laser and a camera capable of trillionth-of-a-second shutter speeds... so fast, that it can send a laser pulse a few centimeters long, can reconstruct images around corners based on reflections, and show how light reflects and refracts through a bottle in "time lapse" fashion. A must-see!
Cool URIs don't change	Nothing on the web is worse than a 404... especially when it is avoidable. This is my little admonishment to web-master-kiddies everywhere (;-) ... please don't change URIs, that's just badness: if it used to work before your reorg, it should continue to do something useful for the visitor afterwards.. It is so trivially easy to preserve old URIs, and redirect them or do something useful with them, even in the face of your pet reorg project... so... just... don't! Really! Cool URIs don't change. Period. ;-)