Links
Note that the links on this page are to my personal favourites and sites I use regularly. It is not a link exchange page so any e-mails requesting inclusion will be ignored.
Search & reference | Online tools | Rawle | Natural history | Architecture | Music | Places | Newspapers | Weather | Maps | Travel | Shopping | Physics and astronomy | Computing/Internet
Search engines & reference
- Google - the world’s best search engine
- Wikipedia - amazingly comprehensive, free encyclopedia in many languages
- Dictionary / Thesaurus from reference.com
- UK postcode search - allows you to search for a postcode, or enter a postcode to find the correct address (registration required)
- Directory Enquiries - the UK’s telephone directories online and free!
- Say No to 0870 - numbers beginning 087 are expensive to call. This site lists cheaper standard telephone numbers for many British companies
- Internet Movie Database - I can’t believe the amount of information this contains!
- Domain name registries - a complete listing of top-level internet domains (TLDs) from around the world
- The American-British British-American Dictionary - describes differences in language, and defines American words in terms of British and vice versa
Online tools
- Babel Fish Translation - translate text or web pages between many different languages
- MDBG Chinese-English dictionary - translates between English, Chinese characters and Mandarin pinyin. Supports both traditional and simplified characters
- The Universal Currency Converter
- Energy Helpline - same money one your utility bills by comparing prices
- Online differentiator - differential calculus
- The Integrator - integrate any function online
Rawle links
- Famous people with the surname Rawle:
- Graham Rawle - illustrator whose cartoons appear in many UK newspapers
- Jeff Rawle - British actor best known for his appearances in TV series such as Drop the Dead Donkey. Due to appear in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Len Rawle - organist who built his home around a rescued Wurlitzer cinema organ
- The Rawle Web Site - my family’s websites
Natural history
- Animal Diversity Web - the complete taxonomical classification of all living animals, many with pictures, specimens, sounds, etc.
- Friends of the sea otter - including lots of information about the world’s smallest aquatic mammal
- Walrus Images Gallery - wildlife photographs by Andy Rouse
Architecture / civil engineering
- Emporis - formerly known as Skyscrapers.com, a database of the tallest buildings in every city of the world, complete with photographs
- The BridgeSite - bridge links and information
- Severn Bridges - photographs of all the bridges that cross the River Severn
- SkyscraperCity forums - architecture and planning discussion forums
Music
- Classic FM - The UK’s most popular independent radio station can be heard online
- Taipei Philharmonic - relaxing classical music station from Taiwan
- Filmtracks Composer Tributes - about film music composers
- Pandora Records - royalty-free classical recording to download in MP3/OGG format
- The Sheet Music Archive - free sheet music downloads (limited to 3 downloads per day
- De Montfort Hall - what’s on at Leicester’s concert hall
- Music at the University of Leicester - lunchtime and evening concerts
Places
- Google Sightseeing - suggests interesting places to look at via Google Local’s satellite photo service
- Ben Ravilious Photographs - of Leicester and other places
- Lake District Walks - I once followed a route from this site to the top of Scafell Pike - and down safely again!
- Webb Aviation - aerial photographs of the UK
News
Weather
If you view the forecast on all of these sites, there’s at least a chance one of them will be right!
Maps
- Google Local - maps and aerial photos of the UK, USA and other countries
- Multimap - street maps of the UK. Will also plan a route between any two places, and has maps for many parts of the world
- UK Street Map - free maps of the whole UK on scales ranging from road atlas to street map
Travel
- TravelService - superb site giving train times for anywhere in Europe, including the UK
- National Rail - find times for trains in the UK. Also has a “live departure board” where you can find out whether trains are running late. Sometimes doesn’t list all trains, in particular connections that don’t allow much time for changing
- TheTainline - will return all the same timetable information as the National Rail site, but also allows you to find out the prices of different tickets and even buy them online (much better than phoning the rail information line where they don’t always tell you about the best tickets!)
- Transport Direct - the Government’s official site giving rail, bus and road transport options between any pair of locations
Shopping
- eBay UK - online auction site. Search for what you want and make a bid - very addictive!
- Kelkoo - automatically compare prices of a wide range of products in various online stores
- Amazon UK - Online book and music store. Includes a powerful search facility, and you can even write your own reviews! Useful for searching for things, even if you don’t buy online
- Ebuyer - online computer and components shop
- Camera Price Buster - find the cheapest camera and photographic accessory prices
Physics and astronomy
- Institute of Physics
- University of Leicester Department of Physics & Astronomy
- Coffee Club - where you find physicists when they are not doing physics. Plus read about eternal debtor Prof Chris Binns
- Heavens above - a comprehensive astronomy site. Can be customised to give details of what may be seen from your current location
- Astrosoc - the University of Leicester Astronomy Society
Computing/Internet
- The Fedora Project - a distribution of the Linux operating system - a completely free alternative to Windows
- FreshRPMS - the extra software needed to make Fedora Core complete (MP3 / movie plugins, etc.) - strictly for non-US users
- DynDNS - get a static host name for your dynamic IP address
- thinkbroadband - comparisons and news about UK broadband providers
- VirtualNames - domain name registration and web hosting
- The World Wide Web Consortium - how to write correct HTML. Read the official specifications, and check your pages to see if they are compliant - mine are, are yours?
- PHP Hypertext Preprocessor - free server-side scripting language - please use this as opposed to ASP or Javascript!