jonathan.rawle.org

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 & news | Online tools | Rawle | Natural history | Architecture | Music | Places | Maps | Travel | Shopping | Physics and astronomy | Computing/Internet

Search, reference & news

• Google – the world’s best search engine
• Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia anyone can edit
• BBC News and Weather
• 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)
• 192.com – directory enquiries plus electoral roll and director search. Some features require payment, but you can find out a lot for 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 – information about films and TV series
• 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

• Graham Rawle – illustrator whose cartoons appear in many UK newspapers
• Jeff Rawle – British actor who appeared in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Known for his appearances in TV series such as Drop the Dead Donkey
• 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.
• International Otter Survival Fund – charity based in Scotland
• 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

• Bachtrack – find classical concerts at venues around the world
• 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

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

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

• Deutsche Bahn TravelService – gives train times for journeys anywhere in Europe
• 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
• First Great Western train tickets – allows you to buy tickets for any rail journey in Great Britain, without booking or credit card fees
• 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!