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 & 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!