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My Favorite Links
These links reflect my own peculiar interests and sensibilities. They are here, so I can access these links from other people's computers — and my own. I change stuff here, but it rarely changes much, although I delete links I never use. This is probably the most-updated page on my personal site, except my movie reviews.
There's an online interview with me — questions by Sonia Semone; answers submitted via email by me — on eXaminer.com's Dallas pages.
the best
First listed are the sites I check daily:
WordNik - I probably shouldn't even put this link this high on this page, but I have a feeling, after only this one brief, so far, visit, that I'll be spending some time here. I love words. Probably has something to do with being an writer. Once I've figured out what the site is really all about, beyond the love of words, I'll report here. Bet it stays here on the top, though.
It has slowly dawned on me that I read something from Ken Rockwell's site nearly every week, sometimes more than once a day. He is a photographer, and he writes online about cameras, lenses and accessories, including reviews and HOW TOs that are invaluable. You can get a flavor for his writing from his Recommended Cameras story, although I also use his camera-specific Nikon D300 User's Guide often and before that the one for the D200. He even does a Today's Updates page of what he changed on his site today, and yesterday, etc. Which I should probably do for DallasArtsRevue when I get the energy back from summer.
I also check Imaging Resource,
Ars Technica - Webb Alert quotes them constantly, so they must be informative.
Stumble is fascinating. Join free and it installs a button top right on Firefox you click whenever you need a thrill, and it gradually learns which sites you like and which you don't and delivers ones you like more often than not.
newish
I've become inordinately fond of essays and essayist. My current fave is The Frontal Cortex, who blogs about intelligence and how our minds work; second comes Tom Bodett of Motel 6 fame. He's funny in the gentle, self-depricating fashion I appreciate in fellow writers and human beings.
There are probably millions more that I'd find fascinating if only I know where they were.
Kevin Kelly, whose Cool Tools [linked above] I check every day, gathers his writings in too many blogs to mention into his Lifestream that's often fascinating in tech and understanding directions.
TED probably fits in this category as well as its own, although these are typed words, and TED's live and in color video.
of interest
in no particular order
Rules of Thumb offers daily "gems of wisdom."
The Consumerist - offers often updated excellent consumer-related information and stories.
One Look nets differing dictionaries, some that even pronounce words or have thesauri. Other dictionaries [below]
Astronomy Picture of the Day and NASA Science — sometimes fascinating, sometimes boring
National Geographic Daily Dozen shots
Commoncraft explains things via small animated videos "in Plain English, but may be a tad commercial.
Lectures at UC Berkely, Princeton, Cornell, Seattle, pop Dartmouth, BioInteractive from Howard Hughes Medical Institute, U of Ediburgh Gifford Lectures, etc. On computer programs, the physical universe, gobs,
Painting Mass Media - the art of fair use with contemporary art by artists who sample media. Long, slow but fascinating video, complete with slide show and thematic sloguns as a young artist explores her dilemma.
Art
DallasArtsRevue has more than 1,100 pages of Dallas- (,Texas, USA) centric visual art news, views, reviews and a oft-updated calendar. Our Resources are helpful and our reviews are opiniated. We publish both positive and vicious nasty feedback, too.
Weberating the iNet
Down For Everyone or Just me? I need to know if my sites are online and whether they're not working for everyone or just me. This is simple and free.
Need to send an image or something else too big to upload, use UpLoad.sc to temporarily load and send using their site. Anna uses this often. I like the standalone program YouSendIt, which is free for one image per email, costs for more, but I stick to free. It easily handles files that overpower my email client. You gotta be registered at www.yousendit.com.
W3C Markup Validation Service - You input your URL, and it checks that page for validation issues.
Video/TV/Music/Media
It's just the five most recent episodes, but I finally tracked down full versions of House or else they finally put them online. Wish I hadn't seen all the recent ones, but next time I miss a new one, I'll go there and just glaze over during the quickish commercials.
Netflix' previews are absorbing and accumulating. Moviefone's are smaller with lower res and volume.
I see a lot of movies. Most of them, I review. More than a thousand in the last decade or so.
Charlie Rose interviews are fabulous but limited, since they try to sell them. Jon Stewart's The DailyShow is sometimes funny. Maybe.
Netflix used to take serious care of customers. Now they treat us like we're stupid and don't care how damaged the DVDs they send us are. Still better than Blockbuster, but the gap may be narrowing.
I'd been thinking iPod thoughts, even bought a Shuffle for Anna, but it seemed so limited, so I tracked down a cheaper, more versatile, possibly better alternative, the Sansa Clip, which I use often. It's only two gigs but only costs $50, though I spent nearly that on a Senheiser PX-100 fold-away headphone that's very comfy and sounds great without blocking traffic and bird noises (if I turn it down). What may prove really nice is its 20-present FM radio, voice and radio recording capabilities, replaceable battery, auto and manual equalizer, it's a lot cheaper than the Shuffle pod, still works with my iMac, and it's red.
When I was a teenager I used to dream that when I grew up I'd have access to all the great cars, but they're all in Jay's Garage.
Soon all TV — like movies — will come down the net — Broadcast TV is dead and surely knows it by now, digital or analog. Cable is at the end of its long and usurious life. Satellites are so last century and junking up space, and YouTube is yesterday's state of science — but fun.
ABC, CBS, NBC, the CW, Hulu and lately the elderly WB (extraordinarily loud but mercifully quick — untill you get to see it a couple hundred times — ads every ten minutes) have shows online with only one commercial every six minutes, so I can catch up and try new (and faved old) programs. Stupid old Fox doesn't show its better (either of them) shows on the net (although House has been available for awhile.)
Now there's TVShack (It's got Joan of Arcadia and dozens more.) and Fancast's Full TV Episodes and probably others.
Online TV has one ad — not a string — interrupting programming less often than TV, but often it's the same stupid ad repeated. CW only advertises itself. ABC makes you push a button to continue programming, handy if you're left the room.
I tried a control option command, maybe escape (Mac) key sequence that not only jumped to the end of the current commercial but blipped through further interruptions but haven't duped it since. Maybe they fixed it. Network sites have a pause. Really popular shows cannot be found except on Amazon and Apple, for sale.
Digicams
I've been a photog for more than 44 years, so I read lens, camera and gismo reviews often, always hoping for something interesting or practical. I have a Nikon D200, and it's a fabulous camera, but like most dSLRs it's stupid, because it doesn't show a live view of what I'm shooting while I'm shooting it tipping me off to bad exposure, wrong ISO or color balance, like even cheap consumer digicams do.
Tripods 101 - wish I'd read this before I bought the cheap (crummy design), expensive ($100 but it's so clumsy I can't use the damned thing. I wrote an honest, clear-headed review for Amazon, but they have not posted it.), so-called Tilt-all tripod.
I've had a genuine Leitz Brothers Tiltall tripod since 1974 that was amazing till it recently became reluctant to bend one leg. When the spring that tightens twisting and raising the central column quit, I knew I had to get a new one. So I bought another "Tiltall (my review near the bottom of that page)," except the brothers apparently sold the name, and who makes them now sucks at it. Tripods 101 is extensive and inclusive. One of those amazing educational experiences free on the web.
After blowing my first purchase on a tripod that was not what it advertised to be, I bought the new, black version of the tripod I've loved and used anyway all those years. It feels very familiar. I'd say intuitive, but more likely it's just what I'm used to. Soon as I black out its one big white logo, it'll be perfect.
Amazing compendium of info about Nikon Lenses
Nikon Cafe was belligerent when I signed in as a "40-year-vet," even though I am, so I have not gone back.
Another Nikon resource I stumbled on online is The Nikonians, which linked me to a great page of Nikon lens review links.
Less exacting are Megapixel, CNET and LetsGoDigital.
Others test lenses, but many don't know what they're doing or are trying to sell something. In this category is Photography Review dot com's tests "tested" by lots of readers, whose comments are highly subjective and only useful in the aggregate, if that.
Storing Your Digital Images is good advice.
The Online Photographer is fascinating and nicely old-fashioned.
SEARCH
Goo sends a lot of hits to DallasArtsRevue.com, but until very recently I preferred to find things net via Yahoo Advanced Search.
Now I use Google's Search, which includes all "my" sites in one seek.
Most sites work better if you don't phrase your search as a question. When you just have to, Ask.
SHOPPING
I have browsed and bought books, computers, monitors, software, hardware and music from
Amazon's cheaper, doesn't charge sales tax in Texas, is mostly honest (their prices change by availability and for no reason at all — sometimes in a list of several "similar items" there'll be more than one of the same item with different prices), but they have almost everything.
Even if I don't buy it there, I learn what's best from their reviews. I do not buy from other companies through Amazon. Too much trouble. I've had a lens crushed, products not as advertised and two that never showed up. Luckily, Amazon is good about tracking down recalcitrant dealers, and I've got my money back every time.
Calumet Photograpphic is quick and has about the same prices as Amazon for the photo products they have. I've bought a couple things from them that Amazon did not have, and I have been very pleased. They're quick shipping, too. For the last six years, Ritz Camera has been very good to me.
Adorama has been much more difficult. I wouldn't use them.
RADIO & Voice
Charlie Gillett's World of Music - outstanding weekly BBC radio of old and new World Music from everywhere. Listen online in 26.5 minutes.
Austin's KUT is usually worth the listen, especially on their wonderfully diverse mornings and early afternoons music programs.
Texas Radio Stations Online lets me listen live to stations all over this state. I get KNTU FM 88.1 in my car, but it's distorted in my bedroom and I can't get it a all in my office. D Magazine says it's the best station in Dallas, neatly overlooking amateurish DJs, Off Topic weekends, low power and 40-mile distance from Dallas. But for real jazz here, there's only KNTU and KNON FM-89.3 after midnight.
National Public Radio - NPR Podcast Directory
Public Radio International - PRI Podcasts
American Public Media Podcasts
WYNC is amazing. The depth of their programming, especially in music has been fascinating to explore for this omni-music buff. But I guess New York City is like that.
RadioLab is my favorite radio show, and I love radio [listed below]. WNYC's RadioLab's page is, in its many changing details, and as a whole, fascinating.
MAC INFO/Shareware
Nothing is as complete and up-to-date as
Calibrate Monitor and or Calibrate Your Monitor may help us see the right colors and tones.
ASTRO
Astrology on the Web tells when the next Mercury Retrograde will strike. Sometime in May 2009.
MAPS
Google Earth, MapQuest and City of Dallas Interactive Maps shows me aerial photographs of some neighborhoods.
LEXICON
There are many dictionaries and encyclopedias online. My favorite encyclopedia is Wikipedia, but I'll add more here, since I often use this page to link to sites from other people's computers. If I were the only person to access this page, it's worth its while.
Urban Dictionary is fun and they add lotsa words every day. 941 today.
Divorce Predictor is uncomfy enough to get me off my ass and communicate with my girlfriend.
The Copyright Website reminds me about the circle c demons.
A Review of Review Sites - helpful page of critiqued review site links from Cool Tools. [above]
One of the more comprehensive computer-rlated gizmo testing sites is good old PC Magazine. Lots of very helpful consumer info.
Gizmodo - "so much in love with shiny new toys, it's unnatural" with a sizable Mac section.
I wasted time and money subscribing to Angie's List, which must be something somewhere else, but not here in Dallas. After I joined at $7.50/month, a $15 one-time charge jumped out of — and goes — nowhere. The agreement goes on and on, so they can afford a lawyer, but not a good web person. The site is ragged primitive. I repeatedly listed "carpenters" or "foundation repair" but the interface automatically popped me back to "pick a category." Plus numerous niggling navigation problems. Foundation Repair is not even a category, and the listed carpenters only make expensive bookcases. A hearty Bronx cheer for Angie and her list.
Texas Birding
Red-tailed Hawk Up Close and Nearly Personal from my journal
The Amateur Birder's Journal - is my own thrice-weekly walk through White Rock Lake inside the City Limits of Dallas, Texas, USA. In the journal you will find thousands of my photographs of the birds of White Rock and some other places, day by day through the seasons since June 2006, though I don't usually get this close to hawks.
Passport to Texas - Birding is a link list, but I hit ten links at random, and none of them went anywhere, so I'm not linking it here.
I tried the American Birding Association Birding Festival Search for "North Texas," and it gave me a listing for Galveston, which is not in North Texas. I tried East Texas, and it gave me a list of events in Virginia, so I gave up.
Birding.com's Texas bird watching page has so many bad links it's almost useless — no illustrations and no map, so I felt lost there.
Audubon Dallas wants me to review their site even though nothing's on their site. Last time I was there, there was a lot there. Now nothing.
Oh, wrong link. But this one is right. And there's Bird Chat. That's what I was looking for in the line above.
The Trinity River Audubon Center opens to the public October 18 & 19. There's already Roseate Spoonbills, Ibis, and the usual crowd of herons and egrets sighted there. I gotta go. Says here, it's "tucked away off South Loop 12, in a dense forest that most Dallas residents don't know exists" and it's rising, literally, from the ashes." But it doesn't say where, exactly. Oh, yeah, Goog knows all, 6500 S. Loop 12
Gulf Coast Birding
an afternoon's obsessing:
David Sarkozi's Birds of the Upper Texas Coast is informative and replete — gobs of info and in all kinds of directions — deep info, but they have an aversion to photographs or illustrations or maps on the same page as text, so it's visually dull. Probably fine for linear thinkers, but seeing a page of descriptions of photographs to choose from confuses me, when the picture could have been right there...
Their Birding Locations of the Upper Texas Coast page is fascinating and off-pissing, because it lists lots of places in that bird-rich vicinity but there's no maps to show where they are, lots of typos,
Gulf Coast Bird Observatory's site is navigationally adverse, difficult to get around in. Several links go nowhere. I'm still curious about it, but not willing to deal with that site anymore.
Rockport-Fulton - The Charm of the Texas Coast - sounds good for early spring - bird species named and described in the first paragraph. There's a picture. Amateur beautiful, but informative. Nice. For spring.
Finding Birds On The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail: Houston, Galveston, and the Upper Texas Coast - It's a book from Sarkozi's site. Might be just what I'm looking for. Might not. Probably worth $18
Exploring the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail: Highlights of a Birding Mecca's book description mentions "the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, a state-designated driving route connecting more than 300 birdwatching sites from the Louisiana state line to the Mexican border. Brown highway signs, marked with the profile of a Black Skimmer, point the way to these bird-rich destinations," which fascinates this birder. paperback $11.86 today on Amazon.
Great Texas Wildlife Trails - is a nice-looking site that eventaully leads to a private bookstore that sells maps of places in Texas that have great birds. The Texas AgriLife Extension Bookstore continues the visual , but ya have to click one more page for prices, $4 each. Several pages later I still didn't know what shipping would be. Then I snapped that theirs were the same maps friends gave me last spring. Now to find them.
Aransas National Wildlife Refuge has Whooping Cranes and it is accessible by car, uh, maybe. The cranes can be seen from the observation tower from late October to mid-April. (For information about commercial boat tours to see the cranes and other birds, call the Rockport Chamber of Commerce at 1-800-242-0071.)
Rocky Mountain BIRDING
http://rockymountainnationalpark.com/pages/backyard_birdlist_estes.html
http://www.fodors.com/world/north-america/usa/colorado/rocky-mountain-np/activities.html
http://slybird.blogspot.com/2007/08/trip-report-part-6-rocky-mountain.html
http://www.hawkowlsnest.com/2006/08/rocky-mountain-high.html
http://wgrc1971.blogspot.com/2006/07/july-3-2006-rocky-mountain-national.html
Software I use
El Camino's my favorite browser, because it lets me pile on bookmarks in the wrapping bookmark bar. Would love to do without the icons, many of which are generic, to save even more room. I also use Firefox, but its bookmarks disappear off the right edge while El Camino's wrap. Safari is a big mistake that's actually dangerous to use.
Dreamweaver web production basically sucks but it's supposedly the best. I miss PageMill, which was easy, fast and certain. Then Adobe bought it, because it competed with Dreamweaver, and dropped it.
Photoshop, of course, although I don't feel obligated to do every update. But then I'm still at OSX (not ten, X) Tiger and waiting for OSXX.
Apple's Mail is adequate. Their Adress Book crashed on me, taking with it all my addresses. I now rely on a text-based utility. Use the address book as a temporary entity.
Interarchy is still the best FTP-er.
My latest email address is always on the Contact page.