Links

Links are the pathways of the Internet. Without them, we are left stranded. Search engines are like cities built at the vast crossroads where those pathways meet, but unfortunately the signposts are a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it takes a lot of wandering to get to where you want to be.

Luckily, there is also an easier way to find your way around. All it takes is the guiding hand of those who have been there before. Here I present to you some my favourite sites to visit. I will add to the list every now and then, as my various interests wax and wane. (For D&D links, see my separate D&D Links page.)

• Charles Tait Photographic - This is my father's photography homepage. You can find hundreds of wonderful photos, mainly of Orkney and the north of Scotland, in his photo library. Subjects range from landscapes and archaeology to wildlife and flowers. Also worth checking out are his calendars and guide books. And there are various sub-sites, like the Maeshowe Winter Solstice site and the Ba' site. Of course I'm biased, but I don't think you'll regret having a look.
• BBC News - My source of news here in Japan. I almost never watch TV here, but I'm usually pretty up-to-date on international news thanks to this site. I only started reading the news regularly a year or so ago, thanks to the Live Bookmark/RSS features of Firefox. The BBC site has an RSS feed, so you can see the headlines in a pull-down bookmark without ever visiting the site, which makes sifting through the stories you want to read a very easy prospect.
• Internet Movie Database - The IMDB is an invaluable site for looking up information about movies and TV shows. It's the first site I turn to when I can't think of the name of that guy who was in this movie I saw - you know, the one who was in that movie everyone hated so much.
• Identifont - One of my favourite sites, Identifont allows you to search for a particular font by answering questions about its features. The more samples you have of a font, the more likely it is that you can find a match. I have loved experimenting with different fonts since I started using WordPerfect back in the late 1980s, and my interest in different alphabets stems from even earlier, probably due to growing up in Orkney, close to Maeshowe with its collection of Viking runic graffiti.
• BTJunkie - The best Bit Torrent search engine I have found. This is how I keep up to date with my favourite TV shows, which are mostly American series that are only shown in Japan a few years later - on cable.