Interesting, useful and fun links

Books

• The R.A. Lafferty Devotional Page The most original writer of the 20th century and perhaps of all time.
• A Gene Wolfe page Gene Wolfe may be the best writer active today.
• Flann O'Brien The other great Irish novelist; author of At Swim Two Birds and The Third Policeman.
• The Evil Overlord Page Planning to subjugate the universe? Don't make the usual stupid mistakes.
• The Works of G.K. Chesterton Find The Man Who Was Thursday here.
• Diana Wynne Jones The best answer to "what do you read after Harry Potter?"
• Neil Gaiman's online journal.
• The Compleat Bellairs A site devoted to John Bellairs, best known for his young adult mysteries, but also the author of St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies and The Face in the Frost. The site also includes a tribute to the idiosyncratic author and illustrator Edward Gorey, and a good chunk of Bellairs' metaphysical farce, The Pedant and the Shuffly.
• Doubting Hall A Guided tour around the works of Evelyn Waugh.
• The Annotated Pratchett File.
• Thomas Lovell Beddoes The first Goth, and still the most interesting.
• SF Writers The religious affiliations, or lack thereof, of most well-known science fiction writers.
• Dirda on Books. Michael Dirda reads books for a living and has a healthy respect for writers as diverse as Gene Wolfe and Max Beerbohm. Once a week he answers questions online; the transcripts of these sessions are here.
• Project Gutenberg. Literature online.
• Blackmask Online More online literature.
• The geek hierarchy.

Tolkieniana

• Resources for Tolkienian Linguistics.
• Ardalambion Of the Tongues of Arda, the invented world of J.R.R. Tolkien.
• The Tolkien Sarcasm Page.
• Arms & Armour in JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth.
• The Language Construction Kit Emulate JRRT and build your own language.
• Tolkien-inspired art.

Is Harry Potter the AntiChrist?

• Amy Welborn on Harry Potter.
• "Harry Potter's Magic" in First Things.
• Further discussion in First Things.

Music

Listening

• Walnut Valley Festival The outstanding cultural event in Kansas; this is where to find me the third weekend every September.
• Ari Davidow's Klezmer Shack Klezmer is the wildest music there is. This page features much information, top-ten lists and many links.
• Ceolas Links to just about everything connected with Celtic music.
• Raymond Scott You might not recognize the name, but you know the music.
• The Bonzo Dog Band Page "Sir Kenneth Clark on bass sax .... Quasimodo on bells."
• Don Ross The only musician to win the National Fingerpicking Competion at Winfield twice.
• Leggheads Adrian Legg is an exceptionally good fingerpicker; this is his home page.
• No Strings Attached A quartet of eccentrics who play all sorts music on all sorts of instruments, with and without strings, including two hammered dulcimers.
• The Plaid Family Princess Harris, hammered dulcimer; Diana Werts, accordion; Kelly Werts, fiddle, guitar, pennywhistle, jawbone and velcro tap dancing.
• Danny Gatton The greatest guitarist you've never heard of.
• The Cowbell Project.
• Dirty Linen The magazine of acoustic, folk and world music.
• InnerViews Interviews with interesting musicians ranging from from Dave Swarbrick to John McLaughlin.
• The Classical Archives An immense collection of classical music MIDI files.
• Ragtime MIDI Files by Warren Trachtman An enormous collection of MIDI files that goes far beyond Scott Joplin.
• Oozak More than you ever wanted to know about the kazoo.

  Progressive Rock: Past

• New Gibralter Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock.
• Gryphon Early music meets Yes. The best rock 'n' roll band you've never heard.
• Gentle Giant Baroque intricacy and rock energy.
• Steve Morse Dixie Dregs, Kansas, Deep Purple, Steve Morse Band.
• Van der Graaf Generator.
• Glass Harp.
• Curved Air.
• Lyrics to Genesis songs.
• Happy the Man.
• Banco del Mutuo Soccorso.
• Camel.
• King Crimson.

  Progressive Rock: Present

• Birdsongs of the Mesozoic "The world's hardest-rocking chamber quartet."
• Jordan Rudess Liquid Tension Experiment, Dixie Dregs, Dream Theatre.
• Sean Malone/Gordian Knot.
• Spock's Beard.
• Djam Karet.
• King Crimson.

  Progressive Rock: Future

• Ron Jarzombek/Spastic Ink.
• Aghora.
• Dreadnaught "Zappa meets Yes at Willie Nelson's BBQ."
• King Crimson.

Making Music

• .abc homepage .abc is a simple scheme for translating tunes into ASCII files and back again. There are links here to a number of shareware and freeware .abc packages and to some useful tune archives.
• JC's ABC tune finder A handy utility for finding fiddle tunes and the like.
• The Kitchen Musician Everything hammered dulcimer-related, from music and MIDI files to Dulcimers in Space.
• The Hammered Ducimer Web Page The so-called "official" site.
• Lark in the Morning A source for uncommon musical instruments and books.
• Elderly Instruments Acoustic and electric instruments, books and CDs.
• Early Music FAQ.
• Raybro's Renaissance Music Pages Includes an explanation of how to read mensural notation.
• The Synth Museum
• Musician jokes.

Music Software

• Tune Toys Algorithmic musical novelties. What melody does your name generate?
• Ixi Software More musical software toys.
• The Sound of Mathematics Music based on various mathematical entities.
• Digital Fish Phones Free, high-quality VST plug-ins.
• The Myriad/Guillon Bros. Site Useful music notation shareware.
• K-v-R News about and downloads of "VST" plug-ins for Cubase and Logic Audio.
• MDA Many useful and free VST instruments and effects.
• Vsamp A shareware sampler for Macintosh.
• BS-1 Another shareware sampler.
• HammerSound More Soundfonts.
• Computer Music Programs for Macintosh.
• Shareware Music Machine Lots of downloadable music software, some free, some expensive.
• Synth Zone.
• Sonic State Synth Site.

Dance

• Blue Diamond Dance Page For dance students who begin later in life.
• Ballet Alert A site devoted to classical ballet; it features an active moderated message board.
• CyberDance A massive collection of dance links.
• Dance Links Another comprehensive list of links.
• For Ballet Lovers Only Marc Haegeman's pictures of the Kirov and Bolshoi Ballets.
• Dance Magazine.
• ballet.co Home Page Focused on ballet in Great Britain, but an interesting site for anyone interested in dance.

Botany

• Cactus and Succulent Plant Mall The crossroads of the xerophyte world.
• Mesa Garden The best source in the world for cactus and succulent seeds.
• Silverhill Seeds A good source for African seeds, including many succulent species.
• Central Kansas Cactus and Succulent Study Group The Wichita cactus club's home page. Some more of my botanical pictures are here.
• Cactus & Succulent Society of Hawaii A nice place to visit on blustery winter days.
• Stapeliads: the orchids of the succulent world.

Society for Creative Anachronism

• The Society for Creative Anachronism The home site of the Current Middle Ages.
• The Kingdom of Calontir Calontir is the region of the Known World corresonding roughly to Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa, plus Fayetteville, Arkansas, minus westernmost Nebraska.
• Barony of Vatavia Known in the 20th century as Wichita, Kansas. (The URL changes every few months, and this one may already be outdated.)
• T'ger Toggs Fine tights for Renaissance men and other clothing.
• The Medieval Times News spanning three millennia.
• Society for Creative Anachronism Seizes Control of Russia
• People & Groups in the SCA If they're in the SCA and online, you can probably find them here.
• Silverwing's Laws Everything else you need to know about the SCA.

Photography

• Alternative Photographic Processes There is more to photography than gelatine-silver prints.
• Photographer's Formulary The outstanding source for the photographic chemistry that Kodak doesn't sell. They also sell kits for many of the alternative photographic processes.
• Infrared Photography FAQ.
• Sharp Todd's Photo Gallery "Wild West," flowers, stereo.

Mathematics, science and computers

• The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences Eugene Wigner's famous paper.
• Mathmatical Life Sciences Cellular automata, besides being of considerable mathematical interest, are fun. Many of the links here are dead, but there is still plenty of shareware and freeware here for IBM's, Macs and Unix. Mac users might want to start with "EasyLife," an implementation of Conway's game of life.
• Fractal Domains Shareware and freeware for Macs to explore the Mandelbrot and Julia sets. If you want to see mathematics at its prettiest, check this out.
• Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity (Background)
• Penrose Tiles Online Play with the classic kites-and-darts Penrose tiles. (Requires a Java-enabled browser.)
• The Fractal Microscope Borrow a supercomputer to explore the Mandelbrot set.
  
• Annals of Improbable Research Home of the IgNobel Prize.
• Bad Physics Humor Make an atomic bomb in ten easy steps.
• The vOICe Sonification Applet What does that picture sound like?

Silly, eccentric, philosophic

• Nominalist Things Dogs are nominalists; cats are idealists.
• Weird Words for a more bewildering vocabulary.
• Engrish.com Weirder words: English as a really foreign language.
• The Utah Baby Namer. Alternatives to "John" and "Mary."
• Canadian World Domination.
• "Oh my God, there's an ax in my head!" in 102 languages.
• Villain Supply "Your online source for everything evil."
• Tales of the Plush Cthulhu.
• Marx Brothers sound clips.
• Flame Warriors: portraits of online personalities.
• Extreme Ironing.
• The history of Michael Jackson's face Not for the squeamish.
• The Postmodern Generator Authentically senseless academic prose, freshly generated.
• The Dialectizer Translate good English prose into Jive, Redneck, Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef a la Jim Henson, Moron or Pig Latin.
• Ask Dr. Science Science made silly, courtesy of the Duck's Breath Mystery Theatre.
• The I Before E Quagmire.
• Ian's Scribbles Parodies and silliness
• The Cracked pages of J. Lindsay "Gravity isn't just a good idea -- it's the law".
• Undead Tech Support.
• LOSERS dot ORG Astonishingly weird or just plain bad websites. Look at the "5-L" sites and shudder.
• Despair, Inc. Feeling motivated? This will cure you.
• Fling the Cow.
• Slap the evil dictator Jiang Zemin.
• The Ultimate Monty Python Site.
• Fat Lane Online Tired of skinny celebrities?

Odds and Ends

• Pibgorn Good, evil, a fairy, a succubus and a grand piano.
• James Lileks Curator of the Institute of Official Cheer, collector of flotsam and jetsam and author of Screeds. Start your weekdays with his daily Bleat.
• Arts & Letters Daily A selection of noteworthy articles on the humanities published on the web.
• SciTech Daily Review Recent articles on the sciences and technology.
• Weather Net Find the weather anywhere.
• The NASA Home Page Here's where to look to find pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.
• Babel Fish A handy translation utility. Try changing a joke from English to French and back again.
• The Anagram Genius Server What else do the letters of your name spell?
• Elfwood A site devoted to fantasy art. Most of it is embarrasingly amateurish, but there are some surprises.
• Epilogue: another fantasy art gallery.
• Javasaw Solve jigsaw puzzles online. You can download the applet and use your own images.
• JigZone Jigsaw Puzzles Online.
• Frostbite Falls Page Still the best show ever on television.
• HoustonChronicle.com -- Comics Find most of the comics that your paper doesn't carry.
• King Features Syndicate -- Comics Find Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon here.
• ComicPage.com Find Brenda Starr here.
• Tigertail Associates Home Page Classic paintings photoshopped to "restore" their original appearanc -- an interesting experiment, but don't use this site to document your own creative anachronisms.
• St. Christina the Astonishing.

Flash and Shockwave Novelties

• Strindberg and Helium.
• Beethoven's Interactive "Ode to Joy".
• Viking kittens.
• More kittens.
• The home of Strong Bad.
• The Devil's Tramping Ground.
• Stairway to Gilligan's Island.
• Dancing Paul.
• Play golf online.
• Cat bowling.

Selected Web Logs

• Catholic and Enjoying It! Pungent commentary on all things Catholic.
• Eve Tushnet Erudite, thoughtful and insightful.
• Relapsed Catholic "Where the religious rubber meets the pop culture road." Particularly good for links.
• More Last Than Star e.e. cummings and the Smiths. (189)
• Flos Carmeli Prayer and reflection, literature and music.
• Dave Barry Yes, that Dave Barry.
• A Saintly Salmagundi Silenced by the (ex)bishop of his diocese, now free again to speak his mind.
• Thrown Back
• Scrappleface "News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher."
• Old Oligarch's Painted Stoa He doesn't update his blog often, but when does it's worth the wait.
• Zorak, the Embittered Mantis Old Oligarch's wife and an indefatigable discoverer of interesting links.
• The Rat Lots of strange links. (182)
• Dyspeptic Mutterings Thoughtful and satirical.
• Et Cetera "St. Blog's resident deranged genius" (Mark Shea), and a fellow computer musician. Check out his music as well as his words.
• Fructus Ventris.
• The Curt Jester.
• Oblique House.
• The Gospel M*I*N*E*F*I*E*L*D.
• Pdawwg.
• Samual Pepys' Diary.
• Quenta Nârwenion John Henry Newman and J.R.R. Tolkien.
• Bloggus Caesari The original warblogger. (It really ought to be in Latin.)
• In Between Naps Amy Welborn's historic site, now semi-retired.
• Sand in the Gears Wichita's claim to blog history, now moved to the east coast and semi-retired.