Links

Those who remember the grey and black Times New Roman world of the early internet seen through the misty glass of Mosaic will, like me, probably be amazed at how it’s grown up. You can keep your celebrity channels and sleaze, thank you, but please don’t take away all those information sites that are so fascinating. Here are just a few of my own favourites:

• Weather radar: whether (sorry!) you just want to know if your washing is going to be soaked by a shower in the next 30 minutes, or are planning a long country walk, this is really helpful
• Lightning strikes: doesn’t happen often here, but interesting nonetheless
• Marine traffic: if you live by the sea, what’s not to like?
• Tide times: essential for beachcombers (also see below)
• The Photographer’s Ephemeris: ditto for successful sunrise/sunset/moonrise/moonset photos
• Historic OS maps: digitised large-scale maps of the UK
• The Hall of Einar: a delightful nature blog and Jessica’s Nature Blog – another one
• AI Weirdness: Janelle Shane’s humorous look at how AI sees the world. Expect laugh-out-loud paint shade names, weird animal hybrids, cereals that even Bill Bryson wouldn’t eat, and monster kittens.
• My favourite haunts on Facebook (which is very good for special interests if you can ignore the relentless drizzle of political axe-grinding and tedious advertising by various people and companies):
  • Brick of the Day – one for fans of bricks, tiles, and other ceramic construction items
  • Beachcombing British Coastline – an inexhaustible trove of finds and information
  • Corrugated Iron Appreciation Society – full of fellow rustaholics and fans of wriggly tin
  • The Gate Appreciation Society – mostly gates but a few doors and stiles do creep in!
  • Eric Ravilious and Friends – devoted to the eponymous artist and similar painters and printmakers, including Nash, Bawden and Garwood.
• Wordle – generate word pictures from your text (doesn’t generally work in Chrome)
• Arty Bollocks – amusing artspeak generator (possibly the only mildly rude word on my site…)
• Hipster Ipsum – if you need some amusing but meaningless filler for a design concept, this is for you. Or if you want to choose a different variety of guff, look here. For those requiring a conventional Latin text, look no further.