Mark Tsai's Web page: Links Page

On this page, you'll find a bunch of miscellaneous hyperlinks which I find interesting or otherwise worthy of attention. I've made comments near most of them, so hopefully this will be helpful in your exploration. These hyperlinks are 'general,' that is, they don't really fall into the other categories I cover in other pages on this site (i.e. all car-related pages are in the RX-7 Section and R/C links are in the R/C Cars section.)

By the way, if you find any links that are broken, or no longer in service, please let me know! I try to keep up with sites, but they move quickly enough that it sometimes becomes problematic.

I've broken the links into the following categories:

Search Engines for the web, people, news...
Reference Sites
Humorous Sites
Sites belonging to friends and relations

Selecting one of the above categories will take you there. So, without further delay, here they are!

Search Engines

I'm not going to list tons of search engines, only the ones I use regularly. I'll admit I haven't done tons of research into this, but the ones I use do serve their purpose.

Digital Equipment's Altavista is a great search engine. It's fast and useful (despite the recent addition of advertising spam), and can search both Web sites and Usenet. In addition, their advanced query is extremely easy to use and can really pin down the information you're looking for. In addition, they're the site which I use for my Super Site Randomizer, which will fling you to a random web page.

Dejanews is a site which archives the last few months of Usenet postings, and makes them available through a search engine. Useful for following a thread back, or for scanning for conversations on particular topics. (They don't archive binary newsgroups, though.)

Four11.com, WhoWhere, and LookupUSA are search engines which will allow you to enter a person and return potential E-mail addresses for them, so that you can get in touch with that person you knew from college. Switchboard will return phone numbers and addresses. Most of these have somewhat useful information, but I've found that some of it is less than accurate.

FTP Search is a search engine which scans anonymous FTP sites for files you may be interested in. The only service of its kind, as far as I know.

Reference Sites

These are sites which contain useful information on one thing or another.

Mapquest allows you to find a location anywhere in the United States if you know its address (or a business, if you know its name!) Control over zoom level and detail level allows you to find major freeways nearby, and you can zoom down to the tiny surface street level. Points of interest can also be highlighted. Great service, and its free!

The Skeptic's Dictionary has a large collection of articles on some of the ridiculous marketing claims, fads and mythologies which populate our thought space today. Highlights include information on pyramid schemes, mind control and other interesting (and sometimes hilarious) topics.

The world population clock site gives an approximate count of how many people are sharing the air you breathe. Right now, it reads . Pretty scary, eh? (Yes, it does update if you reload)

The U.S. Naval Observatory is the keeper of the super-accurate official clock used for time in the U.S. For instance, right now, in Massachusetts, it's , or if you're not using Netscape, .

The Windows '95 annoyances site has a large archive of bugs and problems with Windows '95, and what you can do about some of them.

The World Wide Web Consortium is the keeper of the official HTML standards papers.

NIST (formerly ANSI) are the keepers of absolutely tons of standards.

The Lyrics Database is a search-engine for those wacky lyrics you've heard, but never quite understood...

Humorous sites

Funny stuff to brighten your day...

Dilbert's homepage. Need I say more?

The ROTFL digest has some really funny news items and clips. Be warned though, that there's a lot of stuff to read here.

Mirsky's Worst of the Web is (was?) a really funny site to browse, as Mirsky goes out and looks for the most ridiculous sites (both in design and in content), and collects them here for your perusal. Of course, as soon as some of the authors find out they've made the "WOTW" list, the pages are pulled, but regardless, there's still some really funny stuff here. Unfortunately, Mirsky has gone offline as of November 1, 1996, so this site will probably go away in a few months.

The alt.folklore.urban archive has detailed information on all the wacky stories that you've heard about pranks and weird crimes. There are medical oddities, scams, and lots of attributed news stories which claim to back some of this (somewhat fanciful stuff) up.

Personal Links

This section contains links to friends' and relations' sites.

My brother's site is now new and improved. Even though it's full of PUNK-ese (i.e., it has references to phat stuff and whatEVER), it might give you a bit of insight into him.

My friend Mashi's site has useful information if you're an electric guitarist.

Heather's Happy Homepage contains lots of information about her, her CD Collection and her friends. We met on IRC whilst blabbing about cars.

Find a broken link? Mail me!

	Digital Equipment's Altavista is a great search engine. It's fast and useful (despite the recent addition of advertising spam), and can search both Web sites and Usenet. In addition, their advanced query is extremely easy to use and can really pin down the information you're looking for. In addition, they're the site which I use for my Super Site Randomizer, which will fling you to a random web page.
	Dejanews is a site which archives the last few months of Usenet postings, and makes them available through a search engine. Useful for following a thread back, or for scanning for conversations on particular topics. (They don't archive binary newsgroups, though.)
	Four11.com, WhoWhere, and LookupUSA are search engines which will allow you to enter a person and return potential E-mail addresses for them, so that you can get in touch with that person you knew from college. Switchboard will return phone numbers and addresses. Most of these have somewhat useful information, but I've found that some of it is less than accurate.
	FTP Search is a search engine which scans anonymous FTP sites for files you may be interested in. The only service of its kind, as far as I know.

	Mapquest allows you to find a location anywhere in the United States if you know its address (or a business, if you know its name!) Control over zoom level and detail level allows you to find major freeways nearby, and you can zoom down to the tiny surface street level. Points of interest can also be highlighted. Great service, and its free!
	The Skeptic's Dictionary has a large collection of articles on some of the ridiculous marketing claims, fads and mythologies which populate our thought space today. Highlights include information on pyramid schemes, mind control and other interesting (and sometimes hilarious) topics.
	The world population clock site gives an approximate count of how many people are sharing the air you breathe. Right now, it reads . Pretty scary, eh? (Yes, it does update if you reload)
	The U.S. Naval Observatory is the keeper of the super-accurate official clock used for time in the U.S. For instance, right now, in Massachusetts, it's , or if you're not using Netscape, .
	The Windows '95 annoyances site has a large archive of bugs and problems with Windows '95, and what you can do about some of them.
	The World Wide Web Consortium is the keeper of the official HTML standards papers.
	NIST (formerly ANSI) are the keepers of absolutely tons of standards.
	The Lyrics Database is a search-engine for those wacky lyrics you've heard, but never quite understood...

	Dilbert's homepage. Need I say more?
	The ROTFL digest has some really funny news items and clips. Be warned though, that there's a lot of stuff to read here.
	Mirsky's Worst of the Web is (was?) a really funny site to browse, as Mirsky goes out and looks for the most ridiculous sites (both in design and in content), and collects them here for your perusal. Of course, as soon as some of the authors find out they've made the "WOTW" list, the pages are pulled, but regardless, there's still some really funny stuff here. Unfortunately, Mirsky has gone offline as of November 1, 1996, so this site will probably go away in a few months.
	The alt.folklore.urban archive has detailed information on all the wacky stories that you've heard about pranks and weird crimes. There are medical oddities, scams, and lots of attributed news stories which claim to back some of this (somewhat fanciful stuff) up.

	My brother's site is now new and improved. Even though it's full of PUNK-ese (i.e., it has references to phat stuff and whatEVER), it might give you a bit of insight into him.
	My friend Mashi's site has useful information if you're an electric guitarist.
	Heather's Happy Homepage contains lots of information about her, her CD Collection and her friends. We met on IRC whilst blabbing about cars.