Pandora - Radio from the Music Genome Project
Very slick - you can build your own "internet radio station" that plays (through the computer) any kind of music you like, any era, style, artist, song - it will build a never-ending queue of tunes to be played. You can build many "stations" of different styles, and you can have a station that is a mix of any or all your stations. There's also Postclassic Radio - "weirdly new music from composers who've left the classical world far behind."
Flash Fabrica is compendium of brain
teasers, games, and puzzles (example: Test #4 - find out
the "age of your brain"). It is in Japanese, but this
link is to a sort-of English translation. Fun stuff!!
Horn Lamp. How can one live
without one of these? Available from Ken Pope.
Cheapesttextbooks.com - a terrific idea: a web site that will search the web for the best offers for used college textbooks. The link here will take you to "Art & Music" textbooks - unfortunately mixed together, but if you can wade through it all (or just use the Search funchtion) to find the textbook you're looking for, you will be offered an array of unbeatable low prices for used textbooks.
Musipedia - "A searchable, editable, and expandable collection of tunes, melodies, and musical themes" inspired by Wikipedia. Have a tune in your head but can't remember where you heard it? You can enter a series of notes in Musipedia (by online keyboard, contour, sing or whistle it, or put in the rhythm) and it will return suggestions of possible tunes - notated! I put in the beginning of "How Dry I Am" and got back ten pages of possibilities. See also the Wikipedia article on Musipedia.
Classical Music in Movie Soundtracks - Ever wonder what that sort-of-familiar music in the soundtrack of your favorite movie? This is the place to come to find out. See also ClassicalThemes
All Brass Band Internet Radio - for fans of British-style brass bands.
Odd Music - "Experimental music, unique, unusual, strange, weird musical instruments. Look, listen, explore, participate."
Army Bugle Calls - notated and recorded examples of army bugle calls. More information here.
Blackout Poems - Writer, cartoonist, and designer Austin Kleon creates "poems" by blacking out text in the New York Times - what's unblacked is the poem.
Cool reference sites:
Refdesk - comprehensive "fact checker for the internet" - instant connection with every reference site imaginable. Sign up for their reference site of the day. If you had to pick one mother-of-all-reference sites, this is it.
Soyouwanna - "teaches you how to do all the things nobody taught you in school"
eHow - "How to do just about everything"
Answerbag - ask a question about anything, or be an expert and answer the question of others in our specialty.
Arts & Letters Daily - Not a reference site per se, but a terrific sampler of fascinating current articles from all over the web on many, many subjects.
Infoplease - Almanacs, atlas, encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, features, quizzes, timelines, news, history, sports, biography, links, and much much more.
Wikipedia - everyone knows about Wikipedia. Right?
Babelfish - quick translation of almost any language
Internet Public Library
New York Public Library - Gateway to vast resources of every kind.
LibrarySpot - Online reference site of vast scope. A sampling of their links: Online libraries (of every sort), news, magazines, podcasts, poetry, speeches, almanacs, associations, Ask an Expert, biographies, countries, current events, dictionaries, encyclopedias, grammar, people, public records, how to, quotations, statistics, white pages, maps, zip codes and a whole lot more.
WorldCat - "The world's largest network of library content and services." Lets you search the collections of libraries locally and around the world (10,000!). Find books, music, videos, research articles, audiobooks and other digital articles; you can review items or contribute facts. Create your own free account, lists of items you'd like to track or share with others, build bibliographies, get plug-ins for Foxfire or Facebook, even try some "planned serendipity."
Language Learning Library - free online language learning resources: grammar, common phrases, nouns, numbers, telling time, alphabet, dictionaries, cultural information.
Cartoons by Kliban
Andrew Crawford's hand made
decorative boxes:
The Reactable
"The Reactable is a collaborative electronic music
instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface."
You have to see it to appreciate (and perhaps believe) it:
Phantom Words and Other Curiosities
From Wikipedia: "Harry Partch (1901-1974) was an American composer and instrument builder. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-make instruments he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation."
This site lets you "play" Harry Partch's original instruments (using your computer keyboard), such as the Bass Marimba, the Quadrangularus Reversum, The Boo [bamboo marimba], The Cloud Chamber Bowls, the Zymo-Xyl, and the Harmonic Canon (I, II & III). There are also recorded sound clips of the instruments plus clips of Partch describing the instruments and they are made and played. Amazing stuff!
The French Horn Hotel &
Restaurant in Sonning-on-Thames, Berkshire, UK
30 minutes from Heathrow. Signature dish in the restaurant
is "duck, spit-roasted in front of the bar and carved at
the table."
The French Horn - pub. "Built in
1640, the French Horn is a delightful, historic pub in
Alton, Hampshire - a town renowned for its brewing
heritage. With the help of new chefs and a lot of
maintenance, the French Horn has been restored to its
former glory and is an ideal eating venue in North East
Hampshire, both night and day, seven days a week."