Astronomy
Astronomy Pictures of the Day Archive - from NASA
Lots of astronomical tools here
Earth Sciences
Tides calculator, for fishing.
CRED, University of Louvain, Brussels, Belgium:
2009 Disaster Statistics, 2008 Disaster Statistics, 2007 Disaster Statistics. The above site contains many other natural disaster statistics.
Bulgarian Geophysical Journal, year 2000: Extracts from a very interesting article (very technical, but legible if you ignore the mathematical equations) (download zip file which contains a Word document - I checked and it has no computer virus).
- In the last 2 Ga the Moon was about two times closer to the Earth;
- The Moon rotated about the Earth for about 12 days;
- The tides from the Moon origin were about 6 times higher than now;
- The Equatorial radius and the Earth gravitational field did not change substantially;
- The geometrical flatten of the Earth ellipsoid α was about three times higher.
Volcanoes
The Global Volcanic Earthquake Swarm Database by USGS contains an easy introduction to understand the definition of Volcanic Earthquake Swarms and the database data for volcanic swarms. The pdf report is complete with the analysis, but minus the database.
Realtime and predictions of volcanic ash over Europe. Looks nice, is accurate and models the latest information on volcano dust clouds. You can also download each picture separately from the start of the eruption of the Iceland volcano.
EarthQuakes
Mystery behind weak earthquake faults solved (very technical article).
Calculators
Calculate tides anywhere in the world - FREE software.javascript:void(0)
I have downloaded it and it works absolutely perfect.
Calculate the time from the shadow of the sun
Compsys21 Geodetic Calculations.
Bearings, distance segments, primary circles for aviation and navigation. Free software by US DOT Federal Aviation Administration AeroNav Services/FAA. Needs a thorough reading of the help pdf file, but it's a really good and practical calculator. It has no virus and it's easy to install.
Online Geodesy Calculations and Astronomical Calcs, Rising/Setting of the Sun, Moon, anywhere on Earth. Calculate bearing and distance from latitude and longitude. By the Australian Government. Site a bit complicated to navigate but good and accurate online calculators.
Time, speed and distance calculator. One of the most useful online calculator.
Online. Find terminal coordinates given a bearing and a distance. By the Federal Communications Commission.
Online. Distance, bearing between latitude and longitude points, Haversine Formula and Law of Cosine, rumb lines, cross-track distance. With the javascript code, no less!
Marine WayPoints. Lots of very useful online calculators, look at menu on right-hand side of web page.
Aviation
The best forum around is pprune.org. If it crashes, if it deviates, if pilots fall asleep or if BA is on strike, it's there. It's a professional pilot forum, so the level of discussion is very high, courteous and technical.
Flight arrivals and departures around the world can be tracked with FlightStats. You can access historical flights (like AF447 or 8U-771) by registering (it's free, it's not spammy and does not have virus)
Aviation and maritime waypoints: Directory and Directory
Great Circle Mapper
World Aero Data - Database
Aeronautical Charts
Marine
Sailing Guide
Updated wind currents world map
Weather
Tim Vasquez always write fantastic articles on the weather and catastrophies, but he does not keep his pages up long. When you come across one of his articles, copy it quickly, because it could disappear soon. Here is a link about Malaysian Airlines MAS Missing Flight MH970.
Mapping
Mapping Design Tool
Some of the most beautiful plane photos
Astronomy and other useful freeware (all in French) -
Aviation, nautical ephemeris, moon phases, Algol minima, IATA airport listsAstronomy
Article on the stars' occultation by the Moon (in French) with free downloadable software
Build your own Sundial or Astrolabe
Gardening with the Moon (free software, in French)
Accurate astronomical ephemerides
Maths
aviation maths, the Aviation Formulary by Ed Williams is a classic.
Epidemics and Survival Tips and Knowledge.
Bird Flu, Avian Flu, Flu-Like-Illness. Aside from the medical information, this forum site contains extremely useful tips on how to prepare and what to do in case of disasters and it's very useful also for earthquake preparation, floods and other catastrophes. It's free and the level of discussion is very good.
Computer or Internet Stuff
Web Statistics Counter StatCounter is free and I must admit I like it after trying a few others.
You want to write htlm code for a table within a table? The only place that I found it easy to understand is this one. For Blogger, put all code in lower case, suppress line returns and extra spaces, so all code is glued together and it looks like a real mess. Now you can make a table within a table with Blogger!
Renaming lots of files easily - A wonderful freeware for renaming lots of files in one go, including changing the length of the filename, upper or lower case, really fantastic, much better than the DOS ren command, here: Renaming Files
Make animated gifs yourself with Photoscape. Free and pretty good, easy to use.
Choosing colors for your web page or blog - My astrologer friend at Serennu has the most practical and easy to use color calculator which I use all the time to pick colors for my web sites. It's the best I have found.
Photo sharing
Twitter: When do they sleep? Find out when a particular follower's sleep pattern based on the tweets patterns!
News feed for your blog. I had tried for hours to put a news feed widget on one of my blogs and this is the only one that works, nice, simple, quick. Beautiful!
Oddly Enough
Iceland Chefs cook on lava
Woman plans to feed herself of $365 a year!
The Flake Equation (funny)
Mental calculators (these people who can multiply thousands of figures or find square and cubic roots in a split second). Article on how they do it, in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and an amazing, old video of one show by Wim Klein at CERN in 1973 (It's a bit long, but worth watching to the end).
I'll be adding to this list of little gems as I go along and find them surfing around the web. Questions, requests for inclusion, comment on one of the posts or send me an email: as tr o x a st [*at%%] goo gle dot c o m (take out the spaces and squiggles - that's to avoid spam).
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