Web Sights

A Personal Guide for Slightly Cerebral Surfers

The
Arts

From Music

The huge Classical Midi Archives are a fascinating place to explore familiar and unfamiliar classical works. The best ones are helpfully marked. For live music, on the other hand, take a look at OrchestraNet.

From Painting

Three nice sites with very different artistic leanings and self-explanatory titles are the Claude Monet Home Page the William Morris Gallery and the World of Escher.

From History

The Mary Rose was the flagship of Henry VIII's navy, now undergoing restoration. Meanwhile, representing a totally different era, Angelcynn is the very attractive site of an Anglo-Saxon living history group.

Other Arts

The cinematic arts are well represented at the Internet Movie Database, which has facts, stills, clips, cast lists and so on for films from the whole of cinema history.
Pictures of a different kind feature at Comic Strip - a nice collection of well-known cartoon strips.

The
Sciences

From Astronomy

A really great introduction to astronomy can be found in Bill Arnett's The Nine Planets, an impressive multimedia tour of the solar system. Copious and carefully chosen links to astronomical resources are provided by Charles Boley on his homepage.
And a web first - the UK's Bradford University Robotic Telescope goes several steps better than the various CamBots on the Net, by allowing members of the public to submit observation requests.

From Botany

The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew are one of the foremost institutions in this arena. On the more general subject of the natural sciences, the UK's Natural History Museum and offers an excellent Web site, and the Tree of Life is a huge and exciting phylogenic progect still in progress.

From Archaeology

Details of an exciting recent discovery of cave paintings can be found on the French Ministry of Culture site - in English! Meanwhile across the channel the English Heritage Archaeology Division are currently involved in some very interesting projects. One of the most entertaining is the virtual reality experiment Virtually Stonehenge.

General Science

Britain's national Science Museum has a very enjoyable site promoting popular science. On a more professional level, the scientific journals Nature and New Scientist both have interesting web sites (although navigation on the former can be a little confusing) covering a broad range of subjects. And from the sublime to the ridiculous - Science made Stupid reinterprets almost every branch of science for the hard of thinking!

The
Globe

From Newsreel

In fairness to Birmingham City Council, they have been responsible for a dramatic change in the city's image and sense of pride. Their large and well organised web site Assist is one small aspect of their enthusiasm.
My favourite of the various online newspapers is the Electronic Telegraph. Meanwhile, for quick access to news try the BBC News. Its 24 hour rolling TV news service may stink, but this is way better.

From Coredump

To keep up to date with computing issues in general, Computer Weekly is a model site - colourful, lively and informative.

From Codex Nova

An interesting collection of the works of the great man can be found in the Leonardo da Vinci Museum.

From Minerva Mariner

The Magellan Voyeur is a different kind on search tool. It shows a random selection of search strings currently being used, updated every fifteen seconds.

From Leitmotifs

The BBC has its own substantial web site, covering both tv and radio programming. An independent (but essentially enthusiastic) viewpoint can be seen in William Gallagher's DarkRide which explores a variety of media issues.
Mornington Crescent is a popular but enigmatic regular item in Radio 4's game show "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue"

The
Rest

From The Tavern at the End of Time

There are many sites catering for the sf genre. Two useful ones are Saul Jaffe's large US-based SF-Lover's Archive which has been running for around 17 years, and its younger and smaller British equivalent, Naveed Khan's UK SF Fandom Archive. Both sites contain some pages with a rather monolithic FTP feel, but there is a lot of quality material on offer.
Naveed's site also links to the very attractive ConNotation convention list from Chris O'Shea (the Magician). Meanwhile Chad Childers joins the convention listing fray with the Stilyagi Air Corps service, with a rather smart selection front-end.

Net Benefits

Web Pages That Suck gives the impression of being a list of dire sites. In fact, its a highly entertaining lesson in Web design which every budding creator should visit.
Further help for Net types can be found at Nethead, a cool site which offers guidance on software tools (and is itself a neat excercise in the use of frames).
And, whilst you're waiting for your downloads, Gid's Blueberry Games is a visually excellent collection of interactive games which should pass the time nicely.

People

Here's an unusual perspective on Star Trek. Glenn Wilson is something of a thespian. His New Grange site includes the diary of Commander Data, a role which he recently performed for the official touring Star Trek exhibition.
Allan Winrow has a soft spot for things wet and sticky. His growing site reflects his twin passions of... philately and canal restoration! Well what were you expecting?

And Finally, Cyril...

If you've enjoyed this brief tour of the web, let me know. If you haven't, visit the Complaint Letter Generator.

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