Whacky and offbeat

Offbeat, Whacky and someone might find it useful, for some reason

• The Times Series Data library Lots of numbers in lots of lists. Some really off beat interesting categorised time series data. A home grown carrot to the person to prove a causal link between the solar sun spot cycle progress and the daily morning temperature of an adult female (time since the solar minimum vs °C of course). Too difficult? How about the solar sun spot cycle and the width of tree rings, years 0000 to 1989. And once you've go the hang of it, how about "daily brightness of a variable star on 600 successive midnights vs Caffeine levels in instant coffee (I'm sure they are related!)"

• IEC - the Australian company not the organisation. If you've ever tried to search for this it's well nigh impossible.

• Music from outer space - not really but a very interesting electronic music site (if you're into that kind of thing). Some very spacey examples.

• -Electronic Music There's a section on freeware. UltraMixer is freeware DJ Mix Desk. It lasts for 1/2 hour before....

• Global Earthquake Explorer
• See the result of recent groundbreaking events

• The Book of threes - everything comes in threes- right, centre and left. OK!

• The Sun-Now A summary of what the Sun is up to. Follow this and you'll be leading the charge preparing for climate change in the opposite direction (dowwwn)! To give you some perspective: 65 is the LOWEST recorded flux. When the Sun is excited it can reach well over 200. It's not been excited for a long time.

NASA tracking - MDI Continuum is the most useful for Sunspots
A very useful site for tracking the behaviour of the Sun
A longer term record of events

• Sorting as you've never heard it before. For the audio-visual learners amongst the madding crowd.

• Human Powered Flight If you've been told the sky's the limit, you'll have a more humble view after reading this.

• Computing for Joy - There is Joy in there somewhere. Actually this is a very interesting site for Software Design and Development Students. See how far you get before you lose traction.

• Trinary comes after Binary - 0, 1, 2 OK or is that -1, 0, 1

• Climate change - for those brave enough to discover global warming is not climate change and both are not new, nor is what's happening "out of control". Read the bit about a major stock market crash. Then the date at the bottom: 2007. Have we forgotten, or refuse to acknowledge what history tells us?

Change for change sake - not bloody likely!

For those of you who feel the pace of change, and are overwhelmed, look up YouTube or "Google", or get the boxed set of DVDs of

• "Connections" by James Burke

This was an award-winning TV program from the 1970s (for those old enough to remember) that looked at the history of technology from a very different point of view. At least his point of view is on the record!

For those of you who can't wait for the "next best thing", there are some sobering thoughts presented that every technological aficionado needs to assimilate. The message is even more prescient today. He is still extant.

Small Parts (but not for actors)

Ever wanted to buy some very small engineering parts: like screws, washers, bearings, motors, gears, pulleys, timing belts, linear actuators, gas springs etc, etc, etc. Well Small Parts may be just the place to find what you are after, but not if you're modding a high performance road vehicle.

IC, but then again maybe I don't

Ever wanted to find the data sheet for a particular Integrated Circuit(IC). An excellent free on-line data sheet resource lists thousands of ICs and provides you with access to their data sheets.