A Wrong Turn Off the Information Highway,
A Refuge in the Disinformation Desert!
Dave's Oasis
The New Home of
Scratchi's Page

Copyright © 2001 David G. Bartholomew
Revised July 9, 2002

The top pages of interest:
[News] [Financial] [Weather]

And other topics on this index page:
[Features] [Books] [Reference] [Info]

My Other Primary Websites:
[Ham Radio] [Photos]

And other pages at or near this location:
[Downloads] [Alarms] [Arizona] [Food] [Getaway] [Road Trips] [The Vault] [About myself] [Disclaimer]

Just in case there is any confusion...
This is the Information Superhighway.
This is the Information Superhighway.
This is Scratchi's Page.
This is Scratchi's Page.

Any questions?


Search Tools:
  • Yahoo
  • AltaVista
  • Excite
  • Northern Light
  • Lycos
  • Webcrawler
  • Infoseek
  • LookSmart
  • Hotbot
  • Ask Jeeves


Optimized for
640x480
Screens!

256 color
or 16-bit
recommended!
Special Features at Scratchi's Page


Get the Cool Fonts! Then you can see these pages the way they were meant to be seen!
In Association with Amazon.com Shop at Amazon.com!


The following URLs include some I have found in my own exploration of the Web, and others I have been told about by other people.

I do have some of my own material here, so this isn't just another bunch of links to other pages. Apparently, the Web is getting to be a lot of pages that go from nowhere to nowhere.

And I am not trying to make an all-encompassing list. There are plenty of other folks who are doing that, and I've listed some of their pages below. But even they admit it's impossible for any list to be up-to-date for more than an hour.

Therefore, what you'll find here generally tends to follow my own interests and other stuff I thought was neat.

I hope you find them useful in your own explorations.

Please note: I am using many advanced HTML features. However, to better serve those of you who do not have (or cannot use) Netscape or Internet Explorer, I am avoiding complicated things like frames and other specialized features. I hope these pages can be enjoyed by all. Sorry for the clutter if you're using something that can't quite handle it. I may begin using more fancy stuff later on, but for right now I believe content is more important than flashy effects. Please read my disclaimer for more information about my pages. Thank you.

New! means a new addition to these pages.
Updated means there's been a recent update.
Graphics means lots of graphics lie ahead.
Bandwidth hog means it's a bandwidth hog. Slow connections beware.
Dead? means it might be a dead link.
Recommended means "Highly Recommended", well worth a look.


Good Books to Have On Hand

Get them at Amazon.com! Get these and other computer books at Amazon.com.
(I used to have other books to recommend, but now they seem to be out of print, so I guess I have some collectors items on my bookshelf!

Useful References

By no means an exhaustive list, these are merely some useful ones I know about.
  • EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet
  • Color Landform Atlas of the United States
  • Area Codes Map (hard to find this!)
  • 800-number Directory
  • USPS ZIP Code and Address Lookup
  • Maps from [Yahoo] [City.Net] [Borchert] [Mapblast]
  • Instant Reference Desk
  • Language Translator from Altavista
  • Learn to Do Nearly Anything
  • Internet Movie Data Base (searchable)
  • Library of Congress
  • Central Intelligence Agency and its publications
  • Internal Revenue Service - You've got to see this. Paying your taxes almost looks like fun!
  • The Bible Gateway - multiple versions and languages, searchable.
  • Biorhythmic Chart
  • Weather and Traffic

  • Scratchi's Weather Page (go here for maps)
  • The Weather Channel (you can customize it, too!)
  • The Old Farmer's Almanac
  • Ski Reports (in season)
  • Los Angeles and Southern California Traffic Reports
  • Statewide Road Conditions
  • Current Air Quality and Weather in Van Nuys CA.
  • Recent Earthquakes in Los Angeles (hey, earthquakes count as weather around here!) and California and Nevada. These are pretty good, constantly updated and yet showing activity up to a week old.
  • Southern Arizona Seismic Observatory (live seismograms)
  • Susan Rosenberg's Earthquake Page

    Pictures and Graphics

    A picture is worth a thousand words. Except for GIF files. Somehow, I think a 100K text file could say a lot more than some of the equivalent-sized picture files that are around, but I might be wrong...
  • Computer Vision Home Page (you could spend years in here)
  • NASA Dryden Photo Archive of USAF planes at Edwards AFB
  • NASA Photo Collection direct from Houston
  • Worldbath Geographic Viewer
  • Earth View - see where it's day and night right now
  • Terranova: Planet of the Day - random terraformed planets

  • Why rent a movie? Download one!

  • Spacebattles.com - see Galactica, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Babylon 5 ships all duking it out together!
  • 405 - The Movie! Watch a driver on the world famous 405 (San Diego Freeway) in West Los Angeles deal with a real big surprise!
  • CNN Video Archive. Tons of interesting QuickTime movies from present and past CNN news stories, updated daily. This page just has today's stuff and from previous months. For other things from the current month, begin at the CNN Home Page and select the category of news or entertainment stories you're interested in.
  • Phone Bashers. These guys absolutely hate cellular telephone users! One of these times, someone is going to actually catch them and beat their brains in.
  • Las Vegas Hotel Demolitions in QuickTime format, along with lots of other stuff: roller coasters at casinos in Las Vegas and Primm NV, nuclear tests from the 1950's, and other stuff unique to Las Vegas.
  • LookSmart's list of Multimedia Sites.
  • Thant's Animations List. Lots of stuff here. Links to many computer-generated movies, video captures, and more, in AVI, MPEG, FLI, and QuickTime (MOV) formats.
  • How I Got Into College...

    You can take sides:
  • USC vs UCLA
  • CalTech vs MIT
  • Yale vs Harvard
  • University of Texas vs Texas A&M

    And some with less rivalry:

  • Cornell University
  • University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
  • Nevada universities and colleges
  • University of Nevada Las Vegas
  • University of New Mexico

    And some of the nearby schools. (I am not trying to list them ALL, just the more interesting ones.)

  • SDSU, CSUN, CSULB, CalArts.


  • Visit one of several Coke Machines on the Internet.
    (You think these students would do something useful with their time!)


    Header Test 1

    Header Test 2

    Header Test 3

    Header Test 4

    Header Test 5
    Header Test 6
    The above is supplied so you can try out different fonts
    in your page setup. Be sure to use RELOAD so that any
    changes you make will take effect.

    I saw a suggestion at www.halebopp.com (which is about that spectacular comet all those nuts killed themselves for), which mentions trying out Helvetica or Arial in place of the Roman font used for proportional spacing. I've tried this, and it does look better!

    For something really way out, try fonts like Ransom Note, Dear Teacher, or Star Trek TNG!

    Of course, I recommend staying with one that's easily readable, and includes all of the symbols. (Not all fonts do.) Go here for more information including some fonts to download.


    Click here to read more about me.

    Keep notes and share neat pages with us!

    EFF Blue Ribbon Campaign for Online Free Speech: Fight censorship!

    I try to check these links from time to time, but don't always get around to re-checking some of them too often. Thus some of these might vanish for quite a while before I find out and delete them. I would appreciate all mail regarding my pages and any comments you may have.



    My disclaimer.

    Dave Bartholomew This page is written and maintained by David Bartholomew.
    Return to my Home Page.
    Looks best using Microsoft Internet Explorer