Invincible Muffin Productions

• Google - If you must use Google - and Google is good at what it does - check out these important caveats
• Vroosh
• Alta Vista
• About.com
• ixquick

Directories

• AT&T's AnyWho - the usual, plus reverse look-up, e-mail addresses, etc.
• WhitePages.com - includes international directories, find a zip code and more. Check out YellowPages.com for businesses
• Superphone lists area codes by number and area codes by state or country
• Zip code+4 Look-up from the United States Postal Service
• 2-letter state codes, from the USPS

Take me to the Movies

• Spectrum 8 Theatres

What's on the Tube tonight?

• TV Guide listings.
• American Movie Classics (AMC)
• Turner Classic Movies (TCM) - I recommend checking out the monthly schedules on AMC and TCM to see if they're showing any hard-to-find gems that month. The List of Lists can point you in the direction of some great old movies.

Reference

• The University at Albany's reference collection - stuffed with useful and interesting info
• Dictionary.com - Dictionaries, thersauri, and grammar help on the web
• CEOExpress - loads of links. Check out the list of alternative papers in the Newspapers section
• A Selection of Ready Reference Web Sites - from the Lakewood (Ohio) Public Library.
• refdesk.com
• NYCD Blue - Capital District links

Libraries

• Troy Public Library
• Albany Public Library
• Upper Hudson Library System - search the catalogs of libraries in Albany and Rensselaer counties
• University at Albany Libraries
• RensSearch - RPI Library's catalog

Getting Around

• CDTA - Capital District buses
• Amtrak
• Greyhound bus line
• Albany Airport - links to lots of airlines.

What Time is it?

• The Official U.S. Time - set for Eastern time zone
• Time Service Dept. U.S. Naval Observatory

Weather

• Weather Underground
• Intellicast.com
• The Weather Channel

Local Rags

• Metroland
• Albany Times Union
• Troy Record
• Schenectady Gazette

Local Radio

• WRPI - 91.5 FM Troy, NY

News Sources

• American Journalism Review - links to newspapers, magazines, other news sources
• News and Newspapers Online - news from all over the world
• The Christian Science Monitor - simply, the best American newspaper around
• CNN
• Time
• C-SPAN

Politics & Government

• New York State Government Information Locator - Find NYS govt. agencies, directories, legislation etc.
• Federal Consumer Information Center National Contact Center - They handle questions about Federal programs, benefits, or services.
• FirstGov - "The official site for U.S. Government information, services, transactions, and forms."
• Politics1.com - A directory of New York candidates for Governor, United State Senator and Congress in the current election cycle. Scroll to the bottom for a list of other NYS news sources. Non-New Yorkers can find your state at the State Pages.
• Congress.Org - Contact info Federal representatives, plus current legislation and more. Punch in 12180-4413 to see my elected officials.
• New York State Board of Elections - New Yorkers: want to gripe to your elected officials but can't remember their addresses? The NYSBOE can fix you up.
• Green Party in NYS

Maps

• MapQuest
• Maps On Us
• MapPoint

Units of Measure

• Measurement conversion tables - never wonder how many cups to a gallon again

Money

• FundAlarm - mutual fund info that's funny, too
• Morningstar
• Kiplingers - from the magazine
• SmartMoney University - guide for beginning investors

Health

• The Centers for Disease Control - keep up on the latest epidemics. (Hi Greg!)

Style Guides

• Citation and Style Guides

Boing Boing Boing Boing bills itself as a Directory of Wonderful Things. And it is. So many of my productive hours have been lost, lost! to this oft-updated gallery of the finest fruits the Web has to offer.

Conspire.com

Based on the book, 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time. Essential book. Essential website.

Democracy Means You

Sharp political commentary and satire.

disinformation

It's grossly misleading to call this the CNN for conspiranoiacs, but that does kind of give you the general idea.

UFOmind

Also known as Aliens on Earth.com, this once-great site has been frozen since January 26, 2000. It's here not just in tribute, but because it's still useful.

The Black Vault

Government conspiracy site with paranormal topics, too, invites you to “Embrace the Truth”.

Jerry Capeci's Gang Land

The website for organized crime, labor racketeering and official corruption. Check the weekly column This Week in Gang Land for your freshest OC gossip/info.

The Straight Dope

In which Cecil Adams, source of all knowledge. answers everything.

Fortean Times

The essential publication for keeping current with weirdness in these times. UK-based but international in scope.

Astigmatic One Eye Typographic Institute

Very nifty font foundry; appealing website, and free fonts to be had.

The Onion

Reliably amusing news source, and "Savage Love"!

The Laughing Librarian

Funniest site on the web - Obscure-Library-Humor Division. Statistics! Statistics!

Brunching Shuttlecocks

Looks like this is now an archive, but still worth a look.

Satire Wire

Another site that's no longer current - but if you're new to it, it's definitely gigglesome.

The Institute of Official Cheer

Still more funniness; home of the Gallery of Regrettable Food, the Dorcus Menswear Collection, the jaw-dropping, amazing, incredible Interior Desecrators, and others.

Our Cruel Heritage

Ocassionally just mean, but a fairly good source for funny stuff

The Origami Boulder Company

A one-joke site, but well executed. The letters from the outraged are the best part.

Laibach

Famous for their unusual covers of unlikely songs. Laibach's musical output ranges from experimental to what could be described as Stalinist disco.

The Recovery Man Humor Asylum

Genuinely funny stuff - not at all what I expected from site devoted to Christian Recovery.

Ship of Fools

A British site that bills itself as the magazine of Christian unrest. More genuinely funny Christian stuff.

Film Score Monthly

This is a fun mag for film score/soundtrack fans that I became fond of while I worked for the Film Literature Index.

The Loompanics Unlimited Book Catalog

Required reading for the coming apocalypse.

Salon.com Comics

Whatever else you might think of Salon, it does offer This Modern World, The K Chronicles, and Tom the Dancing Bug in one convenient location.

Movies
The Internet Movie Database

Film Threat balances indie news with a claws-out take on the usual Hollywood stuff.

CHUD - Cinematic Happenings Under Development. Not CHUD as a certain class of individuals understands it, but the site acknowledges its heritage; contains fun movie gossipy stuff.

Oh, the Humanity! Great website in the Worst-Movies-on-Earth Division.

Stomp Tokyo is another fun site about B- (and worse) movies.

The Filthy Critic. John Tribble turned me onto (justifiably) cranky movie critic Mr. Filthy. He's kind of like a crabby, non-Texan, Joe Bob Briggs who reviews indoor bullstuff - if that means anything to you.

Consumer
Kelley Blue Book is the standard source for used car values but the site also has tips for buying and selling cars and other handy automotive stuff

Mind Control
The Government Psychiatric Torture Site

Computers & HTML
Learn good design by looking at bad design...really bad design at Web Pages That Suck.

Two good website builders' references are Webmonkey and HTML Goodies.

Designed to be an HTML tutorial, HTML Clinic is good for an easy reference resource. The color chart is particularly handy.

Someday I'd like to master Stylesheets. I'm using Steve Mulder's Stylesheet Tutorial to get me started.

Learn how to kill spam, protect your online privacy, and more at Counterexploitation.

Download freeware and shareware from Tucows.

The Center for an Accessible Society has lots of info on website accessibility.

Judaica
Shamash: the Jewish Internet Consortium

Maven - The Portal Directory to the Jewish World

The Digital Genizah. Chris L. - the Early Christian links might be of interest.

Medievalia & Classics
Georgetown University sponsors The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies, a beautiful site for medieval studies.

The Internet Connection for Medieval Resources.

The Classics Dept. at MIT runs the Internet Classics Archive.

Perseus Digital Library- a library of classical literature on the Web.

Religion and Esoterica
Twilit Grotto: Archives of Western Esoterica - this is for you, Greg G.

The Runic Journey Useful and attractive site about Nordic runes.

Freethought Mecca - When apostates attack. It seems this started out as a skeptic's take exploding myths of Islam, but they've branched out to other religions and superstitions. Essays are merciless, often funny and written by folks very knowledgable with the source material.

Crop Circles
The Crop Circular “Serious research on crop circles and nothing but crop circles.” An attractive site with great pictures, too.

Crop Circle Radius, and Crop Circle Connector aren't as pretty as The Crop Circular, (and Radius isn't as current as either of them). But there's still beautiful pictures on both.

Recipes and Vegetarianism
All the vegetarian websites I've seen so far SUCK to one degree or another, but I feel obligated to put a few of them up.

Vegetarian Times, the online version of the magazine. Note: They charge for recipes, GRRRRR.

Vegsource.com

Our traveling vegan friends recommend VegDining to locate vegetarian restaurants all over the world.

The Food Network, on the other hand, is not strictly veg, but is a really good site for recipes.

Asia Food is also not strictly veg, but a nicely done site devoted to many types of Asian cooking and recipes. For all of my Asian-food loving friends. Part of Asia Source.

Magazines
Go to FindArticles.com for free, full-text articles from over 350 magazines, from 1998 on. Including Vegetarian Times' recipes.

Housekeeping
For Gene and the other environmentally-conscious clean freaks out there: here's a handy reference copy of Greenpeace's Stepping Lightly on the Earth: Everyone's Guide to Toxics in the Home.

So useful, I've listed the Measurement conversion tables twice.

Guide to Lock Picking. Who knows when stuff like this will come in handy?

Miscellaneous
Alpha Search is a gateway to gateways. Principally for academics, but still full of links to interesting links. Daniel M. and Brian M. - check it out.

SoYouWanna provides quick and easy instructions for how to do all sorts of things, except, for some reason, tying a tie. Which has actually come up before so I will include it for you here: How to Tie a Tie.

Flaming Pop-Tart Blowtorches

In blazing Strawberry-Vision.

C'thulu in Legos

As the author says; “This probably isn't what the folks at Lego had in mind.” Thanks to Tim.

How to Dance Properly

Fred Astaire would cry in shame. I don't know how long this'll stay up, so check it out now and never be embarrassed at dance clubs again!

Soul-Patrol

Not the most professional site in the world, but a great resource for those of you who love funk, soul, R&B, etc. The thoughtful essay on Lee Atwater and the Destruction of Black Music convinced me to include this link.

Spinner.com

Online radio/jukebox thing that requires cookies and can be really slow, but has a great selection of genres and is free.

Gothic Martha Stewart

It's funny, until you check it out and realize the webmistress really knows her home-improvement-on-a-budget stuff. Check out the projects. And for those of you with a black thumb (in a good way) check out mAlice's site on Gothic Gardening

Sunspot Designs

For more in a Gothic vein: Sunspot designs sells Gothic jewelry. I got very lovely poison locket from here.

Projekt

They specialize in Darkwave and Ethereal music, and have some excellent sales. You can't beat the Almost Free CD - for just a buck you get a CD full of Projekt's artists.

"Do We" Really Know Dewey?

Can one ever truly know Dewey? A site dedicated to the Dewey Decimal System.

CIA's Homepage for Kids

Exactly what it says it is.