Animated Beer Labels

For some reason this guy makes animated gifs of beer labels.

Where the Bombs Hit

Bombsight is a website that maps the locations of all of the German bombs that were dropped on London during the Blitz (7 October 1940 to 6 June 1941).  Apparently two bombs fell on the small street we used to live on in Fulham and four landed in the square opposite my first London apartment (as well as two on the block where the apartment was).

via Yahoo News

World Population Density

Derek  Watkins has a neat little page that lets you slide a slider to see which parts of the world have a particular population density.

via Flowing Data

Domesday Book is Online for Free

The Open Domesday Book puts all the data from the 1086 AD book on the Internet with maps of all of the mentioned locations.  It also includes images of the original text. 

The Domesday Book was commissioned by William the Conqueror and was a survey of all of the landholdings in his new British domain.

via Google Maps Mania

Days Alive

According to the Amazing Days Alive Calculator, the 20,000th day of my life will be 1 January 2020.

Nerdy Day Trips

NerdyDayTrips.com is the sort of site you check before you go somewhere on vacation just in case there is something interesting nearby.  The map starts up centred on the UK but you can move around to where ever you want.

via Google Maps Mania

The Universal Packing List

Packing for a trip?  This website will generate a packing list for you.  The site has been on the net since 1993 so is presumably well tested.

How Long Will You Live

Wolfram Alpha will show you how long you have to live and what the chances are of you living to various ages. For example, I have a 98.7% chance of living past age 50 but a 98.8% chance of dieing before age 100.

Ninite: Easy PC Installs

I haven't actually tried this but ninite.com looks very cool if you need to install software on a new Windows PC. You go to the page, select the software you want and it gives you an installer to download. You do the one install and all your apps will be there.

via lifehacker

Ancient British Sites on Google Maps

The Megalithic Portal has a Google Map showing locations of various pre-historic sites in Britain. You can even filter them in case you like stone circles but can't stand hill forts.

via Google Maps Mania

Life Magazine on line

Google Books now has the entire run of Life Magazine on line for free.

The interface makes it pretty easy to find, for example, the issue from the week you were born. The cover of mine shows Martin Luther King Jr and proclaims "A Historic Turning Point for the Negro's Cause".

You can see the whole list of magazines on Google Books here.

One of our intrepid correspondents has reported that they have the entire run of the World Weekly News for those of you researching the history of Bat Boy.

Ponoko - Make Stuff from a Picture

Have you every drawn something on a napkin and decided you would really like the real object but had no idea how to make it? Check out the intro video on this page at Ponoko. If you send them a digital photo of the napkin they will make the object for you.

They can also make an object from a more conventional CAD file.

Note that I haven't actually used this service I just like the idea of it.

Plot Generator

Looking for a plot for your novel? Big Huge Thesaurus will generate a whole list of them for you every time you load the page.

Some examples:

• A servant is held hostage in Washington D.C..
• A maid grabs the wrong briefcase by mistake in a spooky cemetary.
• A mystical shaman discovers a shocking secret in the sewers.
• An abused woman must save the president from terrorists while on Safari in Africa.
• God takes a vacation that goes horribly wrong in a prep school.
• A young man misses an opportunity of a lifetime and ends up betraying his best friend.
• An army chaplain fights for his life in Australia.
• A battle-scarred warrior enters a hot dog eating contest while on a date.

Find your magnetic declination

Ever wondered what the magnetic declination (the difference between where a compass points and true north) is where you live? In the old days you had to look on a map or chart and then adjust it for the time that has passed since the chart was printed. Now you can just asked Wolfram Alpha.

If you type in:

geomagnetism Ottawa

it will tell you that the declination here is 13.68deg West.

If you put a date after the location you can also get the declination for other dates. For example the day I was born the declination in Ottawa was 16 degrees West.

Find your next solar eclipse

If you want to find out when the next solar eclipse is in your area, you can just ask Wolfram Alpha.

For example if you type:

next solar eclipse ottawa

into the search box on Wolfram Alpha you'll learn that the next solar eclipse visible from Ottawa will be on 20 May 2012 at 7:52pm. It even gives you a nice map showing what areas the eclipse will cover.

Cat Ladders

In case you doubted that there was a blog for every conceivable topic, this one is about cat ladders.

DropBox

I am probably a bit late in recommending DropBox (found at the slightly hard to remember getDropBox.com) but I will do it anyway.

DropBox is essentially an online file storage service that appears like a normal directory on your computer - the key feature is that you can access a local copy of the files when you aren't connected to the net and they will automatically update on your other machines when you reconnect.

I have been using it lately on my little Dell netbook. I have had problems in the past with files that live on the laptop. I often forget to back them up to the main system and sometimes I update a file on the main computer and then forget to copy it onto the laptop. Now I just keep any files that I might want on the laptop in my DropBox directory.

As an added bonus, if you sign up using this link then both you and I get an extra 250MB of storage.

NYC Travel Times

triptropnyc.com would be a handy website if you were looking for a place to live (or a hotel I suppose) in New York City. You type in an address and it gives you a heat map showing how long it takes to get from that address to other places in NYC.

Make Your Own Tilt Shift Pictures

tiltshiftmaker.com is a site that lets you modify your own pictures so that they look like pictures of miniatures or models. The technique is known as tilt-shift photography because of the special camera lens used to achieve the effect "in real life".

Here's a picture of my house modified by the site. It's not as good as some of the examples on the site but it should give you the idea.

Reserve your user name

Have you ever tried to find a user name to use on all the sites that make you pick one? Well namechk.com will let you check a huge list of sites to see if your name is still available. Sadly chris is taken.