By selecting almost any of these links, you will be leaving NIST webspace. We provided these links because they may have information of interest to you. No inferences should be drawn because some sites are referenced, or not, from this page. There may be other web sites that are more appropriate for your purpose. NIST does not necessarily endorse the views expressed, or concur with the assertions presented on these sites. Further, NIST does not endorse any commercial products that may be mentioned on these sites. Please address comments about this page to paul.black@nist.gov.

Paul Black's Hot List page.

My Curriculum Vitae (or in industry, resume)

This page has the following sections:
Search Services References Formal Methods & Software Eng.
Other Services Fun Stuff HTML, WWW, Internet, etc.
Pictures and Images Misc. References Templates, Prototypes, and Examples
Gov'ment & Politics Code For the Young or Young at Heart

Search Services

  • Google, KillerInfo metasearch, MapQuest with aerial photos!, Lycos (and their HotBot services), AllTheWeb, and AltaVista.
  • AltaVista's Babel Fish and Free Translator.
  • Internet Movie Database (Route66 mirror), Deseret News movie reviews, Kids-in-Mind, and PSV ratings.
  • On-line Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Thesaurus.com, and Encyclopedia from Electric Library (fast, free, with many brief articles).
  • Look up people's or business's telephone numbers across the US with Switchboard white pages. Reverse search at AnyWho. (They also have regular directory searches.)
  • Best Web Buys finds great prices on DVD's, music, electronics, etc. FetchBooks finds great prices on new and used book.

    • References

  • Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures, two-level index, and direct file access.
  • Papers I've published. The Software Assurance Metrics and Tool Evaluation (SAMATE) page.
  • Software Metrics and Combinatorial Testing of Multipliers in the division wiki (not publicly accessible).
  • My HTML Quick Reference, HTML Table Quick Reference, and the W3C HTML 4.0 Specification.
  • My page to Compute Visual Similarity of Top-Level Domains. My Test Generation from Formal Specifications project and Tool Use and Flow pages. My Quantum Computing project page. A page demonstrating a semantic web application of DADS. SSIR project page. My Software Verification, Independent Validation and Verification, and IBM 1620 Restoration (and the 1620 simulator), mailing list archive pages.
  • All the universities in the world and US universities.
  • Google's source code search which takes regular expressions and language designations, like
    (FIXME|TODO) "buffer overflow" lang:c.
  • Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research FAIR, WWW Bible, and Christian Resources. Temple schedules, directions, and pictures. Family Search -- genealogy and family history resources.
  • Wikipedia.
  • Wayne Magnuson's English Idioms, Sayings, and Slang. Robert Heckendorn's List of Misspelled Words, like poinyent or teridactyl, and their correct spelling!
  • Snopes urban legends reference pages.
  • World-Wide Web Virtual Library.
  • PERL archive, and PERL ver. 4 man page.
  • CIA World Factbook with sections on countries, country codes and abbreviations (under Appendixes), and maps. Flags of all nations, and you can look up flags by color and design at Photius Coutsoukis' Flag Identifier Page. For more maps, see the Perry-Castañeda link below.
  • Two letter (like au, jp, uk, etc.) ISO 3166-1 (alpha-2) Country Codes, slightly older 3 letter and numeric country codes, location codes for US port cities, like USGAI for Gaithersburg. Current times and time zones world-wide. Frank's Compulsive Guide to Postal Addresses covers addressing letters in dozens of countries.
  • 10 Big Myths about copyright An attempt to answer myths about copyright and address copyright and USENET/Internet/WWW publication.
  • I Love Languages, the human-languages page. ACL Special Interest Group in text generation.
  • The NIST reference on Constants and Units. Values for physical constants (speed of light, Planck constant, etc.) and the "metric system" (SI - meter, gram, seconds, etc.) Origins of unit and prefix names like volt, sievert, kilo, and yocto. The JScience SI Java class has name origins, too. There is a list of stamps, coins, and bills with SI-Metric unit or scientist names. Very weird units such as work measured in barn-yard-atmospheres.
  • On-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.
  • A Summary of the International Standard Date and Time Notation.
  • A database of Automated Reasoning Systems.
  • Use Wotsit's File Format Collection for those times when you need to know a data file's format.
  • The Stony Brook Algorithm Repository by Steven Skiena. Links to implementations of over 70 fundamental problems in data structures, numerical computation, combinatorics, graphs, sets, strings, etc.
  • GAMS: Guide to Available Mathematical Software, e.g., matrix operations, solution of nonlinear equations, minimum spanning tree, multivariate analysis, autocorrelation, stochastic modeling, etc.
  • Table of syntax of computer languages (comments, assignment, names, dereference, etc.). Add more on APL and sh?
  • John Walker's Library of Software and Documents including truly random bits, programs to show views of the Moon and Earth, and view of the Earth from space.
  • The Visual Dictionary.

    • Formal Methods & Software Engineering

  • A straw man proposal for a Software Facts label.
  • HISSA: High Integrity Software System Assurance at NIST. It has a database for documents, software, tools, and other information for Software Quality.
  • Formal Methods and Safety-Critical Systems from the World-Wide Web Virtual Library. SPARK Ada proof tools.
  • FMEInfRes, the Formal Methods Europe Information Resources. It lists applications, tools, bibliographies, and has a FAQ.
  • Donald MacKenzie's (D.MacKenzie@edinburgh.ac.uk) The Automation of Proof: A Historical and Sociological Exploration to appear in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Fall 1995. It includes a fascinating history of the development of software verification.
  • A tutorial on Cleanroom Software Engineering
  • StickyMinds.com offers technical papers, original articles from industry experts, industry news, searchable tools, and more to help produce better software.
  • Some links to comp.software.testing FAQ with mirrors at Cigital and MIT. Generate random data like names, dates, addresses, telephone numbers, or text in various formats.
  • Tom Van Vleck's Software Engineering essays, proverbs, and comics. They are short, provocative, and good.
  • ASQ, the American Society for Quality.
  • Some Formal Methods Cartoons.
  • My collection of software aphorisms.
  • One can check a C compiler with a validation suite. How can one check the validation suite? Read about the design and application of a model compiler. They check that it exactly covers the standard because all if statements either refer to the Standard (by page and line number) or to `internal' documentation.
  • Bull's Eye Software's Software Test Coverage Analysis page. An excellent introduction to statement, branch, condition, etc. coverage. It even has pragmatic advise about what coverage to try first and why!
  • SEL, the Software Engineering Laboratory at NASA.
  • Centre for Software Reliability, (CSR) is a research centre within the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

    • Code

  • Idiom Consulting's Catalog of Free Compilers and Interpreters and compiler generators, assemblers, etc.
  • Snippets: pieces of code, mostly in C and DOS/Windows, for frequent tasks. Also has links to other sites. PCCTS: the Purdue Compiler Construction Tool Set: more powerful public domain tools like lex and yacc. CodeBits in Java, Perl, etc. Sourceforge for cooperatively sharing development across the net for all sorts of projects. Free JavaScript bits: date and time, screen resolution, buttons, etc.
  • Selected Open Source Libraries for Information Retrieval: Xapian, Apache Lucene, ht://Dig, Swish-e, and DataparkSearch.
  • AT&T Labs-Research graphviz: an open-source package to generate good graphs (state machines, call graphs, data structures, etc.) with output in Postscript, GIF, HTML, etc.
  • C code for creating gifs

    • Other Services

  • Expedia, Priceline, EZTrip, AirGorilla.
  • (Airlines not accessed by above.) Southwest, JetBlue Dulles to Las Vegas, etc.
  • Delta Airlines: airports, airplanes, schedules, etc., America West, AA NetSAAvers, Continental, Northwest CyberSaver, United, and US Air E-Savers.
  • Seat Guru guide to airline seating. Boeing jets: 737, 747, 757, 767, 777, MD-xx, etc. all with seating charts, etc. Airbus jets.
  • Universal currency converter.
  • Real-Time Web Clocks from U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock.
  • TIGER Map Service. Convert IP Address to Latitude/Longitude and links to mapping services. ArcData Online with census, flood, topographic, and street maps.
  • Address verification, which corrects spelling and adds zip code. From QAS, an Experian (yes, the credit reporting) company. Zip Code & Mailing Address

    • Pictures and Images

  • Randy's Icon and Image Bazaar with categories like alphabets, food, initials, and animated icons. Techlogica Free Icons and icon design. Andy's Art Attack has lots of free graphics, software, and tips, but is very heavy with graphics.
  • A huge collection of (mostly) Windows Icons (searchable), HTML Goodies with tips, tutorials, and graphics, and Anthony's X icons filtered library (files must be ftp'd).
  • Media Link's Free graphics: backgrounds, gif animations, etc. and a huge collections of backgrounds or textures.
  • Free, imaginative, animated, 3-D, gifs from Clip Art Connection.
  • The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, large and small scale maps of all over the world.
  • 1001 Fonts.com: thousands of free fonts for Mac & Windows, organized by category. Search for fonts by name, true-type-only, too. Identifont, "the largest independent directory of typefaces" You can find fonts by name, similarity, or appearance (answer questions on how it looks). pcfonts.com list of font sites, with descriptions and ratings. Cheap and free letter and "clip" fonts from Emerald City Fontwerks. The "clipfonts" are "a collection of 19th and early 20th century graphic images digitized in an easy-to-use font format." Images include animals, people, insects, parts of the body, etc.
  • Swedish University Network's huge gif & ppm Picture Archive
  • NASA Image eXchange (NIX) -- hundreds of images of research aircraft, space research, history, etc. International Space Station Gallery. Johnson Space Center digital image collection.
  • Celeste Dolan's Holiday Graphic Collection
  • Calculus graphics -- Douglas N. Arnold
  • 100's of beautiful posters and pictures from Zazzle: high resolution pictures, CGI, cartoons, etc.

    • HTML, Browsers, WWW, Internet, etc.

  • Platform for Internet Content Selections or PICS: a means of controlling access to offensive material.
  • Dr. HTML to check the tables, document structures, images, etc. of a web page.
  • PuTTY Download Page
  • Style Sheet for On-line Resources.
  • Case Western's HTML tutorial. NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML. For portability, web pages should be designed so they are Best Viewed With Any Browser.
  • HTML 3.2; Internet Web Text (a hyper-book intro to the Web).
  • Converters to and from HTML
  • A comparison of Web languages including Java, Python, and Phantom.
  • Idocs' HTML advanced features tutorial; assumes familiarity with HTML codes, but addresses the finer points of anchors, fonts, frames, cascading style sheets (CSS), tables, etc.
  • CGI primer and forms creation tutorial, and Server Scripts. Joe Burns' client-side image map tutorial.
  • Every RFC ever published.
  • Internet in the 15th Century or Mendicant Sysops in Cyberspace by Nick Arnett.

    • Fun Stuff

  • Finals in How Things Work (1998) or Physics 106N (1995). No computations, just concepts! The course site has answers, more study questions, etc.
  • The biggest web page I've ever seen (11 miles wide!) shows the proton, electron, and the size of a hydrogen atom to the scale of 1 pixel = 1 electron.
  • WWWF Ground Zero. DS9 or Babylon 5? Emma Peel or Agent 99? Microsoft or Disney? Calvin or Bart? Imelda Marcos or Leona Helmsley? It's all here.
  • xkcd "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." For instance, The Difference between a scientist and a normal person. Today's Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen. Nearing Zero very funny science cartoons: the radiocarbon dating technique, analytical chemists in the old west, etc. Douglas Chandler's A Bit Bent: Vote for me, and I'll kill you last is not a good campaign slogan.
  • Dozens of incredible "moving" optical illusions by Akiyoshi KITAOKA.
  • Underman's complete transcripts of HAL 9000 from 2001 and 2010. The Hal 9000 project: screensavers, wallpaper, links, etc.
  • Wikipedia's list of ships of "The Culture", like "No More Mr Nice Guy", "Just Read The Instructions", "Sweet and Full of Grace", "Shoot Them Later", "What Is The Answer and Why?", "I Thought He Was With You", "Helpless In The Face Of Your Beauty", "All Through With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff", "You May Not Be The Coolest Person Here", "Gravitas... Gravitas... No, Don't Help Me, I'll Get It In A Moment...", and "Ultimate Ship The Second".
  • The Inverse Symbolic Calculator. What is your telephone number, really?
  • Archie McPhee: the source for Larvets, Tequila Worm Suckers, Cricket Lick-its, and much more. Ummmm, them's good eats!!
  • Testing Twinkies and, for the CS enthusiasts, evaluate the Twinkie Turing Test.
  • Send virtual presents and Dr. Fun cartoon postcards. More birthday, wedding, food, business, friend, etc. cards.
  • Internet Anagram Server
  • SCIgen randomly generates computer science research papers, including graphs, figures, and citations. A paper generated by SCIgen was accepted as a "non-reviewed" paper to WMSCI.
  • ConScript Unicode Registry for constructed and artificial languages, like Klingon, Tengwar, Suess, and Ophidian. Ancient Scripts has examples and descriptions of writing systems from prehistory to modern, like Maya, Egyptian, Cuneiform, Japanese, or Latin.
  • Chaitin's book Unknowable including (simple) LISP interpreters (w/o garbage collection, etc.), fixed points, set theory, elegant expressions, etc.
  • Famous Mathematical Curves
  • ACME Laboratories "Purveyors of fine freeware since 1972." Google planimeter and pedometer, phases of the moon, make (graphical) Dymo labels, license plate, and or candy hearts, etc. Atom Smasher's Windows-like Error Message Generator and satirical Error Message Gallery. Go to CustomSignGenerators.com to make "... For Dummies" book covers, warning signs, avatars, comic strips, logos, banners, etc. Cool Text generates custom, fancy logos.
  • Toy Builders have different computerized machines that make anything you can design from golf club heads to chess pieces to jewelry in wood, metal, wax, etc.

    • Government and Political References

  • Project Vote Smart provides voting information, source of contributions, and stands on issues for elected officials. CampaignMoney.com give you contributions by zip code, candidate, party, etc.
  • The Source for Interactive Democracy with names, e-mail, and addresses of U.S. Senators and Representatives by state, name, committee, etc. How to contact your Representative.
  • The US Federal Web Locator.
  • The United States of America's Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Amendments.

    • For the Young or Young at Heart

  • Potomac Valley Den of Good Bears of the World.
  • The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) home page. A Heraldic Primer; shields, blazon, devices, charges, tinctures, etc.

    • Templates, Prototypes, and Examples

  • U Rochester CS Subway
  • Frog Dissection tutorial
  • Simon Laven's Chatterbot page.
  • I use the Unison File Synchronizer for backup.

    • Misc. References I Want to Keep

  • George Rarey's World War II Army Air Corps Cartoon Journal. The gallery has marvelous cartoons of a pilot's daily life, missions flown, etc. The drawings have commentaries by surviving squadron members and Rarey's letters to his bride. This site uses links to present inter-related artistic and historical information. It's fun. Check it out.
  • Lexical FreeNet find connections (similarity chains, rhyme coercion, biographical, etc.) between words. How do you get "pig" and "dance" to rhyme? How about "hog" and "clog" or "pig" and "jig"?
  • WordNet, a lexical (or semantic) net. Nouns, verbs, etc. are grouped into synonym classes. Web site includes links to similar projects.
  • Kevin's Word List page. Lists of words marked with parts of speech, words for spell checkers, etc.
  • List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names. Where else can you find the definition of cyanos, erythro, glycis, ortho, pachys, platy, stoma, or xanthos?
  • FCC Amateur Radio Services: forms, FAQ, rules, etc.
  • Jornal do Brasil ONLINE, AlterNETive a Brazilian net index.
  • Cirrus Logic corporate and financial press releases and graph of stock.
  • Lindsay's links to Science and engineering, LDS, humor, magic, etc.
  • Commercial moon base at the Artemis Project, and starship design at the Lunar Institute of Technology. Space Vehicle Designs: links and pictures of a dozen commercial space flight designs (single-stage to orbit, etc.). desktop starships hundreds of science fiction and artistic space pictures, screen savers, fonts, etc.
  • The Classification Society of North America
  • Solutions for classic math puzzles such as Eight Queens and Towers of Hanoi at the Math Puzzle Solution archive.
  • Linux Documentation Project
  • List of Telephone Area Codes and states in which they are located. Also gives information about new area code splits. ITU National Numbering Plans for telephones.
  • Ogre game!
  • The IChef Recipe Archive - over 30,000 recipes.
  • How To Deconstruct Almost Anything. An engineering student's adventure into literary criticism.
  • National Academy of Sciences 2001 report Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (so-called "global warming"). I found that rather than incontrovertibly confirming it, there are a LOT of unknowns: e.g., (Chapter 5) "... evidence points to a warming of global surface air temperatures. ... warming has not been uniform over the 20th century. Most of it occurred prior to 1940 and during the past few decades. The Northern Hemisphere as a whole experienced a slight cooling from 1946-75, and the cooling during that period was quite marked over the eastern United States. The cause of this hiatus in the warming is still under debate."
  • Rent edited DVDs through the web at CleanFilms - DVDs are small enough to mail and these are edited to PG! Great idea. NetFlix PSV ratings

    • Personal References

  • My essay on why Repentance is the Easiest Thing.
  • The United Federation of Planets, and the Enterprise plasma distribution system.
  • An explanation of the Elements of Poetry

    • PGP USA Public Key

    Updated Thu Apr 24 11:43:44 2008

    by Paul E. Black  (paul.black@nist.gov)

    Standard Disclaimer

    This page's URL is /~black/hotlist.html