Squaddie John suggests some tekkie links

The Cartoon Laws of Physics - the Ten Laws of Cartoon Motion: the first law is: "Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation"; see also 25 Laws of Japanese Animation

Enigma code machine simulators. During WWII the Germans used mechanical devices to encrypt their radio messages. The best known of these machines is the Enigma, which was initially invented in 1918 for commercial applications, until it was adopted by the German Army for military encypherment. Not many Enigma devices are available today, but some can be seen in dedicated exhibitions throughout the world. As it is rather difficult to get your hands on 'the real thing', some have developed Enigma simulators in software.

The Alan Turing Home Page. Founder of computer science, mathematician, philosopher, codebreaker, strange visionary and a gay man before his time.
The Museum of HP Calculators describes older Hewlett-Packard calculators. Mine was an HP-25. Do you remember Nimb or the HP Moon Landing Simulator? This site has the programs plus simulators for many of the classic calculators, a software library and sections on calculating machines and slide rules.

The Television Test Card gallery.The BBC and ITV have over the years used a number of tuning signals, test cards and captions either for engineering purposes, or just to fill time in the days before breakfast and daytime TV. This page shows some of them, and some of the captions used in days past.
Vintage Broadcasting
Colour Theory

Apollo 11: The First Lunar Landing annotated transcript and use browser search 1202 - an error numbers that the 72 kbyte on-board navigation computer threw up during descent and which the lunar crew were authorised to override; also includes movie and sound clips. One of Apollo Lunar Surface Journals

Baggage X-Ray Scanning Equipment Can Jeopardize Your Film - Kodak Technical Information Bulletin
The Royal Observer Corps - A brief pictorial history see also The Royal Observer Corps : 1925-1992, history and archeaology
How to Write Plain English by Rudolf Flesch - the theory behind the Readability Scores, available in Word
Tea
Tea with milk and sugar has come to characterise the British since it first gained popularity under the Stuarts. Tea trade motivated and funded the expansion of the British Empine. A triangle trade route with China was established through India to secure the supply of tea, this led to the Opium Wars. Tea kept Britain working during World War II. The American Revolution started with the Boston Tea Party. And foreigners still can't offer a proper cup of tea.

In Our Time - Tea - recording of BBC Radio programme
British Standard Method for preparation of a liquor of tea for use in sensory tests BS6008 ISO 3103:1980
Tea - article from Wikipedia
The diary of Samuel Pepys - blogging in tea drinking seventeenth century London

PRESTEL - The Post Office Viewdata Service - I had a BT Prestel account on my BBC Micro back in the 1980s : were you too there before the Internet? Perhaps also in "The CUG" (Closed User Group). See also Prestel and Minitel the forerunner of the Internet
An illustrated History of Windows
London Underground
- UTS Ticket Barrier Error Codes These are the codes that the operator reads when you are refused entry with the "Seek Assistance" mesage. The same codes are used by the UK suburban and mainline ticket barrier gates.
- Wood Lane to White City - one of the most interesting parts of the Underground explanation why the lines through White City station are the wrong way round for a British railway
- Disused Stations on London's Underground

Ursus Bear: Mi Home Page

Electricty Pylon of the Month Site dedicated to the humble electricity pylon, whose beauty remains tragically unrecognised. Railed against by misguided environmentalists, these delightful constructions enhance and beautify their surroundings, providing a comforting reminder of Man's harnessing of the forces of nature. They also provide children and adults alike with the opportunity to engage in the fascinating and rewarding hobby of electricity pylon number collecting. See also Traffic Cone Preservation Soc

All ordinary e-mails, web mail, chat, files and other ordinary online activities are traceable by an investigation which has enough resource
- A member of your household or anyone technical with physical access to your hard drive will be able to trace your surfing and your mail. The only sure way of privacy from a member of your household is to use another PC and another internet account that the sensitive person cannot access
- ISPs and corporate IT outfits are obliged to keep logs and/or actual e-mails and to release them on demand to qualified investigators
- Most UK ISPs' logs include the landline phone number that you connect from, corporate IT records even more detail
- "Deleting" a file in the ordinary way on a PC does not remove the file from the hard drive, it merely hides the listing of it from a naiive user
- if you need anonymity you should be aware that it's not absolutely achieveable online, but there are steps you can take which will make tracing your activities impracticable except by those with extreme resource: Do-it-yourself internet anonymity
The Internet Archive The Wayback Machine makes it possible to surf pages stored in the Internet Archive's web archive

Acronym finder a searchable database of over 340,000 acronyms, abbreviations and meanings. Covers: common acronyms, computers, science, technology, government, telecommunications, and military acronyms
Acronym to find (example SNAFU)

Low cost Virus Protection Strategy (use at your own risk)
1. Regularly check that your PC is clear of viruses using on-line free virus checks (monthly): try Symantec Security Check for Home Users
2. Regularly visit Windows Updates select Product Updates and install Security or Critical Updates
3. Use a program that reports Spyware such as Ad-Aware from Lavasoft
Unfortunately updates to Windows are essential unless you propose to never open e-mail or connect to the internet or accept disks from other people.
Think of anti-virus programs like a household insurance policy and critical Windows updates like locks on the doors. Just because you have an insurance policy on your house it doesn't mean it's safe to leave the doors unlocked. If a passkey is doing the rounds (ie a virus) then your locks are useless.
You could use an alternative to Windows but the other options are either more expensive or more technical. The only other viable alternative is to live on an island, ie to disconnect from the internet. Even so you can still get tricked into parting with your valuables by a quick-talking salesman.