Mark Fulton
Useful Links
Search
- BSU Library Yes, use the library for the most authoritative sources of information. In the current world, information on the web is not filtered for quality, except at certain sites. Publishers of books, magazines, & journals select and edit the material they publish. If the BSU library doesn't have what you want, you can probably get it on interlibrary loan - get to know the catalog and the interlibrary loan system.
- Google Still the best general-purpose search engine. Start here first. Most search engine sites allow other sites to purchase higher rankings in search results (and they often don't make it clear that this is being done). Google also does this to some extent, but they clearly delineate the ad results from the good stuff. Instead, Google search rankings are based on relevance and the 'authoritativeness' of a page; a page is 'authoritative' if a lot of other web pages point to it.
- U.S. Universities by State Nice for finding home pages of universities and colleges when you want to locate information about a colleague or department.
Weather
One of my favorite uses for the web is as a source of rich, up-to-minute data, such as weather. All of these sites (except for BSU weather) are supported by banner ads, but this hasn't been unbearably burdensome (yet).
Botany/Ecology
A smattering of sites I find myself returning to fairly often. Most of these sites get you fairly directly to good content, rather than just more lists.
- Forest mensuration Good descriptions of forest mensuration procedures.
- Forestry Images Especially useful for images of forest diseases and pests.
- USDA Plants Database One-stop site for a broad range of botanical info, all the way down to individual species treatments with images.
- Wisconsin Vascular Plants Really wonderful site with a massive, well organized, and attractive compilation of information about plants, including many images. The high overlap between Minnesota and Wisconsin flora makes it pretty useful around Bemidji.
- Northern Prairie Biological Resources Rich and well laid out site with lots of biological data on species found in the northern prairie region of the US. Run by the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center - USGS (based in Jamestown, North Dakota).
- NRCS Natural Resources - Minnesota All kinds of information about Minnesota natural resources, including soils, forests and plants. Lots of links to a variety of primarily government data sources.
- NRCS Soils Where to find out about soil surveys all over the country. If you don't know why you want to know about soil surveys, you don't know enough about plants…
- Ecological Society of America The ESA is the leading organization in the US for ecology as a science. I check this site most frequently when I want to know about meetings, either of the ESA or of related interest.
- Tom Volk's Fungi Website Great site for all kinds of fungi info. Tom Volk is a professor of mycology at the University of Wisconsin - LaCrosse. Lots of content, graphically cluttered but fun presentation.
Tree Climbing
Rope-assisted tree climbing is a safe and fun way to spend time up in the forest where much of the biological action is. It's safe if you learn the techniques carefully and pay attention while you climb, and rather dangerous if approached thoughtlessly. Remember: gravity is on duty all of the time
(Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival). It's fun if you like trees, woods, and an interesting physical/mental challenge. Half of the attraction is just hanging out once you are up there. The links here provide an entry into the web information available. Strongly recommended: get instruction before you go up.
- Tree Climbers International The central clearing house of recreational treeclimbing information and training. Links, big helpful discussion forum, classes, certification programs.
- Tree Climber's Coalition Another recreational tree climbing group. Quite a lively discussion forum.
- New Tribe - Tree Climbing Gear Specializing in equipment (saddles, ropes, tree hammocks, other gear) for recreational tree climbers. The professional tree climbers (arborists) often use their stuff too. Nice folks, excellent gear (what they make is superb, what they sell from other manufacturers is very thoughtfully selected), informative site.
- Recreational Tree Climbing - A Newcomer's Guide A nice introduction to the basics of recreational tree climbing. Good, commonsense approach. The author, Dick Flowers, also runs an excellent course on tree climbing once or twice / year (typically May and October) through Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan. Look in the personal enrichment courses of Extended Education Services for the next course.
- Tree Climber's Companion The most widely used manual for basic tree climbing techniques that arborists use. Wider range of techniques than Flowers' book, somewhat less introductory. I refer to both this and Flowers' book often.
HTML coding and web design
Web design is split between the HTML purists who advocate pure structural markup (information on the web page organized and marked-up according to function) and the graphic designers who emphasize web page appearance (often at the expense of slow loading). My own preference falls somewhat on the HTML purist side, for two reasons: 1) BSU serves a rural area where many people are accessing the web on modems working on noisy phone lines, and 2) many fancy graphical features are highly browser sensitive, and I'd like anybody to have access to my stuff. That said, I do use tables for page layout on some kinds of web pages (a no-no from the point of view of a purist), and presentation markup instead of cascading style sheets (CSS are not universally or consistently supported by browsers yet). The following list of sites is in approximate order from 'purist' to somewhat 'graphical'.
- HTML home page This is where the guys who write HTML standards explain what they are doing and why. Lots of highly technical stuff, also some useful tutorials.
- Barebones guide to HTML A nice reference to have handy when you are writing HTML, but not the best way to learn it. To get started on learning, prowl the links in the HTML Home page or go through the NCSA primer.
- HTML tidy Useful utility for making sure you produce "clean" HTML code. Both hand-written pages and pages produced by commercial editors will be improved in readability and portability by a run through this program. Also a good learning device for teaching yourself how to write clean HTML.
- Philip and Alex's guide to web publishing. Good advice, presented in a feisty and opinionated way. Much of this is about how to make a big site backed by a relational database - for ambitious programmers only. The stuff I find useful for the scale on which I work is in the chapters on static web sites, HTML coding, and adding images. Advice on how to create and maintain static websites is especially helpful (maintain a database of information and write functions to wrap that information in HTML). I maintain a number of pages (including this one) by keeping the data in a spreadsheet and using text functions to make the data into readable HTML.
- Yale Web Style Manual Mostly sensible advice, more graphical emphasis than the other links here. Lots of thoughtful stuff on layout of information on a single page and the information flow of web sites. Now in a second edition.
Miscellaneous
- Official U.S. Time Handy way to check your watch or the clock on your computer.
- Amazon.com A pretty useful bookstore, especially for people who live in isolated rural areas who don't have regular access to big urban bookstores.
- Photo Net Good example of an 'online community'; an information rich site that works to a large extent by content contributions from users of the site. The best place on the net to go for advice about all kinds of photography.