ResearchBuzz

Summer’s just about over, but you don’t have to give up that wonderful smell of chlorine and chronically-wrinkled fingers. Thanks to Swimmers Guide, at http://www.swimmersguide.com/ , you can find an indoor swimming pool in a directory of over 18,000 facilities in over 10,000 cities. It looks like it’s updated about once a month (last update September 1.)

You can do a keyword search for drill-down geographically. With the US, you select the country, then the state, then either the city or the county. Swimming pools are presented in a table that includes name and size of the pool, postal code, access details (public or not, hotel or not) and some other details (whether it has diving, whether it has a swim team, etc.)

Detail pages provide some additional information including telephone number and admission cost (the site notes that even with the admission costs, some of the facilities listed are not public) along with details of the pool (size, number of lanes, and pool temperature.) There’s also a link to the map, and random comments about other features of the pool. Some pools also have reviews that cover the pool itself, availability, and fees. (”The marble pool walls and flooring are attractive, but make flip turns impossible.”)

If you’re interested in swimming in general, also check out the link directory for swimming at http://swimindex.lornet.com/ . Both this site and Swimmers Guide are pretty basic design-wise, but have lots of great information. Of course now I want to go swim 20 laps…

I was going to start this writeup with “Muhammad is Ali I know about boxing.” Aren’t you glad I restrained myself? I’ll stay serious instead and note that BoxSch ( http://www.boxsch.com/ ) provides information on both boxing schedules and boxers themselves.

According to the site owner, there is no official boxing schedule “as too many sanctioning bodies rule too many divisions.” Here there are several ways to look at the boxing schedules. You can view by television schedule, a “view all” if you want to see everything that’s going on, and a “This Week in Boxing” fight list.

Match lists contain the names and records (W/L/D/KO) of the boxers, class and location. Click on the name of the boxer for additional information (oddly formatted in Firefox) like nationality, stance, date of birth, and strengths and weaknesses (Ricky Hatton, for example, is a strong body puncher but according to this site has no jab, etc.)

In addition to the schedule information, there’s also a news portion of the site (featuring content from the site and headlines for other sites) as well as rankings, a bunch of videos (which look like they all come from YouTube, and a brief link list. The formatting in Firefox is wonky; I had to move all the way to the right to see anything. Lots to see here, interesting use of specialized YouTube information.

This post came from ResearchBuzz, a site with news and information about online data collections. Visit us at ResearchBuzz.com .

I found this site today while search for something totally different and got a great laugh. I love the Internet. Sure, there are sites for golf, and sites for comic books — so, hey, why not, a site for comic books related to golf. Yepper, check out http://www.golfcomicbooks.com/ .

This site features images of hundreds — literally hundreds — of comic book covers that include golf. Some of them are expected (Yes, The Adventures of Bob Hope was a comic), some of them are fairly mundane (Mickey Mouse, Richie Rich, etc.) and some of them are just weird (Beavis and Butthead, Anarchy Comics). Listings are divided alphabetically over several pages and include name and date of the comic as well as a few details. Click on the picture of the cover for a slightly larger picture. One time I saw a cover that didn’t quite seem to have the golf reference, but realized there was golf equipment in the background (New Teen Titans.)

In addition to the gallery of covers there’s also a want list and a list of golf-themed comic book covers for sale. Totally awesome.