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fdisk
Fred's digital garden and personal site. He's an interesting guy and his site reflects that. Topics include: tabletop RPGs, forgotten board games, video game development, print-making and sculpture
personal, art, tech
Added by reed
Inigo Quilez
This is the website of a brilliant graphcs and demoscene programmer, and one of the creators of shadertoy. There are a lot of clever algorithms and tricks in here, especially for fullscreen-quad/shadertoy style demos.
blog, tech, graphics, math
Added by benjamin
Mechanical Sympathy
A blog about performant software engineering on modern hardware. The absolutely miraculous performance improvements in computer hardware over the past few decades have been almost completely almost entirely cancelled out by inefficient software. This blog explains many of the the performance properties and quirks of modern hardware in order to build software that actually takes advantage of it.
blog, tech, programming, performance
Added by benjamin
~jart
Jart's homepage. Lots of cool projects here but especially of note are cosmopolitan libc and αcτµαlly pδrταblε εxεcµταblε which both are projects that let you compile C once and run it anywhere. C is finally truly portable.
tech, programming, c
Added by uelen
Matt Phar's blog
The blog of Matt Phar, one of the authors behind the computer graphics textbook 'Physically Based Rendering, From Theory to Implementation', which goes into detail on the implementation of an educational renderer, pbrt. His blog contains some articles about solving specific graphics problems, as well as longer series. The series about the development of th e ispc compiler, and rendering the Moana Island dataset with pbrt are particularly interesting.
blog, tech, graphics, math
Added by benjamin
Simplifier
A site about building technology from simple materials and techniques. This site explores electronics, woodworking, chemistry, ceramics, glassworking, and other areas.
diy, low tech, personal
Added by benjamin
Wetfish
"A crystalline anarchy, a direct democracy with Rachel as your benevolent baby sitter." "There is nothing to find here but the undying vacuum more commonly known as friendship." Take from that what you will.
retroweb, personal, wiki, web, gifs
Added by reed
Chomsky.info
The official site of Noam Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. Need I say more?
philosophy, library
Added by reed
Kristall
Another good alt-web browser. This one is graphical, with custom themes, and has support for gopher, gemini, and http(s).
gemini, altweb, browser
Added by uelen
Bombadillo
A cool alt-web browser for the terminal. Has vim keybinds and can access gemini, gopher, and http(s) sites.
gemini, altweb, browser
Added by uelen
STRML
Samuel Reed's personal site, presented as an interactive programming exercise.
web, personal
Added by uelen
The Codeless Code
An independently created collection of koans, related to but distinct from The Rootless Root. These are illustrated, and occasionally violent, in a "Kill Bill" kind of way. Mostly covering "The Art and Philosophy of Software Development"
tech, pedagogy
Added by reed
The Rootless Root
The Unix Koans of Master Foo. These are written in the style of Zen Koans, but relate to Unix precepts. From the webpage of Eric S. Raymond, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative.
unix, tech, hackers, pedagogy
Added by reed
Hannu's Boatyard
Free plans of micro-boats, distributed by a hobbyist boat designer in Finland. Lots of these can be constructed from a single 4'x8' sheet of plywood, shockingly enough, though naturally you wouldn't be taking these boats on anything but the most protected of waters.
boats, personal, diy
Added by reed
The Mother of All Maritime Links
The title promises a lot, but it does genuinely deliver. It's referenced all over on the internet when researching DIY wooden boats, and has a plethora of links (some now sadly broken.) Expect to use the WayBack machine a fair bit, and sometimes you'll be disappointed. But, it's well worth browsing if you're interested in boats.
boats, diy
Added by reed
Craig O'D's Cheap Pages
A profoundly personal website, this is "A pre-blog blog" around the interests of the eponymous Craig O'D. It covers a variety of topics including: cheap guitars, Chinese Lugsails, plywood boats, tube amps, and Wanda the Cat. Check it out.
boats, personal, diy, retroweb
Added by reed
Ian MacLarty
An Australian game developer, Ian MacLarty develops awesome, small, and experimental games. Check out his Itch.io page to browse and play a few. He also produces the open source Lua framework Amulet.
personal, tech
Added by reed
The Webb Blog
The blog of Anthony Paul Webb, a software architect, the articles here are really fascinating. Of particular interest are the articles on operating system UI - so much of the commentary on operating systems is focused on the underlying technical debates (microkernel vs. monolithic kernel, permissions systems, sandboxing, etc). This is a refreshing change, and it doesn't hurt that the writing is good.
personal, blog, tech, user interface
Added by reed
evilsocket
The blog of Simone (different than simone.computer I believe) a self-taught programmer with an interest in security. Some awesome articles and projects, including the amazing Pwnagotchi, an automated wifi deauther with a cute face and a personality. Unfortunately it appears that Simone is taking a break to focus their efforts elsewhere but hopefully soon they return to publishing their awesome content.
blog, personal, open source, tech
Added by reed
Alexander Greene
The personal site of Alexander Greene, this site is covered in beautiflu small watercolors and neat articles, including Arts & Crafts and Recipes sections.
personal, design
Added by reed
Monokai
"Monokai is the lab of Wimer Hazenberg" the website says. Indeed it is! The scrolling animation and the curious web experiments are fascinating. Wimer Hazenberg is the designer of the Monokai color palette, which is ubiquitous in syntax highlighting for code editors. While the site isn't as intricate or deep as some, the content that's front and center is awesome.
design, personal
Added by reed
meyerweb.com
The beautiful personal and professional site of Eric Meyer. He's a web designer, and the site has been around since 1999. It's beautifully designed, and his writing is excellent - the articles on CSS are a real treat, as are the smalll tools he has designed and published.
personal, web, design
Added by reed
SIX EYES
A personal site of ... someone? It's really awesome though - they seem to be a big fan of synthesizers, and their webpage strikes an awesome mix between being beautiful, mysterious, informative, and simple.
personal, mystery, design
Added by reed
The Whimsical Web
A web directory much like Terra, The Whimsical Web is focused on whimsical web design - fun, silly websites. A lot of the featured sites are the portfolio or professional sites of web designers, and feature great art as well as fun effects.
web, design, personal, art, discovery
Added by reed
yyyyyyy.info
Much like jodi.org below, what is even going on? The site has links to various media all over the page, and it's randomly generated whenever you visit. Apparently they update the privacy policy every time you visit, but there's no way to read it.
web, mystery
Added by reed
Jodi
What even is going on here? It seems to be some kind of unsettlingly complex website, full of easter eggs and mysterious animations and behaviors. Lots to explore, very little to understand. You can even get to different places by varying the number of 'w's in the subdomain.
web, mystery
Added by reed
2bit
A personal site all about 2-bit graphics. The kind of fun retro site that's just about someone's personal interests, with no ulterior motives or inventives (though there is a web store selling their designs {which are really cool!}). There are lots of little easter eggs all over the site, so it's quite fun to explore.
personal, design, retroweb
Added by reed
tildeverse
The homepage for tildeverse, a loose association of tildes. Tildes are public unix systems, like sdf.org below, though the tilde movement is much more recent. They have an irc network and a mumble server, and links to many other tilde communities, as well as a many other services and projects that are tilde-related.
retroweb, tilde, culture, open source
Added by reed
The SDF Public Access Unix System
Established 1987, this is the homepage of a community of people who all share accounts on the same Unix system. There is email, a minecraft server, web hosting, gopher hosting, chat, and countless other activities. It's essentially a tildetown from long before the tilde movement.
retroweb, web, communication
Added by reed
Cern's World Wide Web
A web-based port of Tim Berners-Lee's original web browser and WYSIWYG editor. An awesome sight into what started the web, and inspires us to think about what might have been and could still come to be.
virtual desktop, retroweb, web
Added by reed
~Mariano Pascual
A virtual desktop created by a talented visual artist. The design is on point, the art is great, and the whole virtual desktop is well executed. Definitely worth checking out.
art, virtual desktop, personal, web
Added by uelen
8-Track Tape Repair
A guide to the repair of 8-track tapes. There's tons of good guidance here and it's an incredibly useful resource if you've got any of these tapes.
8track, diy, repair
Added by uelen
Astronaut
Randomly selected YouTube videos. They have all been uploaded in the last week, and have almost zero prior views. It's a fascinating view into the breadth of video produced by humans, rather than the content made popular by the YouTube algorithm.
web, communication
Added by reed
Elkins DIY
The webpage of Paul Elkins, a self-taught vehicle designer. He focuses primarily on small bike campers, emergency shelters, and boats, all constructed from corrugated plastic. Fascinating and affordable designs, and he sells plans as well.
personal, diy, design, boats, low tech, mechanics
Added by reed
Back Street Frying
The website of 3 friends, and the recipes and food they eat. Find the "secret" blog or poke through some recipes. Consult the oracle for your mealplans, if you dare.
personal, blog, culture, food
Added by reed
Nerdy Pleasures
This guy does a ton of hacking on old computers and gaming systems. There's some great hardware mods I've found on here and a huge wealth of content on systems from the Game Boy to DOS and the PCjr.
retrocomputing, gaming, personal, blog
Added by uelen
Ted the Caver
The story of Ted's journeys into a cave near his house. This is a famous internet creepypasta that even got turned into a feature-length film. It's a wonder it's still preserved on angelfire!
creepypasta, fiction
Added by uelen
Max Bittker
The personal site/portfolio of a web developer, this site is full of some fascinating projects. The author is the developer of orb.farm, broider, mojulo, and lunar bocce, all other Terra entries. Beautifully weird website, with lots of hidden interactions and fun controls.
design, personal, web, art
Added by reed
Lunar Bocce
An implementation of the classic lawn game, IN SPACE. Kept to two dimensions, probably for simplicy and to make it easy enough to be enjoyable, the goal is to throw your balls so that they end up as close to the small white ball initally thrown (the boccino or pallino in Italian.) Of course this is all complicated by gravity and the way the balls tend to slingshot around the planets.
web, art, games
Added by reed
Broider
A small lo-fi tool for making 9-patch borders. Draw that you want, and then copy the CSS to your own page for neat retro style.
art, design, web, retroweb
Added by reed
Orb Farm
A beautiful little game (or maybe art piece?) designed around the experience of building a small aquarium ecosystem. Styled like those old 'falling sand' games, this is surprisingly peaceful, and you'll be surprised at how sad you feel when the page reloads and your fish are gone. It's ok though - you can rebuild.
web, retroweb, design, virtual desktop, art
Added by reed
Elliot's Computer
The personal page of a web developer (creator of special.fish and Gossip's cafe, two other Terra entries {check them out!}), this page arrays its content in a multitude of little blocks, each one devoted to single purpose. Fun to explore, and a great gateway into a small artistic bubble, here in the web wasteland.
personal, design, web, culture, discovery, music, art
Added by reed
Hundred Rabbits
The creators of some totally FASCINATING software, Hundred Rabbits is a studio run by a duo consisting of a cartoonist/writer and a programmer/musician. Together, they travel the world in a small sailboat, building fascinating experimental software focused on self-reliance.
personal, computers, boats, open source, design, sustainability, web, hacking, art, tech
Added by reed
Cameron's World
Cameron's World is a collage made up in the style of an old geocities site. The page is full of gifs arranged by color and style, some leading to geocities pages and some opening fun trinkets. The whole page has a great layout and is fun to explore
geocities, retroweb, discovery, web
Added by uelen
Windows 93
A virtual desktop inspired by the 90s. Full of games, fun applications, and vapourwave gradients
virtual desktop
Added by uelen
Gossip's Cafe
Much like the Bus-Stop, this is a small anonymous text-board - all messages expire in 8 hours, and there are a few pre-defined topics to discuss. Very short-form discussions, and a great place to chat with random folks on the web.
textboard, forum
Added by reed
Special Fish
Part web directory, part social media network, all fascinating. This experimental page groups people by interests and who they follow on the site. At the same time, it only has space for a few questions about individual users and a free-form text file, plus links to personal pages.
textboard, web, design, directory, personal
Added by reed
The Bus Stop
An anonymous small talk message board. Posts are deleted after 24 hours, and can be accompanied with short uploaded files.
textboard, forum
Added by reed
href.cool
A web directory, run by Kicks Condor (see below for their website.) A beautifully simple site tracking things that appeal to Kicks Condor's peculiar and wonderful style.
web, culture, art, hackers, tech, personal, media, design, retroweb, directory
Added by reed
~Dennis Havlena
This page covers a really wide variety of DIY musical instruments and instrument modifications. There are tons of short articles on all kinds of instruments including the bagpipes, banjos, guitars, bazoukis, fiddles, hurdy gurdies, drums, a variety of African instruments, and more. Really a wealth of knowledge and inspiration.
personal, music, retroweb, diy
Added by reed
~gwern
The Website of Gwern Branwen - this is a fascinatingly complex personal site/wiki, with extensive writing on a variety of topics. Worth it just for looking at the beautiful web/graphic design. Also a great example of a minimalist and fast site that still has all kinds of interface niceties like link previews and drop capitals.
personal, blog, design, tech, hackers, journal, web, culture
Added by reed
PCem
An IBM PC emulator. It can emulate a wide range of PCs and PC clones, complete with graphics and sound cards from the same era
emulation, retrocomputing
Added by uelen
RAL
A textboard. Mostly dead but there's still some discussion happening
textboard, forum
Added by uelen
Spitalfields Life
A daily blog of the anonymous author's life in Spitalfields, London. Pictures, well-written stories and blog posts, and fascinating little slices of life in a really historic area. Hard to describe adequately.
blog, archaeology, literature
Added by reed
wiby
A search engine that only searches static web sites. These are all 2000s-era sites or sites built in the same style
web, retroweb, discovery
Added by uelen
The Missing Quests
An online games journal highlighting games from small, independent creators. Cool games that you won't see on big platforms or in other media
media, gaming, journal
Added by uelen
the textfile directory
A collection of plain-text files, primarily from the mid-1980s, when person-to-person-via-computer communication happened almost exclusively in plain text. Think of these as the original memes, before computers were good at sending and displaying graphics. See the Top 100 to get a sense of what kind of material is here.
retrocomputers, culture, literature, tech, computers, hackers
Added by reed
Lost Art Press Blog
A blog published by Lost Art Press, a small publisher focusing on historical woodworking. Lots of fascinating articles on the design of furniture and tools throughout history - really neat for those into UX and product design. Occasional material that, although not political really, touches on the founder's peculiar brand of anarchism.
diy, blog, anarchism, design
Added by reed
Low Tech Magazine
An online magazine dedicated to encouraging alternative tech and reviving 'obselete' technology to solve modern problems. Has a focus on sustainability as well. The website is served by a solar-powered Raspberry Pi.
low tech, open source, diy, sustainability
Added by reed
Chest of Books
A compendium of a wide variety of public domain books, all converted to HTML format. Mostly non-fiction. I've looked through their camping and DIY books primarily and have found some gems.
public domain, media, diy
Added by reed
Jim Michalak's Boat Designs
Fascinating DIY boats by Jim Michalak - these are rather unusual and strange looking, but easy to build and fun to use! He has a catalog of 'prototype' boats available for $3, and articles on boat design fairly regularly.
diy, boats, blog
Added by reed
Alex Schroeder's Blog
The online diary of Alex Schroeder, developer of the Oddmuse wiki platform (used by Emacswiki, which he also runs.) Also writes about TTRPGS and programming (occasionally combining the two!)
lisp, ttrpgs, blog
Added by reed
Eat Your Words
A recipe series centered around the food in the lives and works of famous authors. Released by The Paris Review literary magazine.
food, literature
Added by reed
Ribbonfarm
Articles by very smart but slightly eccentric writers. Mostly focused on modern culture and events
journal, blog
Added by uelen
allRGB
A collection of images where every rgb color appears exactly once
media
Added by uelen
Terra