Terra

cool sites, straight from earth

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acdw's capsule acdw's Gemini capsule. They're the developer of bollux and an admin of breadpunks.club. personal, gemini, blog Added by u9000

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

Museum of bad album covers Exactly what it says on the tin. music, retroweb 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

The Public Domain Review An online journal and not-for-profit project that focuses on the exploration of interesting public-domain works. public domain, literature, art, library Added by reed

The George Orwell Library A collection of Orwell's works, all in a 2000s web format. Various other works are here too like bibliographic works and Huxley's Brave New World library, literature Added by uelen

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

~xq xq's personal site. They do cool work with gemini and demoscenes personal, web, gemini Added by uelen

Solid Grind A website dedicated to soaping. Tons of old pictures and videos on here coolweb, soaping, retroweb Added by uelen

STRML Samuel Reed's personal site, presented as an interactive programming exercise. web, personal Added by uelen

DOS Haven A collection of DOS games released in the 21st century. Plenty of games here that you can play on your IBM PC games, retrocomputing, dos Added by uelen

XXIIVV - the wiki of Devine Lu Linvega Half of the dynamic duo that runs Hundred Rabbits (also on Terra), Devine Lu Linvega runs this wiki. Lots of really cool projects documented here, as well as information about Devine, their research and music, and the 33 foot sailboat they travel the world on. personal, exocortex, wiki, tech, design, art Added by reed

The Most Useful Rope Knots A list of common knots. There's comprehensive instructions on here about how to tie different knots and their relative merits. knots, sailing, neocities 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

Dan's ALDL Information Page A site all about the ALDL car debugging protocol. It focuses on 80s cars and the dialects of ALDL around at the time cars, debugging, retrotech Added by uelen

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

WWWTXT An archival project that mines the records of the internet from 1980 to 1994, picking out insightful excerpts of 140 or fewer characters. art, retroweb, virtual desktop, culture, media, web, archaeology 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

Nightwave Plaza A virtual desktop radio, much like Poolside.FM. Not as many desktop features, but a sweet Windows 95 aesthetic and cool video backgrounds, typically taken from anime. web, virtual desktop, music, retroweb 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

Flying Snake Homepage A homepage for flying snakes web, snakes 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

MySpace A clone of early myspace web, social, retroweb Added by uelen

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

Mx. van Hoorn's Cabinet of Hypertext Curiosities Much like Terra, this is a web directory of neat links. Some stuff I've seen before, but nothing too popular or obvious, and everything is high quality. Still updated, so check back! personal, web, retroweb, discovery Added by reed

Simon Sarris's List of Art Collections A handy compendium of many different sources for digitized copies of public domain art. Simon's blog looks interesting too. personal, art, media 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

Chris Shier Maurits Cornelis Escher-esque psychedelic art. Amazing web-based animations by Chris Shier. art, trippy, personal, media Added by aujxn

Learn Vimscript the Hard Way An incredibly detailed guide to vim and vimscript. The whole thing is set up as an easy-to-follow lesson and only requires minimal vim knowledge. vim, editing, programming Added by uelen

strandbeest Theo Jansen's website of Strandbeests sculpture, art, life, evolution Added by aujxn

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

Mojulo A beautiful lo-fi visualization of mathematical functions. math, web, design 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

Yuichan A fun, SFW imageboard. Good vibes only. comfy, imageboard Added by uelen

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

~syx The personal website of Simone. The site is full of fun trinkets like a link directory and endless 3d maze personal, discovery, directory Added by uelen

ZineOS A whimsical online desktop complete with zines, accessories, and games virtual desktop, emulation, retroweb, design, web, art Added by uelen

The Medieval Music & Arts Foundation A site dedicated to medieval music and arts as well as other random musings. Going strong since 1991 music, medieval, blog 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

404 City Free XMPP hosting. This is an old-school federated messaging platform messaging, communication Added by uelen

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

This Vessel Does Not Exist AI generated pictures of vases. Sounds boring, but the website is oddly compelling as the generated vases morph and shift, adopting a wide variety of colors, patterns and forms. Genuinely mesmerizing, depending on your affection for amphorae. machine learning, culture, art, open source, design Added by reed

RAL A textboard. Mostly dead but there's still some discussion happening textboard, forum Added by uelen

Habitat Chronicles A blog site ran by the creators of Habitat. Covers random technical work, MMOs, and other varied topics blog, mmo, tech 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

The Post Office A casual anonymous textboard. The friendliest textboard around textboard, forum Added by uelen

Peelo Paalu A massive web directory listing mostly 90s and 2000s sites web, retroweb, directory, discovery Added by uelen

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

GifCities A collection of gifs sourced straight from geocities gifs, retroweb Added by uelen

Wayne's Animated Gif Collection A collection of 2000's era animated gifs gifs, retroweb Added by uelen

The Car Hacker's Handbook A book on car security and car computers cars, hacking, mechanics Added by uelen

~Stephen Marz The blog of Stephen Marz. Stephen is building and documening an operating system that runs on RISC-V blog, personal, osdev, riscv 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

MUCKROCK A collection of public domain requests to the US government government, freedom Added by uelen

TYP3 Technologies Charles' forge for tech rust, personal, blog Added by aujxn

Open Music Theory An open source interactive online textbook for college level music theory music, theory, science, art, textbook, pedagogy, open source Added by aujxn

~kickscondor Who knows, really? This is a fascinating blog/web-directory/art piece? Honestly just worth exploring for the weird style and incredible variety of bizarre web animations. blog, journal, culture, design, media, web Added by reed

~xj9 xj9's personal site and blog personal, blog, solarpunk 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

The Mahjong Guide A site dedicated to mahjong and mahjong strategy. Great for improving your mahjong game mahjong, games, strategy Added by uelen

The Seasteading Institute Crazy libertarian floating cities utopia, city design, seasteading Added by uelen

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

Open Source Ecology An organization working on open source instructions for building the "Global Village Construction Set" low tech, diy, open source Added by reed

Ribbonfarm Articles by very smart but slightly eccentric writers. Mostly focused on modern culture and events journal, blog Added by uelen

StumblingOn StumblingOn takes you to random, interesting webpages web, discovery Added by uelen

Trance Attic substance's trance mixes media, music Added by uelen

allRGB A collection of images where every rgb color appears exactly once media Added by uelen

la finzdani uelen's personal site personal, blog Added by uelen

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