Surfing the internet can be a very passive activity. I often find myself skimming an article or finding a useful resource that I lose or that becomes unavailable later on. Because of this I made this list to highlight some interesting tools, games, and articles that I have found. This month I found a lot of internet resources related to the arts and non technical writing.
If it made sense, I have included an archived link via the WayBackMachine. This means that if a link becomes dead a couple of years down the road, most likely it will still be available on the WaybackMachine. If you are able to support this amazing resource, here is the link. https://archive.org/donate
Prose:
https://www.thelegalartist.com/blog/on-bill-wattersons-refusal-to-license-calvin-and-hobbes - (Archived Version) - On how and why Bill Watterson refused to make licensed merchandise for his strip "Calvin and Hobbes"
https://oalannoble.substack.com/p/note-2-challenging-technological - (Archived Version) - Strawberry Shortcake and Technological Determinism (The Luddite Message of "Makeover Madness")
https://web.archive.org/web/20220121203810/https://evergreenreview.com/read/the-assassination-of-john-fitzgerald-kennedy-considered-as-a-downhill-motor-race/ - A humorous interpretation of the assassination of John F Kennedy published in 1967. "Without doubt, Oswald badly misfired. But one question still remains unanswered: Who loaded the starting gun?"
https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/ - (Archived Version) - Shakespeare’s work with helpful information to aid in understanding the text. -
https://llamasandmystegosaurus.blogspot.com/2017/05/alpha.html?m=1 - (Archived Version)- A computer generated paraphrase of Genesis 1 only using the letter A.
Lifestyle/Art:
http://omick.net/ - (Archived Version) - From their description: "simple technologies and skills that address basic needs such as food, water, shelter, etc."
https://www.flickr.com/groups/647040@N23/ - Photographs of the old South that I found interesting.
https://abandonedok.com/ - A collection of photos and descriptions of abandoned buildings, churches, and town in my home state.
https://darknetdiaries.com/ - An accessible podcast with stories about hacking and internet security.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AXaXnQv6knQ - (Archived Version) - A Northern US Accent from the 18th to the 21st Centuries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2hTinDsyCY - (Archived Version) - How to build bike infrastructure cheaply
https://www.strongtowns.org/podcast - A podcast on creating more people friendly infrastructure.
https://www.gulfcoast.org/events/ - Events Happening on the Gulf Coast in Mississippi
Educational Articles on Tech and Software Development
https://medium.com/@thomas_shone/reverse-engineering-apis-from-android-apps-part-1-ea3d07b2a6c - (Archived Version) - A bit of an intro on how to reverse engineer closed Android application APIS.
https://github.com/open-guides/og-aws - (Archived Version) - A list and explanation for every AWS service. A coworker showed me this to help me figure out what services I would need for hosting.
https://freakingrectangle.com/2022/04/15/how-to-freaking-hire-great-developers/ - (Archived Version) - How to hire great developers by having them read increasingly complex code instead of live coding.
https://martinfowler.com/bliki/Yagni.html - (Archived Version) - "You ain't gonna need it" An article on early abstraction and how building for the future in software can lead to time wasted. Speaking of wasting time...
https://ppn.snovvcrash.rocks/ - (Archived Version) - An intro to ethical hacking and pentesting.
https://github.com/hemanth/functional-programming-jargon - (Archived Version) - An intro to functional programming terminology.
Time Wasters/Tech Demos
https://dustinbrett.com/ - (Archived Version) - A fun webassembly "desktop". Lots of games and little tools included as well. Comes with blog posts in the folders
https://github.com/copy/v86 - x86 virtualization in your browser, recompiling x86 to wasm on the fly
https://wttr.in/ - (Archived Version) - A cool text based weather forecast
https://wiby.me/ - (Archived Version) - WEB 1.0 website search engine. If you click the surprise me button you can find lots of random old webpages.
https://emreed.net/LowTech_Directory.html - (Archived Version) - low tech web-ring that I want to join. Lots of cool low tech websites for perusal here
https://vole.wtf/scunthorpe-sans/ - (Archived Version) - A funny font that blocks swears.
https://webamp.org/ - (Archived Version) - Winamp in your browser.
https://hisword.pearlcrescent.com/ - (Archived Version) - Wordle with scripture verses
Utilities
https://standardebooks.org/ - A collection of beautiful, free ebooks.
https://github.com/httptoolkit/httptoolkit - A great tool for debugging or reverse engineering web applications. I used this to debug a private Android API.
https://bearblog.dev/ - blog platform that is super lightweight and easy to use
https://prose.sh/ - blogging for hackers
https://github.com/mdibaiee/awesome-lite-websites - (Archived Version) - Awesome lite websites for things like news etc. These are usually ad free and don't use much data.
https://legiblenews.com/ - News without the click and rage bait.
http://www.structurise.com/screenshot-ocr/ - (Archived Version) - A tool that can grab the text from a screenshot. I have found this to be very useful.
https://distrotest.net/index.php - A tool that allows you to test different linux distros in the browser without installing or downloading them.
https://www.brow.sh/ - (Archived Version) - A modern text based browser that can handle images. This would be useful for low data situations.
https://github.com/jaromaz/MacintoshPi - (Archived Version) - A cool tool to run Macintosh applications on the Raspberry Pi.