Thran

pages

No. 53 Vol. 1Since 2018 A.D.Price: 0/0d

Linklist

Links to many places. Chosen for their reasons. I've more websites listed at Well Made Web, a gallery of wild and glorious web pages and home pages.

Personal

Blogroll

These authors are not known personally to me, but they are blogs worthy of a visit.

  • Lloydian Aspects - Eclectic and argumentative, the only living example of an English eccentric has his web presence here.
  • Damn Interesting - Deep dive curiosity into various subjects.
  • Gnucitizen - Cybersecurity blogger. Low-fi site.
  • Guido Fawkes - Keeping an eye on the dirty dealings of Parliament.
  • Daring Fireball - Commentary on all things Apple and online privacy.
  • Tales from the Dork Web - Commentary on internet subcultures and hardware hacking. Notable as being the first other blog that linked to me - thanks!
  • ASCII by Jason Scott - Musings on the preservation of the Internet's knowledge store and pleas to save data from bit rot. He also veers into computing history and his wild and eclectic collections.
  • The Rock Robot's Guide to Guided By Voices - Writeups and song-by-song reviews of the GBV back catalogue and Robert Pollard's related works.

Blog Aggregators, search engines

Almost like we have webrings again.

  • Refined Blog - Listings where many independent blogs may be found here.
  • BlogDb - Aggregator and directory for yet more blogs. You can never have too many.
  • Wiby - Search engine for the classic web. No bloat, no corporate drivel or SEOspam.
  • Marginalia Search - Curated search engine, designed to avoid content farms and SEOspam. The idea is to present the best and most interesting sites, not those most desperate to game the ranking system.

Netlore

  • b3ta - British imageboard and meme source. Online since forever.
  • Newgrounds - Repository of original animations and music. Many old flash animations have been preserved and are playable in HTML5 browsers - Repository of original animations and music. Many old flash animations have been preserved and are playable in HTML5 browsers.

Computing

Forums

  • Hacker News - A well-curated forum and link sharing page.
  • System 7 Today - A forum devoted to System 7 era Macintoshes and how they are still used today.

Programming Languages

  • Modern Perl Book - The best way to learn Perl I've found. Explains the whats, and crucially the whys of Perl.
  • Bash Hackers Wiki - An indispensable wealth of knowledge for the Bash shell. There are many helpful guides and explanations. Familiarity with this site will benefit both scripting and interactive use.
  • C Programming - A website that introduces C and C++. Ideal for first steps.
  • Parallel Realities SDL Game Tutorials (C) - Step by step games programming. It uses a modern gfx/sound/input abstraction library called SDL, this means your code may be written once and compiled for many platforms. SDL is behind many major games. C combined with SDL targets a low level without making you lose your head. This makes it a great tutorial for teaching the deepest workings of games programming.

Web Development resources

  • Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) - Comprehensive resource instructing all things HTML, HTTP, CSS and JavaScript. My go-to reference when I'm working with any web technologies. Much better quality than the watered-down dross at the top of most search engine results.
  • Just Another Button Maker - An online tool to generate those narrow buttons that used to be everywhere on the web.

Free Software Projects

Operating Systems

  • Serenity OS - Ambitious and bustling project to create a new Unix OS with a tightly-integrated 90s style desktop. In other words, what I would consider computing perfection.
  • Haiku OS - Alternative OS, reimplementation of BeOS. Boots on modern hardware and has many programs available; some original and many ports.
  • {Open,Net}BSD - The continuation of old Unix, still chugging along. They have unique strengths compared to Linux.
  • Debian GNU/Linux - What I use when I want laziness or stability.
  • Void GNU/Linux - What I use when I don't.

Software

  • Fluxbox - My window manager of choice.
  • Suckless - Lightweight window manager and terminal emulator written in very small and efficient C.
  • Alacritty - Multiplatform GPU accelerated terminal emulator.
  • KDE - Tightly integrated and highly customisable *nix desktop environment.
  • Gemini - Lightweight hypertext alternative to the WWW.
  • Blender - 3D sculptor and animation tool.
  • SDL - Seamless cross-platform graphics, sound and input library written in C.
  • Pelican - The static blog maker that makes Thranpages. Excellent docs.

Hardware

  • Pine64 - Purveyors of ARM-hardware, aiming to be as open as possible. They've built a SBC, laptop, phone, smartwatch, and many other things. Hardware hacker's paradise.

GNU/Linux and Unix references

  • The Linux Documentation Project - Old site but full of useful tidbits, HOWTO guides, details of Linux internals.
  • Arch Wiki - A go-to source for most Linux conundrums. Arch Linux focused but applicable to other distros.
  • Digital Ocean - Rich repository of Linux systems administration guides, programming language and web dev tutorials.

MS Windows References

  • NT Internals - Under the Win32 subsystem there exists the lowest level of the NTAPI. This is how one speaks straight to the heart of Windows, yet it is undocumented and not meant for mortal men to know.
  • The Forger's Win32 Tutorial - Comprehensive getting started guide to Win32 programming. How to make GUIs and access the Windows API at the lowest level Microsoft intends. How I would program Windows for pleasure, if Windows wasn't so awful nowadays.

News Sources

  • Slashdot - Considered 'Web 1.0' but still a useful digest of stories from the computing world.
  • The Register - "Biting the hand that feeds tech", British news source on all things IT.
  • Ars Technica - Generally high-quality coverage and longform articles on all things tech.
  • Phoronix - Original news covering the latest developments in many open source projects, such as Linux.

Philosophy and Polemics

Privacy and Freedom

  • Big Brother Watch - Organisation who contend for privacy online. Also active at fighting surveillance in the UK.
  • Open Rights Group - Another organisation that advocates privacy and freedom for British netizens.
  • Electronic Frontiers Foundation - Similar to the two above orgs, this one is the original. Founded in the USA during 1990.
  • Techdirt - Excellent blog site covering Internet freedom and state surveillance. US focused but gives adequate coverage to the UK too.

Weights and Measures

  • Lindybeige argument for Imperial weights - A mathematical and practical argument for the good old inches, feet and yards. I'd also welcome a return to pounds, shilling and pence.
  • Inch perfect - Another site advicating for the same. Documents the historical imposition and the persecution of traditional unit users.

Culture and Arts

  • The Movie Database - Independent alternative to IMDB for film recommendations and reviews.
  • The TV Database - As above but for TV series.
  • Rate Your Music - Reviews and recommendations for music albums. Well-categorised, so when you delve deep you will certainly discover something new.

Latest update of this page: 30/12/2023