A little link directory

Here's an increasingly large pile of bookmarks. Most of these are semi-curated backups of my old, old bookmark files from web browsers I don't use any more, on computers that haven't worked for years. I'm putting them here for now, since the search ecosystem is increasingly bad, and Internet Archive links are not always easy to find.

Links aren't endorsements, obviously. Some of this stuff is only here so I can remember that once, decades ago, I was the kind of person who thought it was neat.

—nickm

About me

• My old website
• Me, on Mastodon
• Me, on github
• Me, on gitlab.com
• Inter Allia: My longer ramblings and silly poems

Computers, technology, and the internet

Tor-related

• Arti: rewriting Tor in Rust
• The Tor Project: we're trying to make online privacy possible, for everybody.
• The Free Haven anonymity bibliography: Not updated as regular as it should be, but still quite useful on older papers.
• Tor's first appearance on the "Internet Explorer" webcomic.

Software engineering

• A guide to software estimation that IMO doesn't suck.
• A really good post from Nick Cameron on open collaboration
• Horrible edge cases to consider when dealing with music.

Technical blogs

• Advogato (defunct) had in interesting model for trust in forums.
• Nick Cameron's blog.
• The Tokio blog.
• TimDbg's blog: logs of assembly and low-level material. Good teacher.
• Pedrag's blog: Rust stuff; maintainer of cargo-semver-checks. Lots of interesting semver minutiae.
• Filippo Valsorda: Cryptography, Golang cryptography, professional open source, etc.
• The old new thing, a long running blog about windows internals and the like.

Entertaining things

Literature, writing, stories

• Hitherby Dragons

(Web)comics

• WIGU adventures
• Dumbing of Age
• Girl Genius
• MS Paint Adventures
• Shortpacked!
• Spamusement (defunct)
• Something Positive
• Space Trawler
• Order of the Stick
• Bob the Angry Flower
• The Non-Adventures of Wonderella
• Lore Brand Comics
• Erfworld
• A Softer World
• Perspicuity
• Doctor Fun (defunct, archived)
• Narbonic (completed)
• Skin Horse (completed)
• The Parking Lot Is Full (defunct, archived)

Funny (?) stuff

Or in some cases, things I thought were funny 25 years ago.

• The Onion
• 5ives
• McSweeny's Internet Tendency
• The Eye of Argon, including the long-lost ending.
• The Tolkien Sarcasm Page courtesy of the Flying Moose of Nargothrond.
• A parody of Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings (archived)
• The Institute of Official Cheer
• Acts of Gord (archived)
• Cleaning the F—ing Kitchen
• Dinosaur Dracula — Interesting old pop culture things.
• The Movie Cliches List — sort of a precursor to tvtropes.
• The Little Lytton Contest — a long-running contest to write the worst possible opening to a novel. Unlike the Bulwer Lytton Essay Prize, this one is funny.
• Superdickery (defunct, archived) A longrunning website about supposedly heroic superheroes acting badly.

Tabletop RPGs

• rpg.net

• The Forge (archived/defunct

• Uncle Figgy's Guide to Good GameMastering — Old, archived.

• Roleplaying tips newsletter

• Lexicon: an RPG A collaborative world-building game where you make a lexicon for an imaginary world.

• Paranoia: The Toothpaste Disaster — An archive of possibly the best Lexicon game ever played.

• The logs of a very good Call of Cthulhu game.

• Expeditious Retreat Press

• Omega Complex — a slightly older Paranoia website

Humor

(Old RPG humor, some of it wildly dated or awful.)

• Critical Miss magazine
• Middle Finger Evolution - defunct, archived. Reviews of allegedly terrible or nonfunctional games

Go (the game)

• A rundown of different formulations of the rules of Go.
• Similarly, in a table

Other games

• The Ludologist blog, by Jesper Juul.

History and the like

• Ex Urbe by Ada Palmer.

Serious things

News I sometimes check

• The Washington Post
• The New York Times
• The Christian Science Monitor

About mental and emotional health

• An academic work habits guide from the COVID pandemic that is generally useful for non-academic and less-pandemic-focused areas too. By Ada Palmer.
• The Integral Guide to wellbeing. Promising but not all there yet?

Politics and law

• Groklaw used to cover important civil liberties liberties stuff.

Stuff in my area

Local weather

• Local air quality
• Weather underground

Local comics stores I like

• Comicopia in Kenmore Square.
• Omar's World of Comics in Lexington Center.
• Comicazi in Davis Square.
• Hub Comics in Union Square
• The Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square

Local bookstores I like

• Pandemonium Books and Games in Central Square.
• The Book Rack in Arlington Center is small, but has a fine used book selection and a well organized special-order system.
• Belmont Books in Belmont center
• The Harvard Bookstore is lovely and not affiliated with the university.
• Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner.
• Porter Square Books.

Local theater schedules

• The Brattle in Harvard Square.
• The Somerville Theatre in Davis Square.
• The Coolidge Corner Theater
• The Capitol Theatre in Arlington.
• The Regent Theatre in Arlington.
• The Lexington Venue.

Art/Lit discussion and criticism

Film review (more or less serious)

• Jabootu's bad movie dimension (defunct)
• Stomp Tokyo
• And you call yourself a scientist!
• flick filosopher

Literary discussion, analysis, criticism

• Columbia University's "Digital Dante" resources.
• Zompist, a blog with good book reviews. The website also has interesting conlang resources and an archive of the DFC.

Forums

• Making Light had (has?) an amazing community, and so much science fiction/cultural stuff.

Art/literature Blogging

• Neil Gaiman updates his blog occasionally.

Misc defunct things

Defunct blogs

• Alton Brown once blogged.
• Infomercial Hell