Links — hermiene.net

"Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."

Necessities

Essential

Google
Your guide to the dense jungle that is the Internet.
foobar2000
A very good and non-bloated audio player.
Winamp
My second favorite audio player.
Google Chrome
My favorite web browser.
Opera
My second favorite web browser.
Firefox
My third favorite web browser.
Launchy
An application launcher.

Reference material

Online Etymology Dictionary
What's the story behind the word 'campus'?
HowStuffWorks
How do UPC bar codes work?
pinouts.ru
Can DVI carry analog signals?
The Phrontistery
What's an exequy?
TV Tropes
What are Precursors, and why do they always leave technology behind?
Unwords
Isn't a hallucidation a contradiction in terms?
Wikipedia
What are hot Jupiters?
The Phrase Finder
In the halcyon days of old, faith would move mountains.

Editors

TextPad
A very good text editor. It does line numbering, keyword highlighting, and regex searching. It doesn't do code folding.
MetaPad
MetaPad replaces Notepad.
Notepad++
An excellent text editor. Has most (if not all) of the features of TextPad, and in addition does code folding (I now use Notepad++ for editing).

Utilities

SIW
Tells you everything about your computer.
Microsoft PowerToys
Small programs that make life in Windows XP happier (I like CmdHere.exe and PowerCalc.exe).
Sysinternals Suite
Small programs that make troubleshooting your computer easier.

Gaming

Flash games

Achievement Unlocked
A meta-game if there ever was one.
The Hapland series
Make things work and then escape through a portal.
This is the Only Level
The same level repeats but with different rules each time.
Planarity
Untangle a planar graph.

Other games

Ballance
Awesome ball game with neat music. It seems it's impossible to get it these days; the link above is to an archived version of the developers' web site.
Ballance: The Return
A sequel to Ballance released in December 2019 on Steam. (Will give a review when played; working under the assumption that it's radical!)
Cave Story
A sweet 2D side-scrolling action-adventure game. You find yourself underground, in a cave system. Be sure to pick up the Deluxe edition, as it contains the OST as MP3s, a level editor, and a small game called Ikachan.
Elasto Mania
An unrealistic (and therefore fun) 2D motocross game.
Enigma
A ball game. I mean, a puzzle game. I mean, a dexterity game. I mean, an action game.
N, N+, N++
You play a ninja who has to escape rooms by doing what ninjas do best (escaping rooms). Comes in three variants; N++ is the best.
Narbacular Drop
The precursor to Valve's Portal.
Neverball
A very entertaining ball game.
Nicklas Nygren (various games)
I really liked Knytt, a 2D side-scroller inventory game. "The Knytt was abducted by an alien!" If you like Knytt, check out Knytt Stories and the other games.
Nitronic Rush
A futuristic racer (platform-racer?). Extremely entertaining and pretty-looking.
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
A lot of small, fun puzzle games. My favorites are Inertia and Net.
Sokoban++
A good clone of the classic Sokoban warehouse game. Push boxes into designated areas.
StepMania
An emulator (sort of) for DDR. Hit arrows in sync to the music's beat. See Bemanistyle for music.
The Ur-Quan Masters
A mind-blowing science fiction game. UQM is Star Control 2 for modern computers, but it has some extra features like voice acting. Be sure to use The Ultronomicon in your adventures around the Milky Way.

Emulation

DOSBox
A DOS emulator. Useful for playing really, really old games (pre-1990s, say).
Doomsday
An emulator for Doom, Doom II, Hexen, and Heretic. Supports mouse-look and vertical viewing.
EDuke32
An emulator for Duke Nukem 3D. Hail to the king, baby!
Gens
The de facto Sega Genesis emulator.
PlayGuy
The best GameBoy emulator that I've found.
Tile World
An emulator for Chip's Challenge.

Gaming help

GameFAQs
Helpful user-submitted walkthroughs, maps, and in-depth FAQs for a lot of games.
IndieFAQs
Similar to GameFAQs, only for indie games.

People

Friends

I know them very well and talk to them frequently.

Even Alander
A 3D designer and a good friend for many years.

Others

I think these people are interesting.

Eric S. Raymond
Maintainer of the Jargon File.
Jakob Nielsen
A bi-weekly column dealing with web design.
John Walker
Founder of Autodesk. His site is huge and contains all manner of interesting things.
Mindstalk
A self-described polymath.
Paul Graham
Paul Graham is an excellent essayist.
Phil Plait
Also known as the Bad Astronomer.
Sam Hughes
Things Of Interest, and the title doesn't lie.
Stephan T. Lavavej
A software developer at Microsoft. Reading his site was what pushed me into learning HTML and creating a web site of my own.

Cerebral

Science

Charles Darwin Online
Contains all things Darwin.
Deep Green
A beautiful way to visualize the bewildering tree of green plants. (On the Hyperbolic Trees page is the Research Tree, which contains a dizzying amount of species.)
Golly
A supremely excellent (Conway's) Game of Life simulator which lets you write custom rules, making for extremely interesting results.
Pharyngula
The blog of PZ Myers, a developmental biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
RichardDawkins.net
Contains all things Richard Dawkins (and more).
Symphony of Science
Uses Auto-Tune for good, not evil.
talk.origins
Explains what evolution is all about, and explores evolution/creationism confrontations.

Literature

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database
A really comprehensive, searchable database for all things speculative fiction. Documents authors, illustrators, periodicals, books, different versions of these (and which languages they're written in), cover artists, etc. I use this extensively when researching for my Books page.
LibriVox
A library of free audio books.
Project Gutenberg
A library of books in the public domain.
The Pulp Magazines Project
Aims to preserve early pulpwood magazines. I mainly use it for reading old science fiction.
Penguin First Editions
Extremely comprehensive web site cataloging early Penguin books. I use it when researching books.
Micrographia
Published in 1665, Micrographia contains wonderful illustrations of various insects and plants, drawn from images gained from looking down a microscope. (The book is also famous for coining the word "cell".) This Flash version has useful curator's notes.
Kunstformen der Natur
Insanely high resolution images of the pages from this famous book from 1904 by Ernst Haeckel. (The title is German and means "Artforms of Nature".)

Audio

Music

Airbase
Has an online store of MP3 songs. My Life and Schizofren are awesome.
Aura
Has lots of free songs. Breathing Silence and Naked Angel are magical.
Aural Planet
Awesome downtempo trance. Blue Water Cave and Have You Ever Been are sweet.
Ektoplazm
A fantastic site with lots of music in the psychedelic trance genre. All downloads are in MP3, FLAC, and WAV formats.
Labworks
Labworks makes mostly vocal trance (mmm, female voices). My favorites are Summerbreeze (Aura Remix) and Two Worlds (Airplay Edit).
Lynne Music
Bjørn Lynne is best known for composing the music to the Worms games and his site offers a selection of songs for download.
Shadow of the Beat
Makes drum-and-bass-ish music.
Sonic Mayhem
Makes action-type music.
Xerxes Music
Downtempo electronic-type music.

Remix sites

Hybridized
Has tons of hour-long mixes. Great stuff for having in the background when working.

Podcasts

Point of Inquiry
PoI interviews prominent intellectuals, philosophers, and scientists.
The Thomas Jefferson Hour
A weekly podcast dealing with Thomas Jefferson and his views. The show is made by a scholar impersonating Jefferson being interviewed.
Rationally Speaking Podcast
"Exploring the borderlands between reason and nonsense."

Visual

Exploration

Google Earth
Lets you explore the Earth.
World Wind
Also lets you explore the Earth, but with more statistics.
Celestia
Lets you explore the universe. Check out The Celestia Motherlode for things with which to populate that virtual universe.

Art

deviantART
Lots of amateur art. You can buy prints (I have four).
Bathsheba Grossman
Grossman makes mathematical art (I own the Large Scale Model).
Art of Greg Martin
Makes neato pictures.

deviantART

alexiuss
Draws majestic characters and apocalyptic scenery.
Artgerm
Draws wonderfully pretty ladies.
daggerpoint
Draws super hero-type women and plain pretty women. (Not all SFW.)
DKF
Mostly space renderings.
mr-mister
Draws strong women. Sexy!
Philipstraub
Awesome vistas.
reiq
Draws mostly NSFW women.
spirapride
Draws various things, including pretty women, Final Fantasy, and Ninja Gaiden.

Images

Visible Earth
Our planet is grand and beautiful.

Video

Beyond Belief I: Science, Reason, Religion & Survival, II: Enlightenment 2.0, and III: Candles in the Dark
Two very interesting annual symposia on science and religion. The first is vastly superior to the second, but Peter Atkins made the second one not suck. (I can't wait for the third.)
Loading-Ready-Run
Canadian sketch comedy group.
the show with Ze Frank
A discontinued show about news and stuff. (Ze Frank is my Dear and Glorious Leader!)
Growing Up in the Universe
A children's lecture on evolution by natural selection, I mean by Richard Dawkins.

Various

Physics

Animating Fracture
I, for one, want to shoot steel balls through walls of ceramic and PVC.
Gravitas
I, for one, want to hurl galaxies at each other.
Falling Sand Game
I, for one, want to watch sand and other miscellaneous particles fall.
Ronald Fedkiw's simulations
I, for one, want to serve water from a hollow Buddha statue.

Online comics

Daily

Cyanide and Happiness
A stick-figure comic with revoltingly funny jokes. Therefore, only mature minds should read it.
MildlyHotPeppers
Multi-author comic with some neat ideas.

MWF (or other three-days-a-week schedule)

Penny Arcade
Canonical reading for any gamer.
xkcd
Some nights typing "*hug*" just doesn't cut it. Lost? Let this page explain xkcd for you.

Monday and Thursday (or other two-days-a-week schedule)

AmazingSuperPowers
Sublime and concentrated funny.

Weekly

Cectic
Skepticism in comic form.
Simulated Comic Production
Cautionary tales. (Defunct, but now available through the Internet Archive.)

Haphazard

Dresden Codak
What you get when you are high on science.
Pixel
What if pixels had philosophy?
Subnormality
Crazy stuff in everyday life.
VG Cats
Funny cats making comments on games.

Frozen

A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible
Dreamy musings, disjointed stories. Sadly no more.
Big Science and Proverbs
Two discontinued comics by Albert Sweigart which ran in The Daily Texan, a student newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin. I think almost all of the Big Science ones are hilarious. Proverbs occasionally falls flat.
f8d
Minimalist musings on various things of interest (seems not to update any longer).