Links

There are a lot of great things out there on the Internet, but finding them can be tricky. Each of these sites either offers something worth looking at or worth downloading, in my humble opinion. Some of these sites belong to friends of mine, which may contradict my previous statement. ;)

If you think I've missed something, feel free to email me, and I'll consider adding your link... or laugh at you for thinking I'd link to that sort of thing.

Friends' Personal Sites and Blogs

fourohfour.info - Pete Pearson's web site. There's some kind of weird del.icio.us thing here, a wishlist, and some pictures. The was once a blog, but no longer. Go check it out and maybe buy Pete something on his wishlist....

The RaBlog - This is the blog of one of my roommates, Ray Tetzloff. He tends to blog about similar stuff to what I blog about, since we live together and generally end up seeing similar things over the course of a day. He's also got a gallery of some random photos, including those of our apartment, which may or may not actually interest you at all.

KarlZimm.com - This is the blog of my other roommate, Karl Zimmerman. He was forced at gunpoint to create this blog and may or may not ever actually post anything. He claims to plan to make a mockery of the mockery that is blogging.

Mayron.net - Liam Mayron's site. It's packed with random information, and a few interesting software toys. It's a thought-of-the-moment sort of blog.

Dysfunctionaliblog - KewlioMZX's dysfunctional blog. He's "a guy with hair" that visits my IRC channel enough to be considered a regular. He has dialup and I don't know his real name, but I hear he is a reformed MZXer, whatever that means! Oh, he's Canadian too.

LeoPetr - Leons Petrazickis has a long name and a Wiki site with a blog! His post subjects never seem to mean anything and he likes to use obsure, long words. He usually has some interesting comments about things, planetary and far beyond.

News Sites

Slashdot - An excellent source for science and technology news, as long as you actually RTFA and not the post itself. The commentary is -1, Overrated.

Google News - This site is powered entirely by computers. Amazing, to say the least.

Google Labs - Google has a plethora of unbelievable methods to organizing the madness that is information. Just pick something and try it, and you'll feel like you have something at your fingertips. (Beyond the keyboard, I mean.)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - Jon Stewart's parody of a news program with liberal commentary, guests, and goofy correspondents producing stories steeped in irony. Lewis Black is a feature commentator periodically, and the show is just generally hilarious and awesome.

The Colbert Report - Quite possibly the best show ever created, a Daily Show spinoff, featuring Stephen Colbert as a parody of a cable news pundit. It is the official home and top source of "truthiness." More hilarity than you can handle.

Forums

SC4EVER Discussion Forum - This forum's been around for many years, basically in the same form as it is now, though the old color scheme is available through The SimCity 3000 Resource Center. The forum focuses around the SimCity fan community and I've been an active member there for many years. I'm also a moderator.

Online Games

World of Warcraft - The World of Warcraft draws from the world concepts used in the several Warcraft RTS games Blizzard produced. It's a fantasy world, which seems to me to draw many ideas from the world of Tolkien. The overall interface, and engaging game play make it far superior to many role-playing games in many respects. If you chose to join in, Twisting Nether is where you can find me lately. My main character is Neranil, a Blood Elf Mage.

Online Comics

Penny Arcade - Witty comics and commentary for gamers with three comics per week.

Diesel Sweeties - Weird pixelated art comic where robots and humans (and toasters, Macintosh computers, and kitties) all engage in various relationships, including several that are intimate (!!). My favorite characters are Lil' Sis, Indie Rock Pete, and Metal Steve, for the record. I like Torpor too.

CTRL+ALT+DEL - If you're a gamer or a geek, this comic should make sense to you. Following the life of some roommates, Ethan, Lucas, Linux-friendly Scott, a penguin, and an intelligent X-Box robot, the stories seem oddly familiar in spite of their outrageousness. From dealing with incompetent computer users, to plotting to design a better video game with your friends than available in the industry, to getting shot with arrows that come from somewhere out view... actually, I hope you're not too familiar with that last one.

Real Life - Nothing less than hilarious, this "real life" comic is Greg Dean's interesting take on his actual life. Most of the characters are real, or are the same "extra" drawn with different clothing as required. The comic's topics include the geeky, the implausable, and even actual events that really happened. Many of the comics make a great deal more sense if you've played a lot of video games and have some geeky tendencies...

Boy on a Stick and Slither - These two guys, a boy's head on a stick and a snake of equal stature, discuss pretty much anything and everything while abstract art decorates the space behind them. It's fairly unlikely anything they say will make you feel warm and fuzzy. They're a bit too cynical for that.

Elf Only Inn - A web comic based around a Role-Playing chat room with insane, mismatched characters that don't role play all that well, with a wealth of bizarre personal problems and lots of odd situations. Apparently updates are few and far between these days, but the archive has a fair amount of reading material to keep you busy for a while.

The Creatures in My Head - Andrew Bell has a strange imagination. These creatures range from adorable, to bizarre, to frightening. Amusing comments grace each picture, both in caption and through the user-submitted comments area. This is one of those random things that keeps me amused.

Dilbert - Commentary on office life.

Cool Software

Gentoo Linux - An excellent Linux distribution which uses a comprehensive package manager known as portage to deliver very current source packages to your computer. This distribution is often promoted on the grounds that tuning your compiler will produce better performance in your applications. You probably won't be able to tell, but you will gain fairly easy access to a lot of new software packages very quickly, which can make things interesting. The setup procedure is more complex than with most Linux distributions, so users that don't understand some basics about Linux probably will want to stand clear.

Ubuntu Linux - Another excellent Linux distribution which is extremely well packaged for desktop use. Hardware support is extensive and reliable and available software is tightly integrated to make both new and longtime Linux users fairly comfortable. Setup is quick and easy, with binary packages and good modern software availability, so there's no need for frequent and lengthy package compilation. If you're looking to try Linux for the first time, try this distro.

Gaim - An excellent Linux Instant Messenger client, supporting AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, IRC, XMPP, Gadu-Gadu, and other more useless protocols. A Windows version is available as well and is becoming increasingly popular.

iTunes - A powerful, easy-to-use, free MP3 player for Windows and Mac OS X. It boast strong iPod integration and the extensive music and video collections available through the iTunes Music Store.

PuTTY - A full-featured, free, SSH and Telnet client for Windows and Linux.

Mozilla Firefox - A relatively low-footprint standalone Mozilla web browser for Windows and Linux now destined to become Mozilla's default browser toolkit.

Mozilla Thunderbird - A relatively low-footprint standalone Mozilla email client for Windows and Linux now destined to become Mozilla's default email product. It's closely related to Mozilla Firebird.

Paint Shop Pro - A powerful image editing package, much less expensive than Photoshop.

Web Hosting

Steadfast Networks - I certainly have to plug my employer and the host of this web site. Steadfast Networks provides shared hosting, virtual private servers, dedicated servers, and colocation services on a network designed for performance and reliability.