lolwut's Web Site
The Internet is Serious Business!
Home > Links
Links
Web sites of interest that I have discovered over the years.
Computers and Internet
- 42 ways to distribute DeCSS: Including through Gopher, DNS, the site's favicon, a MUD, a movie, and even a Quake server, among other obscure methods.
- 4chan Chronicle: A narrative history of 4chan, which begins in the mid-1990s with discussion of its forerunners and proceeds until 2015. It offers only a broad overview, and many details are omitted, but it is still very useful for getting a general understanding of the site's evolution.
- AnonFile: No-nonsense anonymous file hosting and sharing, which you should be using instead of Google Drive.
- Blinkynet: The personal Web site of an old Usenet veteran. It has a good deal of computer-related articles, as well as information concerning Usenet.
- BlueMaxima's Flashpoint: Truly, by seeking to save as many Flash games and animations as possible (as well as Adobe Shockwave games/animations and Java applets) and thereby preserving an important part of Internet history, this fine project is deserving of much praise.
- CANYON.MID.
- Catbox: No-nonsense anonymous file hosting and sharing. It only allows uploads up to 200 MB, but a notable advantage is that it provides a direct link to all uploaded files.
- cdecl.org: A helpful tool for C programmers, which translates even the most bizarre declarations within the language.
- Cock.li:
Yeah it's mail with cocks
- Computernewb.com: Most of the time, people will use the Collaborative Virtual Machines to browse to a porn site or somewhere on the deep Web, which is always funny to observe.
- Durga Software Solutions: I honestly believe that this site still has better design than any of those listed in the Web Design Wall of Shame (see below).
- Eternal-September.org: Free access to all text Usenet newsgroups.
- FriendProject: Experience Myspace circa 2007 all over again! Offers Myspace-levels of profile customization; unfortunately, it is not very populated.
- Geocities-izer:
Make Any Webpage Look Like It Was Made By A 13 Year-Old In 1996
- IT and communication, by Jukka Korpela: An interesting and useful collection of writings, mostly about Web authoring.
- lolwut.com: There is also a page full of old 4chan images from the 2000s. (This site is not mine, of course.)
- Macrochan: A large database of images from 4chan's old days. This site has not been updated for many years, with the newest images being from no later than 2008; it therefore offers a glimpse into one element of 2000s 4chan culture.
- MCbx Old Computer Collection.
- Motherfucking Website: It would be perfect if it weren't for that Google Analytics bloat the author places at the very end.
- NearlyFreeSpeech.net: Dirt-cheap Web hosting and libertarian terms of service? Sign me up! (I've used them before to host some of my previous Web sites.)
- NirSoft: A collection of Windows freeware utilities.
- No Code of Conduct: The only libertarian-approved code of conduct.
- QDB: Quote Database: An archive of funny, clever, and interesting quotes and conversations, all collected from IRC.
- RL Vision: Another collection of Windows freeware utilities.
- Satoshi Nakamoto Institute: A repository of writings and documents, most of which concern bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
- SmoothVideo Project: Watch any video at 60 frames per second! A truly excellent program.
- StartPage: A privacy-oriented search engine, which is a valuable tool in today's climate of widespread Internet surveillance.
- Steve's Old Computer Museum.
- TempleOS: The holiest operating system in existence. (RIP in peace, Terry.)
- textfiles.com: A large archive of (mostly) text files from the old Internet, particularly the 1980s BBS world.
- The 386 Experience: Download various versions of DOS, early versions of Microsoft Windows, and DOS applications and games.
- The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine: An enormous archive of Web sites and pages stretching back to 1996. Relive the glory days, every day!
- The Jargon File: An interesting resource about the hacker culture. The only flaws are that it is somewhat outdated, and that it is critical of Microsoft.
- The LaTeX Wikibook.
- The PC Guide.
- TheSiteWizard.com: Lots of articles on Web site design.
- VidLii: A video-sharing site with a design modeled after late 2000s YouTube, which you should be using instead of YouTube.
- Wiby:
The search engine for old school websites
- youtube-dl: A very powerful and flexible command-line tool for downloading videos not only from YouTube, but also from many other sites.
- ZOMG ZUFALL!: A very large collection of mostly short Flash loops.
Gaming
- GameCopyWorld: Download no-CD/no-DVD patches, trainers, and other utilities for a great number of PC games. The site has always been full of ads, but you can still download everything for free.
- Kung Fu Chess: Play chess in real time, without turns.
- Mausland Entertainment: Lots of fun Flash games (and also some Flash animations) made by a fellow in Germany. I quite enjoy his Frank's Adventure series.
- Nintendo Emulator: Play a large number of NES and SNES games in your Web browser for free.
- Puzzle Pirates Activity Tracker: Somewhat detailed data on both the average and maximum number of players across all current and former oceans of Puzzle Pirates, beginning from 2008 and continuing to the present day.
- ScapeRune #462: A RuneScape private server, it is a July 2007 emulator, so the developers will not introduce any garbage that's not supposed to be there: meaning, of course, that the only content that will be included is content that actually existed in RuneScape during July 2007. (Take note, Old School RuneScape community: this is the course that your game should have taken.)
- Worlds.com: A virtual-reality chat program from the 1990s. It was, apparently, quite popular at one time, but has long since faded into obscurity, and now only a few dedicated regulars still log on. Exploring it is a strange experience.
Humor
Novelty and Bizarre
- 7chan /fail/:
- Dokimos.org: Why is it that the strangest sites I encounter are generally those with a religious theme?
- Heaven's Gate: The Web site of the Heaven's Gate religious group. Apparently, all but two of the members committed mass suicide in 1997, and those two survivors still maintain the site. (Bored? Try e-mailing them.)
- Heavenly-Angels.org: I have done it. I have found the final form of the Web.
- Holywar.org:
Nazi Jews
- Mayhem.net: This is some sort of Web art (I think).
- Space Jam: A Web site made back in 1996 as a promotional tool for a film. The design is radical!
- Time Cube:
Earth has 4 days simultaneously each rotation. You erroneously measure time from 1 corner. Earth body 4 corner time equals 4 leg mobility. Your ignorance of Harmonic Cube is demonic.
Political and Advocacy
Laissez-nous faire, laissez-nous passer. Le monde va de lui-même.
(Let us do, leave us alone. The world runs by itself.
) —Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay
Miscellaneous
- Berkshire Hathaway: I heard one remark online that wondered if Warren Buffett himself maintains this site in his spare time.
- Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License: The best public-domain-equivalent license.
- GeaCron World History Maps & Timeline: A very impressive interactive world map of national borders; it begins from the year 3,000 B.C. and includes every year after that, up until the present year.
- Human Raccoon:
Cybergrunge Online
- Mozart Tower: Digital recordings of Mozart's compositions, all available for download.
- Project Gutenberg: A very large library of e-books, most of which are in the public domain. It is a good repository of older works.
- Rashid Bin Muhammad's Home Page: The personal Web site of a professor. It is mostly a bunch of small articles and links.
- The Black Tie Guide.
- The home page of Randy Constan: The personal Web site of a Peter Pan cosplayer, who is quite the interesting fellow.
- The personal Web site of Alexander Chislenko: A great deal of very old links, as well as some essays. Apparently, the author committed suicide in 2000, and ever since then the site hasn't been updated, though it is still accessible.
- The personal Web site of Paul Falstad: Lots of neat mathematics and physics Java applets, among other things.
- The personal Web site of Paul Graham: The essays are quite interesting and worth a read.
- Wolfram MathWorld.
Neocities-Specific
For those who are unaware, this site is hosted on Neocities, a freemium Web host which also provides some basic social networking features, such as the ability to follow other users' sites. Rather than listing them here, you should instead take a look at the page listing the specific sites on Neocities I follow, which automatically updates whenever I follow a new site (or unfollow an existing one).
Web Design Wall of Shame
These are Web sites I have encountered that have such a terrible design (regardless of the content of the pages themselves) that I feel I must point them out as examples of what to avoid when making a site.
If you are short on time and don't wish to view every single site listed below, then just take a look instead at Every Fucking Bootstrap Website Ever and Every Fucking Website, and you will get a good idea of their design.
- Apple: An awful design by an awful company.
- Atom: There are better text editors for Windows, anyway.
- Bolt.
- BrowseHappy.com.
- Burger King: This link leads to the United States version of their Web site. However, I also took the time to visit the French, German, British, Saudi Arabian, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Bangladeshi, and South Korean versions of their Web site, and each time I was sorely disappointed by the design.
- Coda: Nowadays far too many software start-ups (including this one) embrace flat design on their Web sites so they can look
hip
and trendy
, but what it really does is make them look juvenile and amateurish.
- Code and Theory: The home page is so plain and bare that I do not even think it has any design at all.
- GitHub: In addition to the horrid design, GitHub doesn't even support Internet Explorer anymore, so why should I even bother with hosting my source code on it?
- GitHub Pages.
- GitLab.
- Gradescope.
- Internet.org: I will put it simply: a Web site is not a slide show.
- join.me.
- Logitech: Logitech is a very good company that makes very good products, but if you looked only at their terrible Web site, you wouldn't be able to tell.
- McDonald's.
- Pollen London: This is, without a doubt, the worst one on this list. Never have I witnessed a
Web site
with a more ludicrous design: the video is unnecessary and hogs my computer's resources, the pictures are too large and waste space, the text is too sparse, the entire site is terribly bloated, and the important information—namely, who they are—is hidden away in a tiny menu at the top-right corner. Be careful, as these crooks offer Web design services to the general public.
- Randomwire: Why does the author feel it necessary to leave such large sections of the page blank and empty?
- Skype: A terrible design by none other than the sublime Microsoft!
- Tatamagouche Brewing Company.
- Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe.
- Todo - Creative agency: There is such an absurd amount of scrolling that each visitor must do for such a small amount of content; do the authors of this site not know that there are a hundred better and more efficient ways to present this information?
- Torch Browser: Another Web site which wastes my time by forcing me to scroll just so I can read the next sentence.
- Vimeo.
All written materials on this Web site are my own, and all are released under the Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License Version 2.
This page last modified on 25 March 2021.
