[ LINKS ]

β€” on the shoulders of giants

Resources

Coding:

aBowman Various animal-related web widgets.
Alvaro Montoro CSS-only toggles and art.

History:

Rare Historical Photos What it says on the tin.
Retro Mags An archive of retro video game magazines from at least 10 years ago. Mag covers may have risque images.

Misc:

have I been pwned? Check if your passwords and personal information have been exposed in a data breach.
Free Rice Play trivia and sponsors will donate the equivalent of 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Programme.

Personal Web

[ 🐈 = site is/was hosted on Neocities | 🌱 = site is hosted elsewhere ]
Sites listed in rough order of age.

Scott Pakin’s Automatic Complaint Letter generator 🌱 A complaint letter generator that has been online since April 1989 and, as of 2024, is still being updated.
Scuba Mom 🌱 A series of sites made by Lynne 'ScubaMom' McKamey about scuba diving, travelling, and gardening in Texas. Updated from 1997 to around 2009.
Black People Love Us! 🌱 A satirical site made by comedians and siblings Chelsea and Jonah Peretti that sparked controversy in 2002.
Mr. Wong's Soup'Partments 🌱 "The World's Tallest Virtual Building" built by Mr. Wong and 350+ contributing pixel artists in the early 2000s. Project ran until 2004.
Orisinal Games 🌱 A collection of cute and simple flash games created by Ferry Halim. Operating since 2000.
Letters from BBC Television Licensing 🌱 A guy who hasn't paid for his TV loisence since 2006 and is still documenting the paper waste the BBC continues to mail him more than a decade later.
Tim's Homepage 🌱 A travel site by Tim Von Pein, created in 2011 and last updated in 2022, featuring travel logs dating back to the 1980s. As of 2024, his Youtube channel is stil regularly updated.
Melting Asphalt 🌱 A blog/collection of essays on philosophy and society by Kevin Simler. First post was in 2012 and the last was in 2020. Personal recs: Here Be Sermons
The Neonauticon 🐈 A personal site documenting internet culture and the creator's personal projects since 2016. The link at the bottom right of this page links to one of my favourite articles of theirs.
Peelopaalu's Link Directory 🐈 An inactive collection of >1,000 and counting links, curated by Snooper from 2016 to 2024. A longtime fan of Habbo Hotel, the webmaster has recently (as of 2024) made a video on the game's history.
Autumn's Grace 🐈 A site archiving and reminiscing about fansites.
Kale Chips 🐈 A math teacher, fountain pen connoisseur, and creator of responsive themes for your personal site. Site created in May 2020.
Cabbage Sorter 🐈 Reviews of books and anime by an Eastern European woman, often with a female-focused reading. She has her own directory of recommended sites here. Site created in November 2020.
Yukinu 🌱 A site where the webmaster blogs about their tech-related interests and trips around the web. Online since December 2021. This blog post about mushrooms was interesting.
Etaoin! Shrdlu! Cmfwyp! 🐈 Someone who writes about technology, paranormal activity, and the history and architecture of Florida, America.
Ribo Zone 🐈 The site of a molecular biologist who writes about science stuff and their artistic pursuits. I like these two pages of theirs.
Brr.fyi 🌱 Paul Coldren's blog about his experiences working with infrastructure in Antarctica from 2022 to 2023.
Cozy Net 🐈 Various tech-related posts and the occasional music track by a frenly guy. View his recommended stuff here. Site created in August 2022.
Solar Cyber Punk 🐈 A blog about gardening in small, urban spaces, created in Aug 2022.
Mike Grindle 🐈 Mike Grindle's personal site with a blog covering various indie web related topics. I like his articles on the Frutiger Aero and Y2K web aesthetics.
Optical Toys 🐈 A site showcasing various optical illusions. Created in April 2023.

Passion Projects

Inclusive of blogs, web projects, fansites, shrines, and any other site ran by an individual and dedicated to sharing information about a singular niche.

Al-oholics Anonymous 🌱 A fansite for "Weird Al" Yankovic created for the Usenet Newsgroup alt.music.weird-al by Marty "Gumby" Lick. It was updated from 1997 to 2002.
Bring On The Bad Guys 🌱 A fansite cataloguing various comic book villains by Jeanne Burch, updated from 1997 to 2007. She has a page that links to other Marvel fansites.
A Guide to Trilobites
🌱
Created by Sam β€˜Ohu Gon III, an ecologist and a Living Treasure of HawaiΚ»i. Created in 1999 and last updated in 2009.
The Food Timeline 🌱 Launched in 1999 by the late Lynne Olver, this site offers an in-depth overview on the history of food from pre-modern times to 2007.
Life in the Middle Ages 🌱 A blog by C. Dale Brittain, professor of medieval history and fantasy author. Running since 2014 to the present.
Limyaael 🌱 A then-graduate student who wrote/ranted about common Fantasy tropes and writing pitfalls from 2003 to 2010. She has written a total of 390 articles, including the eight in her Insanejournal. A list tagged by topic up to 2007 can be viewed here.
NiGHTS into Dreams 🌱 A fansite for the titular cult classic, originally released in 1996 for the Sega Saturn. The current incarnation of the site has been around since September 2009 and claims to date back to 1999/2000.
Meili Paper 🌱 A blog about printmaking and lithography by Emily Orzech, at the time an exchange student in Beijing and now an Associate Professor at Muhlenberg College. This blog ran from 2009 to 2013.
Kasumi 🐈 An archive of the webmaster's old pokemon fansite, which ran from 2010 to 2011.
In The Dark Again 🌱 A blog about the traditional art of Chinese shadow puppetry, ran by Annie Katsura Rollins from 2011 to 2016.
Chinese Shadow Puppetry 🌱 Created by the aforementioned Annie Rollins as a comprehensive source of Chinese shadow puppetry in English.
Les Leftovers 🌱 Food historian Jim Chevallier's blog, where he primarily writes about food production in medieval times. He has a comprehensive series on how to make medieval French bread. Running since 2012.
When I Was A Child In Ferrol, Spain (1953-65) 🐈 Eduardo Freire Canosa's site about his childhood growing up in the port town of Ferrol. Created in July 2015. He also has many other sites about notable poets who wrote in the Galician language, translations of Galician songs, and more.
Welcome to Saltash 🐈 Created by Sylvia Joyce to share the history, people, and sights of Saltash, Cornwall in March 2016. Before this, she ran Salamanders, a site for young burn victims, since 2000.
Historical Games 🐈 A look at the history of games, from the board game Senet in ancient Egypt to Victorian era parlour games. Created in August 2016.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 🌱 Tracey Christenson's site to catalogue children's literature from the 1810s to the 2000s. She is also the webmaster of the Historical Games site listed above.
Distant Skies 🐈 A fansite of the 1990 NES game Crystalis by Binary Nova. Created in November 2016.
Cameron's World 🌱 A site that pays tribute to Geocities and links to various archived sites dating from 1994 to 2009. Created by Cameron Askin in 2017.
California Horse Racing History 🐈 What it says on the tin. A site about the history, people, and racing horses in the state of California. Created on 10 February 2019.
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry 🌱 Run by Dr. Bret C. Devereaux, a historian specialising in Ancient Rome and the Mediterranean since 2019. I recommend his series on polytheism and the formation of cities in ancient times.
Heather's Historical Society 🐈 The research of Heather Thomas on her family's historical and genealogical information. Created in 2020. Her husband also has a website dedicated to his love of American football at AMT Gridiron, also hosted on Neocities since 2020.
Gold Remix 🐈 A fansite dedicated to the videogame series Rhythm Tengoku/Rhythm Heaven, created in 2022. The site is created/maintained by Ted.
Wild Bread 🐈 A photography journal of discarded bread, created in Nov 2022 and updated with surprising frequency.
Characterie 🐈 A site about the titular English shorthand writing system, first described by Timothie Bright in 1588. Site was created by Brent Hall in 2023.
Kinkan Gakuen 🐈 A fansite for the 2002 mahou-shoujo anime Princess Tutu, created by Ikuko Itoh. Created in 2023. The site is created/maintained by もけγ₯γγ―γ˜γ‚ (Mochizuki Hajime).
Aveyond 🐈 A fansite for the Aveyond series of RPG Maker games, first released in 2004. Created in 2023. It is maintained by Iztopher.
KAIDANworld 🐈 A collection of Japanese short horror stories, translated by the webmaster. Created in September 2024.

Bookmarks

For webpages, articles, videos, and social media posts that I think are neat.

Hiyoooo! Just click it. Created by Sean Boyer in 2009.
Growing up in a one-room flat
(Wayback) | (Archive)
Snippets of life in a one-room HDB flat in Singapore, published in 2008 from My Itchy Fingers.
How to write beautiful prose
(Wayback) | (Archive)
A guide by Reddit user binge_writing on writing prose. They also have other articles on writing dialogue, character descriptions, antagonists, and villains, among others.
Who is Who in ASCII Art
(Wayback) | (Archive)
A non-exhaustive list of notable ASCII artists by OwlMan, last updated in 2018 at the time of listing.
Kids Need Safe Spaces to Create Online
(Wayback) | (Archive)
An article in the Yesterweb Zine about Matmice, a one-page site maker in the 2000s made by kids, for kids, and how spaces like these no longer exist on the modern web.
"They Like That Soft Bread"
(Wayback) | (Archive)
Chelsey Mae Johnson shares her memories of Knoxville steamed sandwiches and charts the history of this little-known regional specialty. Published on January 15, 2020.
The Last of the Fungus
(Wayback) | (Archive)
Written by conservation biologist Wang Zheng Yang, this longform essay details how the demand for caterpillar fungus is threatening vulnerable alpine habitats and communities in Tibet, and his subsequent attempts to cultivate Ophiocordyceps sinensis in a lab environment. Published on 30 Aug 2023.

404'd

Unfiction Forums
Site down as of 2017.
A collection of forums revolving around the discussion of then-ongoing ARGs (Alternate Reality Games). I used to lurk around the Marble Hornets board when I got into the series after Entry 54, from 2012 to 2014. I had 'gotten in' just before the Slender craze a few months later, which made me feel pretty cool as a teen.
The Comment Section
Site down as of April '24.
A community that spun off the (now slowly dying) Cracked.com in 2014. Would you believe the comments section of a humour site once had a thriving community? The forum is currently stuck in a read-only mode from 2015, and unfortunately little of substance has been preserved in the Wayback Machine.
Bikobatanari
Site down as of March '24.
An artist's personal hobby site where they shared their digital art and writing on various subjects. Site has been delisted from the Wayback Machine.
There'll come a day when this page becomes more of a memorial than a directory.