Interesting links
This is just a collection of links to that I find interesting. Some of these are things I’ve read and really enjoyed. Others are things I want to read some day.
Memory lane
These sites take me down memory lane to a time of IRC, FTP servers, GeoCities and Delphi programming.
- The three ASCII Art Styles of the Underground Art Scene, by Roy/SAC: Gorgeous .nfo files.
- GeoCities Gallery: Talk about nostalgia.
- Winamp Skin Museum: I loved Winamp.
- Windows XP screenshot gallery: Say what you will, but I think Windows XP looked much better than Windows 10.
Finance & Investing
- Spitznagel’s Faustmann Ratio: From Mark Spitznagel’s book The Dao of Capital.
- Spitznagel’s ROIC: From Mark Spitznagel’s book The Dao of Capital.
Personal websites & Personal blogs
- swtch.com/~rsc/ and research.swtch.com: Russ Cox is an amazingly smart guy and I really enjoy his methodical, careful writing.
- stallman.org: Richard Stallman is a legend and his website is a classic. I trully admire this guy’s ability to stand his ground. Read RMS lifestyle to see what I mean. My favorite part of his website is his “What’s bad about…” series (e.g. What’s bad about Facebook).
- danielmiessler.com
- pjreddie.com: Extremely funny. His resume really takes it to a whole new level.
- michael.stapelberg.ch: Some interesting articles about Linux, Go and keyboards. Author of the i3 window manager.
- Hugo Landau
- Jeff Johnson: Interesting articles about Mac OS programming.
- Paul Weinstein
- Lawrence Kesteloot: I really like the simple yet exquisite design of this website.
- yourbasic.org: Useful articles about Golang. Very simple and clear layout. No popups! No “Accept Cookies” buttons! No “Sign up to our newsletter” forms! Just a simple website with useful information. What a radical idea!
- manybutfinite.com: Some really cool articles about low-level Linux stuff.
- Omar Cornut: Creator of the Dear ImGui library.
- Fabrice Bellard: Author of ffmpeg, QEMU, TCC (tiny C compiler) and other cool projects.
- Fabien Sanglard: Author of the Game Engine Black Books.
- Andrew Kensler: Author of the Business Card Ray Tracer.
- Simon Howard: Author of Chocolate Doom.
- Casey Muratori: One of my heroes.
Software
Text Editors
- Acme: A user interface for programming: A text editor written by Rob Pike. Has some very interesting ideas. You can also see a video demo by Russ Cox.
- Xi Editor: I haven’t tried out Rust yet, but I am really curious to learn more about this project.
- i3: Not an editor, but handles windows like I wish editors did.
Mac
- Many Tricks: A small software company that builds high quality software for Mac users.
- Contexts: This is a mandatory app for Mac users.
Reverse Engineering
Fonts
The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack: A collection of old school fonts. Amazing!
Hardware
- PinePhone: A Linux phone.
- Raspberry Pi: An ARM computer that fits in your hand.
Programming
Curiosities
- Linus Torvald’s first commit on Git: Extremely interesting read. (HN thread.)
- The history of the first 32 ASCII characters
- The history of UTF-8 by Rob Pike
- The first release of Bitcoin
- Obfuscated Image Decoder
- Binary Golf Grand Prix, 2021
- The International Obfuscated C Code Contest
- SHA-256 animated
Algorithms & Data Structures
- Fisher-Yates Shuffle algorithm: O(n) unbiased random permutation.
- Sattolo’s Algorithm: O(n) random permutation with a single cycle.
- Kadane’s Algorithm: Compute the maximum subarray sum in O(n) time. It’s beautiful.
- Treap: The most beautiful data structure in the world, perhaps closely followed by…
- Suffix Automaton: The swiss army knife of strings.
- Russ Cox’s articles about regular expressions: Great stuff.
- Sparse Set with O(1) initialization: Very clever idea.
- Iterative Segment Trees and here’s an alternative explanation.
Stringology
- Converting a Suffix Automaton to a Suffix Array
- Converting a Suffix Array to a Suffix Tree
- Converting a Suffix Automaton to a Suffix Tree
- Converting the Z-function to the Prefix Function and viceversa: In Russian, but Google Translate does a reasonably good job.
- Multiple common substring problem in linear time
Ruby
- Ruby’s -e, -n and -p switches: Most useful trick you’ll ever learn.
Web Development
Machine Learning
- MediaPipe
- Monster Mash
- Guesslang and GuesslangTools: A simple ML model to auto-detect a programming language.
Cryptocurrencies
Networking
Operating Systems
- Linux from Scratch: A book teaching you how to build your own minimal Linux distro from scratch.
- Creating an OS from scratch: I really want to do this!
- Arch Linux: My main OS. Finally a respectful Linux distro that doesn’t assume you’re stupid.
- SerenityOS: Interesting project. I would love to play with this when I have some time.
Keyboards
- Key64: Made by another Colombian!
- Ergodox
- The Humble Hacker Keyboard
- List of Split Keyboards
- Split Keyboard Gallery
- Dactyl
- ManuForm
- Dactyl-ManuForm
- The story behind AltGr + dead keys: I used this layout for a long time on Linux without ever stopping to think that someone had to, you know, invent it.
3D Printing, Case Supplies
PCB
Forums
- GeekHack: A forum about building keyboards from scratch.
Security
Math
Aesthetics, Art, Illustration
- http://blocktronics.org: ANSI art. I love this gallery.
- http://rom-news.org: Interesting ASCII art from real-life NFO files (example).
- Cool Retro Term: Modern software that looks like the 80s. I love this.
Artists
Psychology, I guess?
WTF, Weirdly Interesting, Funny
- lodownmagazine.com/features/█▬█-█-▀█▀-██▓▒░-♫
- milliondollarhomepage.com: This one has an interesting story behind it.
- wreckedexotics.com: Photos of expensive cars wrecked. Posting weekly since 2002. WTF.
- XKCD Matplotlib: Render graphs in Python that look like they’re from XKCD!
- Motorcycle gets stuck to front of minivan
- Brainstorm vs Green Needle: If you think there is such a thing as “objective reality”, I hate to break the illusion.
- Straightened Trees: This gives me a very awry feeling.
- Tax refund check signed by Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney
- The Aztec Death Whistle (also this one): The scariest sound you’ll ever hear.
- Hal changing a lightbulb: What fixing a bug in a large codebase feels like.
- Ian’s Shoelace Site: This is a gem.
- EIGHTHGRADE_gl00bysw0rld082218.mov by Bo Burnham
- Welcome to the internet by Bo Burnham
- CEO, Entrepreneur, Born in 1964
Music
- Chico Buarque’s Notebooks (Portuguese)
Orchestral music
- Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet, No 13 Dance of the Knights
- Edvard Grieg: Anitra’s Dream - from Peer Gynt Suite no. 1, Op. 46
- Edvard Grieg: In the Hall of the Mountain King - from Peer Gynt Suite no. 1, Op. 46
- Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture - Finale
- John Williams: Theme from Jurassic Park
- John Williams: Raiders March (From Indiana Jones)
- John Williams: Marion’s Theme (From Indiana Jones)
Piano pieces
- Prelude 6, Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1: I want to learn this one so hard.
- Prelude 2, Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1: Brings me good memories. I like the fugue too.
- Prelude 5, Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1: The three chords at the ending of the prelude are ahead of his time.
- Prelude in D minor, BWV 935
- Moonlight Sonata, 3rd Movement