Links

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Yes, every site worth visiting have a "Link page", don't they?

So, here is what I have to share to all of you (even if this list of links by no means is complete):

Contents

Sources of Information

  • Wikipedia - The one and only. This site really needs no presentation, but just in case: a large, very comprehensive encyclopedia on the web, created by volunteers collaborating on writing it's contents.
  • Space.com - So, you are wondering what on earth is going on, well, in space? Well, then this site is a perfect start!
  • Bad Astronomy - Regardless of it's name, this is an great blog for anyone interested in space and science in general.
  • Space Gizmo - Another good space blog. This is more hardcore focused on space and astronomy, and does not contain so much about general science.
  • NASA - No presentation necessary.
  • perlsphere.net - Aggregation of various blogs related to the Perl programming language.
  • Planet Perl 6 - Aggregation focused on Perl 6, the next version of Perl which is under development.
  • High Scalability Websites - Interesting blog focused on how to build and architect (insanely) large websites. Large in the sense of data size, user traffic and/or user base etc.

Funky sites

Comics

  • XKCD! - Sure, this comic is using stick figures, but it is one of the best humor comics ever, all cathegories! Intelligent, utterly deranged and not afraid of combining engineering, mathematics, computer science together with witty, mean (sometimes really mean) and not necessarily too decent humor.
  • Gone With The Blastwave - A couple of soldiers in ABC outfit trying to find their way of survival in the desolate, radioactive postapocalyptical ruins of some huge metropole that clearly has seen better days... the perfect setting for a humor comic, don't you think? Never mind that the author taken a (potential infinite) break from it, it is a must read!
  • MS Paint Adventures - Is it a comic? Is it an adventure game? Very crude graphics, very bizarre plots and very entertaining! It even allows you to suggest "player commands" for the characters given their latest situation. "Problem Sleuth" is highly recommended, but "Homestuck" (the current 'adventure') is good too.
  • The Adventures of Dr McNinja - About an Irish descendant who works as a Doctor but also practices his Ninja skills to keep the town of Cumberland safe(?). If you dislike "Deus Ex Machinas", this comic is nothing for you, as it is just one long continuous amazing row of such Machinas, from start to end. But it is great fun reading!
  • Sinfest - Fun, witty and I like the elegant drawings of this comic. Covers a number of society topics, but among others: If you want to read a comic where God bullies the Devil and is really hilariously good at it, this is it!
  • Redmeat - Another comic I'm fond of. Made in old vintage 1950 style, which contrasts nicely with the quite macabre jokes.

Good Tools

  • jEdit [1] - Excellent text editor. Was so good that it made me switch from Emacs [2] (another excellent product). Written in Java, download one file and use it to install on any OS you like (Ok, I've tried Windows, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris etc). Have lovely support for editing Perl, XML, HTML, Java etc. Uses Beanshell, it has a macro langage which is very similar to Java (hm... or perhaps the language in question actually is Java?)
  • Pidgin [3] - A good open source Instant Messaging Client. It supports many IM protocols and services (Jabber, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo IM, MSN etc) and works on many platforms, including Linux and Windows. Like many of the other tools in this section Pidgin is highly recommended.
  • VNC [4] - An excellent "virtual desktop" solution for me when working with graphical applications on remote Linux/Unix servers. Just fire up a VNC server on that remote box and it provides for me a graphical desktop which I then connect to over the WAN (or VPN) using a really tiny viewer (available on Linux, Windows among other OSes). Once I am done working with it, I can disconnect and the remote desktop will stay around, available for me to reconnect to, if necessary from another machine.
  • Gnu screen [5] - 'screen' is for the text based terminal what VNC is for the desktop, and if you don't need a graphical desktop, 'screen' with it's low bandwidth requirements is a real bliss. It provides a persistent terminal session on the machine you are working on, be it your local host or a remote server. You might disconnect from the session and it keeps running and then you can reconnect later, from the same or another machine. It also allows you to have multiple such persistent terminal sessions in parallel, so you really don't reconnect to a single terminal session, you do reconnect to an entire "deck of cards" of such sessions. The latter feature is one good reason why it is nice to use even on a local Linux box. Another good reason for use on the local Linux box is that the 'sceen' sessions survives even if your X-server dies and you need to log in again. The large scroll buffer it provides for each persistent terminal session is another very useful feature.
  • Inkscape [6] - Good vector graphics editor. It is under continous development, but stable enough, at least for me. It uses the lovely XML based SVG image format, which is an open standard (ok, ok, I know, it is not a real standard but rather a recommendation) for vector graphics created by the W3C consortium. It is the tool I use for the graphics on this site.
  • RRDtool [9] - Also a good to for storing and graphing statistics. MRTG is a tool (among many others) which takes advantage of the capabilities of RRDtool.

Games

  • Freeciv - The flagship among the open source games in my humble opinion. It is basicly a Civ II or Civ III clone, or did at last start off aiming to be that. Anyway, it is a turnbased network enabled game of very high quality both designwise and softwarewise.
  • Widelands - An opensource game which almost is a clone of the Settlers II game. In this real time strategy game, you have a bunch of people who you give directions as they build up a small society with it's own economy. Has reached a rather playable stage, and is a very nice game indeed!
  • Xconq - This is a networked strategy game with an old history. It was actually the first network enabled strategy game I ever encountered, back in 1988! Highly customizable, to the extent that it is rather a game design engine than just a game. Have many very different games defined (fantasy, WW2 etc). Note: even if this game has a Wikipedia Page, development it seem to have stalled completely.
  • Countermoves - This e-zine is focused on games in general and board microgames in particular. There are links to various free microgames in there (including an OGRE/GEV clone called VEG.. ahem..). Unfortunately, this project has been very inactive the last few years.
  • Play By Web Galaxy - A "Play By Web" implementation of the classig Play By Mail game "Galaxy". Note: this site seem to have disappeared for good. (And in contrast to Xconq, good old 'Galaxy' is never allowed to keep it's Wikipedia page that get's created from time to time, which is a shame, really). A variant of the original game can be found here: Howard Bampton's Blind Galaxy.
  • OGRE/GEV - The best game I never bought. OGRE feature futuristic warfare where a "regular" force with tanks, infantry etc were pitched against a single mounstrous cybernetic tank. It's an even match (I told you that it was monstrous!). GEV where a variant of the same game which focused more on regular forces against fighting each other. (When I were a kid in the early 1980s, I had the option to buy OGRE, but I picked another game (Chitin:I) from the same company (Metagaming). Regret I did not buy both ;-).)
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