Blogroll
Journals
Websites
Nathan's Toasty Technology page
Personal webpage about topics related to computers and retrotech. This website stands out for it's GUI screenshots gallery where the author explores the history and evolution of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and his rant about Internet Explorer and Microsoft's predatory behaviour.
Web Design Museum
A web museum with thousands of screens and videos of old websites, mobile apps and software from 1990s to mid-00s.
Make Frontend Shit Again
This dude wants to make front-end shit (fun) again and it's partying like it's 2000.
Cheapskate's Guide
Self-hosted by it's own author, this website talks about saving as much money as possible on computers and internet services, with articles on topics related to computers, indie web, internet etc.
Handmade
A community built arround the idea of digging deep into tech stacks and learning how they work instead of get drowned in endless layers of abstraction.
Programming in the twenty-first century
"It's not about technology for it's own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas". With this sentence, the author starts it's own website to talk about issues tangentially related to programming and how code is a medium for implementing creative visions.
The Big List of Small Forums
A blogroll of small forums/comunities.
Technology tutorials
Write your Own Virtual Machine
A tutorial where the author teaches you how to write your own virtual machine (VM) that can run assembly language programs in 250 lines of C code. According to him the task is simple and enlightening. The website also has many other articles about programming and math.
Writing a simple 16 bit VM in less than 125 lines of C
Tutorial for C beginners who want to do some coding practice developing a virtual machine that interprets a limited set of ASM instructions. The reader will learn about low-level programming and how (some) Virtual Machines operate under the hood.
Online Books
Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python
By Al Sweigart
Book about advanced programming skills with Python.
Build Your Own Lisp
By Mr Daniel Holden
Online book that teaches you how to build your own Lisp interpreter in 1000 lines of C code. You can read the book online for free or buy a physical copy from him. I'm still learning C before trying this book.
The Art of Unix Programming
By Eric Steven Raymond
Music and Audiovisual
FornaxVoid
An audiovisual arts project where ambient music exploration is at the core of the author's work. The project takes inspiration from the technology and design language of the late 20th century in the production of cyberpunk and semiconductorwave music.
Amiga Remix
Website dedicated to remixes of tracks from the Commodore Amiga computer series. The remixes are of tracks from games, demos and stand-alone entries such as compo entries from demoparties.
Articles
How technology is hijacking your mind — from a magician and Google design ethicist
"...Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people’s perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. Once you know how to push people’s buttons, you can play them like a piano. And this is exactly what product designers do to your mind. They play your psychological vulnerabilities (consciously and unconsciously) against you in the race to grab your attention."
McLuhan lecture on internet enshittification
A lecture gave by Cory Doctorow exploring the evolution of the internet and the history of its current degradation. This degradation was called "enshittification" by the author, and describes the way that digital platforms and services that matter to us, that we rely on, are decaying and turning into giant piles of shit. Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution.
Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things
Yet another testimony about the shitification of internet and its migration from a human communication platform to a radioactive septic tank.
Why not github?
A small talk on why the monopolistic position of Github, along with it's subjection to the laws of a single country and use of proprietary code, makes it a bad place to store code, specially free/libre software.
Microsoft, there is a way to win our trust
In the author's own words: "Microsoft's "love" for Linux and open source is like the love that a tapeworm has for a healthy digestive system.". MS still operate using the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy, therefore they ARE an existential threat to FOSS (Free and Open Source Software).
Memory Machines: Learning, Knowing, and Technological Change
The challenge for education – then and now – in the face of the overabundance of information has always been, in part, to determine what pieces of information should be “required knowledge.” Not simply “required knowledge” for a test or for graduation, but “required knowledge” to move you towards a deeper understanding of a topic, towards expertise perhaps.
Code is not literature
"when I did my book of interviews with programmers, Coders at Work, I asked pretty much everyone about code reading. And while most of them said it was important and that programmers should do it more, when I asked them about what code they had read recently, very few of them had any great answers."
Contempt culture
"So when I started programming in 2001, it was du jour in the communities I participated in to be highly critical of other languages. Other languages sucked, the people using them were losers or stupid, if they would just use a real language, such as the one we used, everything would just be better. Right?"
The zen master who taught that meditation is a political act
Author: "Many people associate meditation with a non-judgemental attitude, or perhaps even tolerance to the point of gullibility and anti-intellectualism. Truth be told, these attitudes can be found in some meditation- embracing “spiritual” communities. Sawaki offers another way: meditation as springboard to critical engagement with self and world.".
Having Desires is Not Wrong – Tao of Abundance
Unlike some would think, Lao Tzu does not suggest discarding desires. He does not write desires off.
It's Not What You Know, but How You Use It: Teaching for Wisdom
"Traditional education, and the intellectual and academic skills it provides, furnishes little protection against evil-doing or, for that matter, plain foolishness."
In Defense of Being Average
"Today, I want to take a detour from our “make more, buy more, fuck more” culture and argue for the merits of mediocrity, of being blasé boring and average. Not the merits of pursuing mediocrity, mind you — because we all should try to do the best we possibly can — but rather, the merits of accepting mediocrity when we end up there despite our best efforts."
Shiny and new isn't necessarily better than tried and true
"Consistent wins aren't typically about continuously introducing novel strategies, but about better and more consistent execution with proven ones". Warning: this article has a paywall, you can easily circumvent this by using the Reader View feature of a browser (Firefox offers it out of the box).