Ye Olde List of Links

Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute

https://cari.institute/

"an online community dedicated to developing a visual lexicon of consumer ephemera from the 1970s until now." For instance:

• Airbrush Surrealism
• Wacky Pomo
• Y2K Aesthetic

Neal.fun

https://neal.fun/

Charming collection of "creative coding projects". I found who was alive to be particularly interesting. The author also maintains a link directory of his own.

Matthew Rayfield

https://matthewrayfield.com/

Fun coding experiments that play with and subvert expectations about how HTML works

Sliderland

https://sliderland.blinry.org/

A "minimalist coding playground". Put in math equations and watch them render on the page using HTML sliders.

SEPHORA Ratings and Reviews

https://connie.dog/sephora/

SEPHORA reviews that mention crying

Paper Models of Polyhedra

https://www.polyhedra.net/en/

Tutorials and templates for building some crazy DnD dice shapes outta paper. Rad.

Game of Life 3D

https://kodub.itch.io/game-of-life-3d

Sandbox 3D version of Conway's Game of Life.

98.css

https://jdan.github.io/98.css/

"98.css is a CSS library for building interfaces that look like Windows 98"

Clue Suspects Through The Years

https://theartofmurder.com/table/link/suspectyears/index.html

Depictions of the six main Clue characters from various editions of the board game and related media. I wish these images were a little larger but you can still get a sense of how the character's interpretations have changed through the years. (Or not changed, in the case of Mrs. White, who is almost perpetually cast as a "kindly old house maid" stereotype.) This is part of The Art of Murder, a detailed fan site dedicated to Clue, or Cluedo is it's mysteriously called overseas. Lots of info and pictures on each edition of the game.

Apollo 13 Transcripts

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a13/a13trans.html

Radio transcripts from the entire Apollo 13 mission. Before the flight went awry, here's mission control giving the crew an update on the latest news headlines:

Okay, let's see. The Beatles have announced they will no longer perform as a group. The quartet is reported to have made in excess of a half billion dollars during their short musical career. However, rumors that they will use this money to start their own space program are false.

024:17:24 CDR
Maybe we could borrow some.

Simone's Computer

https://simone.computer/

Very cool personal website that is styled like a retro operating system and full of surprises.

Big Box Collection

https://bigboxcollection.com/

3D scans of computer game boxes from the "big box" era (mid 1980's through mid 2000's). John Romero has written about the fall of the big box.

Apple II Demakes

http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/demakes/

"Demakes are modern games re-written so that they run on much older hardware, in this case the Apple II (introduced in 1977)."

The Cutting Room Floor

https://tcrf.net

Wiki "dedicated to unearthing and researching unused and cut content from video games"

Tranquility Base Arcade

http://www.tranquilitybasearcade.com/

A cozy home arcade modeled after the late 70's, early 80's golden age of arcade games. Check out the repair station section for some interesting looks at what goes into rehabilitating broken arcade machines.

RGB Classic Games

https://www.classicdosgames.com/

A portal of DOS, 16 bit Windows, and early Windows 95 games. Of particular note is the site content section, which includes interviews with some important figures from the era, such as:

• Ken Silverman - developer of the Build engine, which was used for Duke Nukem 3D, among other early FPS games
• Adam Pedersen - creator of Jetpack, a shareware favorite

Software Library: Windows 3.x Games

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_win3_games

Internet Archive collection of Windows 3.x games, made playable online.

The Most Officialest SkiFree Home Page!

https://ski.ihoc.net/

Information about SkiFree's origins from the game's original developer. Plus downloads for the game itself.

Orb Farm

https://orb.farm/

Simulation of a self-contained ecosystem in falling-sand form.

cstrike maps

http://cs.naco.ro/cstrike/maps/

An open directory of vintage counter-strike maps

Kaboom

https://pwmarcz.pl/kaboom/

A version of minesweeper where you're never punished for guessing. Minesweeper was always famous for being one of the games included with Windows, as far back as Windows 3.1, and was probably a lot of people's first introduction to computer games. It's great that people today are still into it.

via Pure Skill Minesweeper

See also: Adversarial Minesweeper

Obspogon's Ultimate Curation List

https://obspogon.neocities.org/curation/curation.html

A homemade directory of interesting links and resources for classic FPS games, and many other categories! There is a lot of great stuff to check out here, like the Ultimate Freeware List of Excellence .

dvd3000's computer stuff

http://www.dvd3000.ca/tek/

Grab bag of guides, downloads, and etcetera. Some highlights:

• Original Classic Windows Wallpaper
• A Complete Guide To Windows 3.1 In DOSBox
• PROGMAN.EXE Icons

Cameron's World

https://www.cameronsworld.net/

"Cameron's World is a web-collage of text and images excavated from the buried neighbourhoods of archived GeoCities pages (1994–2009)."

VETUSWARE.COM

https://vetusware.com/

A large abandonware collection. Most of these kinds of sites focus solely on games, but vetusware seems to give equal billing to operating systems, office productivity software, and other bygone ephemera

Nathan's Toasty Technology page - GUI Gallery

http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html

Screenshots from various GUI interfaces over the years

'90s Dad Thrillers: a List

https://maxread.substack.com/p/90s-dad-thrillers-a-list

Comprehensive theorizing and dissection of the Dad Thriller, a proposed category of 90's Hollywood action movie. This makes total sense to me and helps lay out a broad progression of popular action movie styles:

• 80s: blockbuster action hero flicks. Guns and muscles. The Schwarzenegger heydey.
• 90s: dad thrillers
• 00s: Jason Bourne-alikes.

VHS Tape Logos and Openers

https://archive.org/details/vhsopenings

An internet archive collection of VHS tape openers (like the mix of copyright messages, studio logos, advertisements, previews, etc. that would appear before the "feature presentation" began). This digitization & and preservation effort seems to be the labor one one dedicated user.

Drew's Script-O-Rama - (Sadly, appears to be defunct)

http://www.script-o-rama.com/oldindex.html

Incredible trove of movie scripts. For example:

Super Mario Brothers - The Movie Archive

http://www.smbmovie.com/

Fan site for the (imo underrated) 1993 film adaption of the Super Mario Brothers franchise, with tons of production notes and great behind the scenes pictures. The team behind this site obtained an early version of the SMB movie that included ~20 minutes of previously unseen footage, which they've re-edited into an unofficial extended edition: The Morton Jankel Cut

Movie Censorship

https://www.movie-censorship.com/

A site that tracks the differences between various releases of the same movie (special editions, directors cuts, international versions, TV cuts, etc). My entry point to this site was this extremely detailed writeup of the differences between the original theatrical version and the special edition of Star Wars.

Creative Writings of Andy Weir

http://www.galactanet.com/writing.html

Andy Weir, author of The Martian has a personal site that includes some of his other work. If you're looking for a place to start, I would check out his short story The Egg.

The Heat Death of Nostalgia

https://dannarchy.com/en/0016/

Musing on nostalgia, meta-nostaliga, and finding a balance.

Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution

https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

"Subcultures are dead.", so the author argues. Let's explore why.