Marginalia Search – The inspiration behind the link list, a search engine that heavily favors text-heavy unoptimized sites. A magnificent way to find some real gems just by typing in some keywords. Use it for treasure hunts because I sure will. A breath of fresh air whenever you need a reprieve from modern web.
WinAmp Skin Museum – If you grew up in my era you are probably familiar with WinAmp, the customizable media player that was all the rage before VLC. It’s still my preferred way of listening to internet radio stations on my computer, and this website is a colossal archive of just about every WinAmp skin ever created, painstakingly archived by Jordan Eldredge. I’d love to write an article about some fun finds here some day. It even has the skin I used in high school!
Zonelets – An extremely lightweight piece of code designed to get people to granularly interact with their websites and work hard to Get Some Words On The Internet. Marina Kittaka has created such a simple, friendly platform here, and as I said on my main page I used the code it uses for arrays and listing out post titles to power the sidebars of several pages here. The video tutorials are simple to follow and sweet. Go learn some HTML and carve out your own space online!
JS KidPix – Was considering putting this in the curiosities section but it’s such an impressive piece of kit that I think it goes here. It’s an in-browser port of the classic KidPix drawing tool for Mac, created by Vikrum Nijjar. It has everything you may remember, like the wacky sound effects, extremely specific brush types, and undo button that says “Oh no!”. What a fun tool. I should make my next album cover in KidPix.
The Somnolescent Archives – A miscellaneous archive of some really interesting things. I always love to see fellow archivists at work, and things like cleaned and upscaled Pokemon HGSS wallpapers, “assorted Guitar Hero ISOs”, websites upon websites, and wallpapers from Bejeweled 2 are all really fun and interesting, and the whole thing is tied together with an intriguingly offbeat writing style. The Somnolescent main page is pretty interesting in its own right, something that seems to ape the language and presentation of a cult, but more focused around articles by a group of contributors focusing on retro computing.
Update 9/23/25: I’ve been informed thanks to a comment on the Guestbook that those behind this site are “a group of friends with interest in art and weird old stuff”, which of course is even cooler. Check out the main page linked above! It’s neat!!
Dynamic Drive – Back in the day, I would create forums on Proboards or Invisionfree specifically to mess around with this website’s massive collection of scripts and tools. This is a repository of gaudy and gauche snippets of JavaScript and HTML, but it’s also an extremely useful tool for web design that really pops. It uses the basics of HTML, JS, and CSS, and allows for custom cursors, in-page slideshows, menu bars, and more. It’s honestly extremely neat, even if back in the day what I’d mostly use it for was to attach Metal Sonic to the end of my mouse cursor. This site taught me how much fun messing with web design could really be, even if what they offered wasn’t always the most practical.
Update 9/23/25: It looks like my beloved DD went down some time in 2022. Heartbreaking! I won’t remove this entry, but I might add a Wayback Machine link or a new Graveyard section to the Links list in the future. RIP DynamicDrive. Be sure to change your cursor to your favorite robotic hedgehog in tribute.
Searching for Susy Thunder, by Claire L. Evans – A fantastic and thorough article about one of the pioneers of phone phreaking and hacking, a former groupie called Susan Thunder who vanished off the map one day. Her story is finally told in this article and it’s such a cool peek into the world of phreaking and what the tech scene was like way back when, and also what her life was like and why she ran in the scene. There’s something so mysterious and magical about that time frame. It’s no wonder there’s a sort of romance associated with hacking in the movies. Of course, it was ugly as well, and this article shows that side plainly. A great read about one of tech history’s overlooked names.
eXoWin3x – A torrent dedicated to providing a comprehensive library as well as workspace environment emulation of Windows 3x, the operating environment that was a shell over DOS and predated Windows 95. This is just such a cool, massive resource of games and tech software, and worth checking out if just for fun. You gotta love diving into a treasure trove of shareware and productivity nonsense.
EasyUSSR’s Torrenting Guide – Thorough and pleasantly anarchic guide to torrenting and procuring media with a full list of programs and places to look for almost anything you may need. It’s not quite a one-stop shop, but it’s a start. Gotta love a pretty tutorial. It even has pictures.