What's in my bookmarks?

I decided to sort my bookmarks and thought it might be fun to write about it.

Updates about myself and this blog (it’s related to this post, I promise)

Really quick update about blogging. I made an account on sourcehut and I’m hosting a copy of this blog there at aneesh.srht.site/. Don’t go there just yet! It’s broken since sourcehut pages serves websites with a content source policy of default-src. What that means is that all dependencies on external resources cannot be loaded. I’m trying to decide what to do with that page. I’m thinking I may keep some kind of static personal (non-technical) blog there. Maybe I’ll even set it up as a HTTP mirror of a gemlog or something.

In other news (and motivating this post), I started a new job this month. It’s been really fun so far, and I’m learning a lot about what it means to write C++ again. I’ll probably write a couple more blog posts about what I’ve learned recently (in case I forget, it’s about re-learning c++, abstractions for date/time, how to learn how to navigate a new codebase, and probably something about data structures and how we think about them). Anyway, as a part of all this I’ve gained a few new bookmarks and I thought it was a good time to do some spring cleaning of my bookmarks.

I’ve sorted things into broad categories below.

Tools

  • RANDOM.ORG
    • A random number generator
    • these days I would probably just use javascript’s Math.random instead when I need it.
  • Library Genesis (I won’t link it here because I don’t support piracy)
  • generatedpaper.com
    • Templates to download and print various kinds of paper (e.g. graph, ruled, etc.)
    • This was very useful when I was in highschool. Not useful anymore.
  • Free Class Schedule Maker
    • Paste in your college schedule and it’ll generate a .ics file you can import into google calendar.
  • Detexify
    • Draw a symbol and find out what latex identifier it is
  • Wayback Machine
    • Sometimes I go add snapshots of things like course pages from my university. As a student I really appreciated being able to see history like that.
  • Austin Bike Map
    • I don’t have a bike here at the moment, but if I did this would be useful.

Nerd content

Visualizations

Cool/novelty software

  • Instant Rimshot
    • Useful if you want a rimshot sound effect when hanging out with friends. I’ve never used it.
  • Big Backup
    • Use youtube as a general purpose file storage server
  • Clang in the browser
    • Arguable godbolt is way more useful, but I love the idea of having a webassembly compiler in my browser. I’ve never actually used it though.
  • The Useless Web

Art

Games

I’m sure some of these are broken now.

  • Google pacman
  • Ball pool
  • 2048
    • I remember doing speedrun races of this game with my friends in highschool. Good times.
  • 10 fast fingers
    • Still do this all the time. Currently I’m at 93 WPM - but only with my split ortholinear keyboard. I’m more like 80 on a regular keyboard.
  • Flappy48
    • About as 2014 as it gets.
  • goscurry
    • During the alpha for the game you used to be able to play a demo on the website for free. It was pretty fun, maybe I’ll buy it someday.
  • Akinator, the Web Genius
    • I grew up in the early 2000s, can’t you tell? I’m surprised I never bookmarked miniclip or armorgames, but I guess I still remember those websites more than a decade later.
    • I’ve found that akinator is no longer as accurate as it used to be. I guess as it’s database of people has expanded, it’s harder for it to narrow down the pool of candidates. The magic of having it guess whoever you were thinking of (including yourself!) is lost.
  • Find the Invisible Cow
  • Boss Rush
    • This link is broken, but maybe you can view the content via wayback machine or find the game elsewhere?
    • I miss flash games
  • Box Dodge Fury
    • same as above
  • pretentious game
    • broken - but at least I found out armor games still exists and is trying to preserve flash content via Ruffle.
    • Clicking on the link and not seeing the old armorgames logo/website aesthetic made a little sad.
  • spreeder - learn to speed read
    • I have always been a speed reader, which honestly has worked against me my entire life.
    • This isn’t exactly a game, but it can be if you’re bored.

Memes

A lot of these probably aren’t funny anymore, but they were hilarious when I was 13 I guess.

Memories

  • Tie-a-Tie.net
    • Learn how to tie a tie in multiple styles - a lifesaver in highschool when I had to wear a uniform with a tie.
  • Virtual haircut audio illusion
    • This was before ASMR was a thing, so the concept of stereo audio being used to replicate 3d space was mind blowing to me.
    • I discovered this website through an old windows 7 desktop widget that showed a new optical illusion everyday.
  • A collection of ROMs and guides for the XOLO Q800
    • I won’t link them here - I doubt any of my readers still have a cheap smartphone that only retailed in asia 8 years ago.
    • That honestly was the best phone I ever had for the price I paid. It worked for almost three years, and I only swapped it out because I was tired of seeing a few dead pixels from some bad drops. I never even had a case on the thing.
  • A collection of URLs for planning a trip to Japan
    • A bunch of my friends and I wanted to go on a trip to Japan after highschool. All of our parents unanimously shot the idea down pretty quickly.
    • We thought we were so clever by tell each of our parents that the other parents had already agreed, but we didn’t account for the fact that they could actually call each other.
  • Too Many Tabs
    • This was a firefox extension for tab management. It doesn’t work anymore, but it worked by storing sets of tabs as bookmark folders.
    • Simple tab groups is a good replacement

Conclusion

That was a fun exercise, it was nice to remember things from my past. I deleted most of the links I encountered, since they’re all captured here now! My bookmarks seems so strange and empty now.

Written on March 20, 2021