~kby’s Bookmarks
This is a mirror of ~/envdoc/personal/bookmarks.org, my local bookmarks list.
Each subsection corresponds to a certain area of interest.
1 Software
All software free and open source unless mentioned otherwise
1.1 Programming languages and related tools
- The Tiny C Compiler (or just
tcc) is a fast and lightweight C compiler. It is C99-compliant and it even implements the less harmful GNU extensions (ex. inline assembly). - Alexandria is a Common Lisp library that provides a bunch of (rather fundamental) functions that are (for some reason) missing in the default CL library.
- SQLite is my favourite SQL database engine. Bloat-free, fast and FLOSS. I use SQLite to manage my local music CD and book database. I’ve heard that it’s not particularly optimal for web use, but I never had to deal with online databases until now, and I’m not planning to work as a web developer anytime soon, so that’s irrelevant for me.
- GNU Global is a source code tagging system. It supports over 25 languages and has seamless Emacs/Vim integration.
1.2 Operating systems and administration tools
- Devuan GNU/Linux is a fork of Debian that restores init freedom: the user’s right to choose which init system they want to run on their systems.
- Ulix is a Unix-like operating system. Its source code is literate. i.e. it can be pretty much be read like a book. Very helpful for people who want to learn more about operating system internals.
1.3 Multimedia
- Sound eXchange (aka SoX) is a command-line tool for processing sound files. It calls itself “the Swiss Army knife of sound processing programs” — I’d wholeheartedly say that it deserves that title.
- mpv is a media player for the command line. It’s very extensible (through Lua userscripts) and supports a myriad of different audio and video codecs. It can even be used as an image viewer.
1.4 Games and console emulation
- SMS Power is a community of Sega Master System/Game Gear enthusiasts. Their website has a homebrew section, which is ridiculously active considering that the Sega Master System is almost 30 years old. All homebrew games are freeware, but only a few are free (as in freedom).
- uCity is a homebrew city-building game (aka SimCity clone) for Game Boy Color.
1.5 Science and education
- GAP is a REPL for the language with the same name. GAP provides a myriad of algebraic algorithms with which one can manipulate matrices, calculate normal forms and even do symbolic calculations with rings. It’s basically MATLAB for people who aren’t allergic to command-line interfaces.
- GNU LPK is a set of utilities for solving linear programming/mixed integer programming models. I’m talking an Operations Research course right now and words cannot express how much I’m grateful that GLPK exists. It has its own modelling language called MathProg, which is very intuitive and has even its own major mode in Emacs. Why deal with learning how proprietary junk works when you can pretty much use regular old pseudocode to define problems and get solutions for them in miliseconds?
- LibreLingo is an AGPL-licensed language learning platform. It’s pretty much Duolingo minus the tracking and non-free JavaScript. There is currently only one course available (Spanish for English speakers), but other languages should be coming soon.
2 Music
Here used to be a moderately large list of different artists and bands I like (or resp. once liked). I’ve, however, stopped listening to music in a “planned manner” — nowadays I just listen to the radio stations I like, mostly SomaFM (they always have banger ska playing) and public German/Swiss radio; BR Heimat, WDR4 and Radio Swiss Jazz to be specific. Thinking out your own playlists and cherry-picking tracks from albums is simply too tedious for me. I just want to listen to good music, not lose my mind over tagging formalisms and compression formats.
I don’t like listening to music while working or studying though; I’d much rather have some mild ambient sounds in the background. Because I currently live in public housing with lots of loud neighbours, I need something to “mute away” the outside world — Noice does the trick, it allows you to combine and mix various ambient effects and samples to create the perfect background “soundscape” to help you immerse yourself in what you’re doing, keeping external distractions away (assuming that you have a fair pair of in-ear Bluetooth headphones).
3 Tutorials, tips and various interesting websites
- Here is a compilation of many common mistakes done by
bashusers. I personally usezsh, but those two do share a lot of syntax, so I think it’s a good read for users of both shells. - This animated guide to Paredit might help you if you’re having difficulties editing S-expressions in Emacs.