Whether you found it on a recommendation from others or on your own, we’ve likely encountered small corners online that delight us. One person or small team blogs that are surprisingly insightful, web apps or games that have been go-to’s for ages, showcases and exhibits on a specific yet curious niche, striking art pieces.
Do you have any favorite websites that loosely fall in this grouping? What about it is delightful to you?
I’ll give a couple personal examples that come to mind to get things started:
- The Vidya Interweb Playlist: A relatively well-designed music player that exclusively plays music from a load of videogames. I can’t remember how exactly I found this, but I have some good memories of it being a sizeable part of my soundtrack to my middle school years.
- The Web Design Museum: A showcase of how various websites have evolved over the years. I think it’s cool to see how things have developed with changing tech and changing tastes.
Rainwave.cc is kinda like the link you posted but for remixes of gamemusic, mostly from Overclocked Remix, which I’ve been on since like, 2004 or something haha. I use it all the time!
Oh hey, thanks for listening. :)
That web design museum is awesome. Thanks!
For quickly testing some programming things, I like CodeSandbox.
For choosing colors that are easier to read / more accessible, I like Myndex’s APCA contrast calculator.
I love to garden, and when a few years ago I moved from a cool humid climate to the drier hotter inland southern California, it was quite the learning curve. I found Greg Alder’s Yard Posts, a small blog of a guy who loves to garden and lives in nearly the same climate. His tips on pruning, pest management, and what to plant when were so helpful.
For comparing image compression quality, I really like Squoosh.
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The Laws of UX: A website which catalogs principles, laws, razors -etc- which are relevant to consider for designers. Each concept has its description, the main takeaways, and sources for further reading.
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The Arrowverse: A page which only focus is to catalog in chronological order every single episode from CW’s “Arrowverse” TV shows, like Arrow, Flash, etc. Very helpful for those looking to join in since cross-overs between shows are fairly common, so watching in order makes more sense story-wise
Thanks for the laws of UX! I totally need to share that at work. It’s a really well done site with good info.
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vndb, best tagging system on the planet, I wish every media database had thish much possibility
I looove me a great tagging system and library. It looks like this site also makes use of subtags, tag definitions, and a finely robust search system. It’s the kind of stuff that I never realize how much I appreciate it until I don’t have it somewhere. I wish every database and file system was built to allow this kind of robustness.
kinda strange that Certain Major OS file explorers aren’t as thorough as this right out of the box, come to mention it 🤔
Not exactly what you’re asking about, but this may help you find the type of websites you’re asking about. https://search.marginalia.nu/
This is pretty slick and definitely up my alley. I love how it’s got a Random feature—makes it a lot easier to do the kind of websurfing that makes this stuff fun. I’m gonna spend some time checking this out 👀.
https://tedium.co has been a great read for me for a few years. They often cover in detail topics that many would consider mundane. Also, https://computer.rip/ has a bunch of posts that are good short reads, especially if you like telephony. https://midnight.pub/ is a small but fascinating community.
Online regex tester https://regex101.com/
Ian’s Shoelace Site. His secure knot is a little tricky to learn (at least it was for me) but this and his fast knot are now my favorite ways to tie my boots. I especially love his detailed analysis of the various knots and lacing methods.
Ubuweb has a huge archive of video, music, and poetry from mostly the 20th century avant garde. It’s a great site to just aimlessly explore. In some ways this website isn’t narrow at all, but I think it probably appeals to a pretty narrow group of people. https://www.ubu.com/index.html
These are all great.
- A website that I found primarily for its watercolour pigments section, but which goes off in other directions is http://www.handprint.com/
- On the same theme is https://www.artiscreation.com/ which is a pigment database.
- Finally categorising pigments by when they were used in history is https://colourlex.com/
https://tasvideos.org/ It’s a website that publishes Tool Assisted Speedrun videos and a community that makes the same. I’ve been part of this website for nearly 20 years at this point.
Related: https://gdqvods.com/ which covers Awesome Games Done Quick / Summer Games Done Quick and related events. Recommended if you like TAS with audience participation and commentary.
