Linkdump!

Over the years I have found quite a few cool pockets of Internet.

But before you leave...

Maybe you'd like to help yourself to a free beeks.cool souvenir button?

     

Table of Contents

Personal Website Button Wall Blogs Music & Radio Stations Retro Gaming Toys & Games Useful Tools Misc




Personal Website Button Wall

Lil buttons for others out there in the Indie Web!

Blogs

The American Stationer
A blog about the office equipment of the early 1900s. Reading that last sentence, you are either bored or intrigued. If you've been enjoying this website, I hope it's the latter.

Cerealously
News and reviews from the wide world of breakfast cereal.

The Comics Curmudgeon
A guy named Josh reads the newspaper comics with snarky comments and takes. I've been reading The Comics Curmudgeon for over a decade now, it's not only funny but a really interesting peek into the state of modern day newspaper comics.

Dinosaur Dracula
From the ashes of X-Entertainment comes Dinosaur Dracula, a love letter to things gone by... and weird seasonal food.

Monster Brains
Post after post of amazing monster art from across the world and throughout time.
Note: The art posted here is occasionally NSFW, or just plain unsettling.

Punk Philatelist
My favorite blog about stamps. The titular Punk is from Australia, but the stamps talked about are from all over the world.

Retro Bitch
Cat DeSpira knows a thing or two about arcade machines. And vintage valentines. And a bunch of old stuff. The blog hasn't been updated in a while, but the archives are still absolutely worth reading.


Music & Radio Stations

Beehype
Reviews and articles about music primarily not from the United States.

Listen.moe
J-Pop/K-pop/Anime music radio station.

Lofi ATC
Air-traffic controller chatter playing over lofi music. Pick from a variety of airports.

Nectarine
An online radio station playing demoscene music.

Radio.Garden
Listen to radio stations from all over the world.

Rainwave
Multiple radio stations of video game music. Choose between video game music, chiptunes only, OCRemixes, or a mishmash of everything.

Seeburg 1000
An online radio station playing music from the Seeburg 1000 Background Music System. A must-listen if you enjoy Muzak.


Retro Gaming

The Bad Game Hall of Fame
Anyone can dunk on a bad game. But the Bad Game Hall of Fame goes above and beyond to also talk about the history of the game, the context in which it was released, and so on.

Cirrus Retro
Listen to classic video game music, and mess with the audio channels if you want!

Earthbound Battle Backgrounds
Generate your own animated backgrounds from Earthbound.

FEMICOM Museum
An online museum of games and electronics that were marketed to girls. Featuring everything you ever could possibly want to know about the Casio Loopy!

Handheld Underground
A blog about the odd and interesting world of bootleg cartridges for handheld systems, mostly the Game Boy. In addition to reading about them, they also dump the ROM.

Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
One of my favorite retro game blogs. Kimimi covers all sorts of games, but old JRPGs are her specialty.

LCDMOD
Still want to play NES Zapper games, but don't have a CRT tv lying around? You need to check out the work being done to play these games on modern tvs!

Legends of Localization
A blog showcasing various translation choices (some good, lots bad) of video games over the years. Mostly run by Mato, probably most well-known for his genuinely amazing Mother 3 fan translation.

Moai.game
A collection of Moai heads in video games.

The Mushroom Kingdom
A Super Mario Bros fansite that's been running since 1997!

Noclip.website
Fly through maps of various old video games.

Old Timey Computer Show
A 24/7 Twitch channel showing various retro computing and gaming stuff. Promotional videos, old episodes of GamesMaster, instructional tapes teaching old folks how to set up their computer, etc.

Pinball Map
A long-running crowdsourced map of publicly available pinball machines across the world. It also tells you the name of the machines at each location. Go play some pinball!

The SNES Manual Archive
An online collection of every single English-language Super Nintendo game manual. Very useful if you're playing old carts or roms, but also just fun to browse through.

VGMusic
A collection of video game MIDIs. Running since 1996!


Toys, Games, and Fun Things to Noodle Around With

After Dark in CSS
Remember the After Dark screensaver pack? It's back, in website form!

AnecD'OH!tes
Well, it's not quite a mop, and it's not quite a puppet, but man!
So, to answer your question, it's a daily Simpsons quoting game.

Contexto
A daily word guessing game. Entering a word will tell you how related or unrelated your word is to the secret word. Bascially a Semantle clone, but I find Contexto to be a little easier.

The Death Generator
Allows you to make silly edits to classic video game death/dialog screens.

DoujinSoft Store
An archive of user-created WarioWare DIY games. You can play them online or download the files to add into your own copy.

Dungleon
A Wordle clone based on dungeon crawling.

Interactive DVD Logo
It's the old DVD screensaver, but in website form.

JS Paint
It's MSPaint, in your browser!

Kidpix.app
In case MSPaint doesn't do anything for ya, here's a browser version of KidPix.

Lander
A Lunar Lander clone, but with a daily challenge aspect to it.

Neal.fun
A collection of fun little activities. Look at news websites from 10 years ago, answer absurd trolley problems, look at how long it's been since Earth has had a EF5 tornado, and so on.

Objection.lol
Create your own Phoenix Wright scenes. Surprisingly robust.

Openings.moe
Open the website, receive random anime opening. Despite the name, you might also get an ending.

Peckin' Pixels
An in-browser chicken raising game. It can get frantic if you let it!

Pokémon Booster Pack Simulator
All the fun of opening Pokémon cards, but on a website!

Taconomical
Compare and contrast the price of certain Taco Bell menu items across the continental United States.

Tiny Islands
A chill little puzzle game about creating islands with certain specifications.

The True Size
People love facts about how Country X could fit entirely into US State Y or how hard is it to accurately portray the size of countries on a globe, but with The True Size you can drag states and countries around and see for yourself!

TypeLit
Practice your typing by writing various works of classic literature.

WeatherStar 4000
Relive the fun of the classic Weather Channel's WeatherStar system. Just type in a city and watch it go.

Windows 93 A fake operating system with all sorts of goofy things to click on. Photosensitivity warning: this website has a few full screen flashing effects.


Useful Tools and Resources

3D Gif Maker
Exactly what it says on the tin. Paste a 2D image onto a rotating image. There are other non-3d options, such as glitching and blinking. I used this to glitch out the picture of Len in the sidebar.

BreezeWiki
Fandom's wikis are nightmarishly bad, but what if they weren't? Use BreezeWiki (or one of its mirrors) to bypass all of Fandom's clutter. You may also like Indie Wiki Buddy, a Firefox/Chrome addon that automatically swaps Fandom wikis for BreezeWiki or an independent wiki equivalent.

CARI (Consumer Aesthetics Research Insitute)
I LOVE this website. This website aims to identify/catalog various aesthetic trends in graphic design/consumer goods for the past 60-ish years, with TONS of examples.

Comic Helvetic
Do you want to class Comic Sans up? Do you wish Helvetica was just a little more whimsical? I've got the font for you.

CRT Database
Just like it sounds, a growing database of CRT televisions. Many entries have manuals and tutorials on how to mod S-Video, component, and the like.

Dither Me This
Dither any image you want and give it an old-school look. I used Dither Me This to make that picture of Len in the sidebar.

Famous Fonts
Download fonts you recognize from shows/products/whatever.

ImageGlitcher
Another way to turn your images into glitchy masterpieces. Note that this will not animate them. I used ImageGlitcher to make the beeks.cool picture in the top bar.

KandiPad
Perler/pony bead pattern generator and gallery. Tells you how many of each color you'll need too, which is useful. The website never states it, but you could also easily use these patterns for cross-stitch.

Make Word Art
Windows 95-style WordArt generator.

Remove.bg
Drop in a picture, and Remove.bg will automatically remove (or blur out) the background. It's not flawless, but it works pretty well.

Shading Reference
I don't know about you, but my brain just has the hardest time grokking light and shadow when it comes to drawing. Fortunately this lil web tool will let you noodle around with light source(s) on basic shapes.

Toy Rescue
A database of 3d printing files to fix your old action figures and toys. If you don't have a 3D printer, check to see if your local library or community center has one you can borrow, or you can also reach out to the community to ask for a part to be made.

Velvetyne
Cool, free, open-source fonts.

Wormhole
Quicky and easily share files with someone. Perfect for all those times when you just need to throw a thing out there temporarily but don't want to use Dropbox, Google Drive, or what have you.


Misc

Cinema Treasures
It's a directory of currently open/recently closed/long since demolished movie theaters. Many of which also have pictures.

Home Sweet Homepage
A comic about growing up online. Nostalgic, relatable, and heartwarming.

Insecam
A directory of unsecured security cameras. Peep in on random workplaces, parking garages, sleeping animals in barns, that sort of thing. Also a nice reminder to go make sure your security cam is password protected if you have one.

Lena
An utterly stunning short science fiction story, done in the style of a Wikipedia entry. Some of the best and most harrowing science fiction I've read in a while.

Mutant Standard
This is an emoji set created by Dzuk that I absolutely love. There is an art to creating good and identifiable emojis, and I think Dzuk excels at that. I have used a few Mutant Standard emojis on my site (mainly in the MIDI jukebox) and have modified a few to suit my needs... they're not nearly as good as zirs.

Nestflix
A fake streaming service for shows-within-a-show, such as Itchy and Scratchy on The Simpsons.

Postcrossing
Send and received postcards from all over the world! Kinda like a combination of Secret Santa and Pen Pals. I've been postcrossing since 2017 and I highly reccommend it. If you're the type that enjoys this small "antequated" personal website experience, I have a hunch you might enjoy the even more antequated fun of snail mail.

PostSecret
Write something anonymously on a postcard, send it into PostSecret, and they'll put it on the page. As a lover of postcards and the mail system in general I find this idea really interesting, and the weird cryptic messages are the icing on the cake.

Queering the Map
A giant community-driven map of queer experiences. Some sad, some good, some zany. I'm happy to see so many pins in Texas, even though some are heartbreaking.