Web Surfing

This page is Copyright John N. Shutt 1998–2010. Here's what you're allowed to do with it.
Last modified: 09-Feb-10.
Send me comments, questions, whatever.
EFF Blue Ribbon Campaign for free speech online

Contents:

Contents (more detailed):

Contents (most detailed):

About this page

Overall

When I'm web surfing, I enjoy finding pointers from other people's home pages to stuff they think is interesting.  I've found some of my favorite pages that way.  So it seems only fair that I should do for others like I'd have them do unto (unfor?) me.

This page is really just a hotlist with delusions of grandure:  when I find a URL that I want to hang on to, for whatever reason, I put it here.  Making it globally available is my way of contributing to WebCulture.  Since I'd be putting in the effort to maintain my "hotlist" anyway, I can get the satisfaction of contributing at essentially no extra cost.

It's still just my hotlist, though.  Traditionally, major web indices —the classic example being yahoo— started a lot like this page, with grad students trying to organize their own growing collection of links, and they just kept growing.  I can't afford to let that happen; there are already good general indices out there and I just don't have the time.  I sincerely hope you find lots of fun and interesting stuff here, and I'm making it available to you in the hopes that you will, but it isn't intended to be a web index per se.  Some of the pointers from here are to other people's pages that are pretty comprehensive, such as FAQs, but these pointers are only here because I decided I wanted them.  Every pointer on this page is here on my sufferance.

Because there are lots of different reasons for me to want to keep a URL, and all of them end up here, you'll find an enormous range of variation in the quality of the stuff here.  IMHO, some of it's really neat, some of it is just barely worth saving, and most of it is somewhere in between.  Deciding which is which is left as an exercise for the student.

About the timestamps

After about a year as a web publisher, I came to appreciate just how often pages on the web move around.  Nothing seems to stay put.  Of course I'd update a URL when I noticed it was out of date, but I didn't even know how long ago I'd last tested each URL.  So I instituted the following time-keeping system.

Each entry has one or two dates on it.

The first date is the last time the URL was changed.  If this date is recent, either I've just added the pointer, or I've just changed it because I discovered the target page had moved.  If this date is old, I haven't changed the URL in a long time.

The second date, if any, is a more recent time as of which I know the pointer still worked.  If there is no second date, that's because it would be the same as the first date.

If the first date is old and the second date is recent, you're looking at a fairly stable URL:  I put it in a long time ago, and it was still working pretty recently.  If a stable URL like that doesn't work for you, there's a good chance the problem is only temporary.

Navigation

Physical places

Subject catalogs

Selective lists

Search engines

Other resources

Communication

Radio

Television

Language

Other media

Arts

Science fiction/fantasy

Literature