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Blogs

Here's a collection of the blogs I'm currently following via rss.

2025-08-14 - OPML

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comics

neocities

Books

Goedel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

A masterpiece dive into the intersection of math, number theory, biology, art music, and consciousness. By the end of this gargantuan book, I was absolutely awestruck by the depth of knowledge and cleverness of Hofstadter.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Possibly the best piece of fiction I have ever read. So dense with information, trivia, and strange comedy that it requires a dozen read-throughs and notes to self. The footnotes alone could make up a textbook, partially true, partially imagined.

The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll

A fascinating narrative that is as engaging as it is informative about the early years of the Internet. Particularly great for those interested in cyber security or networking, this book is truly a geeky page-turner. (I went and visited the landing spot in Mui Wo he mentioned!)

Pharmakodynamis by Dale Pendell

This book, the second in a three part series (Pharmakopoeia and Pharmakognosis being the others), blends, history, chemistry, and poetry to describe psychoactive plants that have been used all over the world for hundreds to thousands of years. The series reads like a textbook and a trip report, blending extensive research and personal anecdotes. Pharmakodynamis in particular, looks at stimulants and the role, they have played in the revolutions in society. It may get you to rethink how you view the chemicals that rule the world.

More book reviews

Articles

"Mother Earth Mother Board" by Neal Stephenson (Wired, 1996) [LINK] [PDF]
- An enlightening and entertaining look into the roots of the modern international telecommunications system through vignettes about the construction of the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG). A long read, but as colorful and enthralling as anything Stephenson has ever written -- the hacker cum Gonzo. The piece makes one who took the world wide web for granted into perspective and gives a history of how the telecoms connected the world, who did the heavy lifting, and where these cables made landfall.
"Man-Computer Symbiosis" by JCR Licklider (IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, 1960) [LINK] [PDF]
- A look at computers as an extension of biological life. In moving the perspective of computers as number-crunching mainframes to human-friendly tools, Licklider is able to look decades forward into the grand challenges of the computing industry including artificial intelligence and speech recognition..
"As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush (The Atlantic, 1945) [LINK] [PDF]
- A visionary work of post-war scientific insight and conjecture. Bush looks at the next great frontier of science and predicts the personal computer forty years before the average American would see one. This article is the root of cybernetics and still as relevant as it was in 1945.
"The Cult (and Cults) of Brasilia" by Julian Dibbel (1992) [LINK] [PDF]
- A bizarre and beautifully written piece on a mystical collision of city planning and superstition. I've never visited Brasilia, but this really piques my interest.

Tutorials

"Concise Electronics For Geeks" by Michal Zalewski[LINK] [PDF]
- A fantastic little primer, if a bit nitty-gritty, on the basic dynamics of circuitry, both analog and digital. As someone with little hands on experience, but a lot of interest, I will be referring to this a lot.

Music

While reading up about Medieval fairs on Wikipedia, I came upon the Scarborough Fair ballad rendered in MIDI [Offline Version] by Franz-Rudolf Kuhnen. The sound was really nostalgic and matched ambiance of reading about medieval commerce. So I dug in deeper and found a bunch of cool resources for this type of music. Here are a couple of my favorites.
- Early Music Collection of Curtis Clark: [LINK][ARCHIVE MIRROR]
- Medieval, Rennaisance and Traditional Music on Kunst der Fuge (Curtis Clark, David Miles): [LINK]
- Midi World's Early Music Collection: [LINK]
- Early Polish Music by Adam Jaczyk: [LINK]

Games

The Talos Principle
West of Loathing
Rimworld

Podcasts

Weird History
British History Podcast
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
Lapham's Quarterly
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Podcast

Other Things

Mail Tester: a free service for testing the spamminess of an email. So valuable when troubleshooting your personal server (and extra valuable if you're a total noob).
The Midnight Gospel an animation series that's Adventure Time-meets-Superjail. However sometimes I just turn off the audio sometimes.