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C and C++ programming

The single best general on-line reference I have found for C is Steve Summit's C Frequently Answered Question List. For C++, Marshall Cline's FAQL is comparable. If you don't mind hopping the ocean (or if you're on the Eurasian side of the pond), there's some very nice stuff at Lysator's C Programming page. There's nice documentation at Dinkumware, and I have a sneaking fondness for the International Obfuscated C Code Contest.

The implementation I normally use is Metrowerks Codewarrior, which is generally very good.

Lisp and Artificial Intelligence

The single best commercially available programming environment on the planet is Macintosh Common Lisp (with useful supplements by Alan Ruttenberg). If you are interested in Lisp a bit more generally, you should check out the new site of the Association of Lisp Users, which has an excellent set of links, including to the Common Lisp Hyperspec, a superb reference that I am grateful to Harlequin for, and to the big CMU AI archives. If you like the fringes, there's the Xerox Meta-Object Protocol projects, where people define how the object-oriented part of languages behaves.

Other Programming Links

One of the most influential authors in the computer science is Donald Knuth. There is a page of Programming Language Critiques, if you like language comparisons. Do not forget the Free Software Foundation for good software freely available. The perverse will certainly want to visit the Museum of Retrocomputing. I have some other links.

Macintosh Links

The obvious first step is Apple's home page. I tend to go to Apple Developer World directly, though. There's also Apple's Java page. The Apple Store is graphics-intensive. The project to put Linux on PowerPC-based Macs is called MkLinux, and a good Mac programming magazine (and mail-order store) is MacTech. There's an on-line Mac magazine called MacWeek Online, and an investor-oriented one called Apple Recon. If you like your Mac information opinionated, there's few better sources than The Complete Macintosh Advocacy Page. Speaking as a satisfied customer only, some good Mac mail-order stores are MacZone and MacWarehouse. There is a good book on Macintosh programming at Ambrosia.

Computer Games

I like several sorts of computer games, although my tastes are certainly not the same as anybody else's. For example, I am very fond of the game Angband. I am also inordinately fond of the genre known as adventure games or interactive fiction. A good introductory site would be Brass Lantern.

War Games

I am very fond of wargaming, and there's really no better place to start than Web Grognards. Some of the specific games I love are Command Decision, a set of armored miniatures rules, World in Flames, a strategic World War II game, and the Europa series, which has a web ring. There is also a family of air warfare games called Air Power, or for more air war games see Randy Nonay's pages. My favorite miniatures company is GHQ (with specialty items from the Grandiosity Virtual Store). Other sites worth mentioning are Wrexham Wargamers, who distribute free rules and organizations, Game Design, or MapSymbs for Windows TrueType map symbol fonts.

History (particularly military)

As a wargamer, I have a keen interest in military history. As a general busybody, I have a keen interest in other sorts of history. For general history, consider H-Net (Humanities on-line) For a more popular approach, try The History Net. People are putting together neat on-line source archives for both World War I and World War II.

Further links are available in my General Military Links page and my WWII Links page. The Army Times Online is a current military magazine with links to the other services' counterparts. As far as I can tell, here is the best nuclear weapons site.

Books

On the net: The dominant provider of public-domain books in electronic format is Project Gutenberg.

Bookstores:I've had good experiences with Amazon.com. There are a number of used bookstores on the web. A good list of military bookstores (which I'm not going to repeat here) is Stone & Stone's. Yahoo's page is a bit clumsy but useful.

Authors: I've found good pages for H. P. Lovecraft (writer of philosophical fiction). Fans of other authors might well turn to Yahoo's list.

Characters and Settings: There always have been people interested in the characters, and Sherlock Holmes seems to be the most fascinating one.

Internet stuff

The folks responsible for all these neat standards are the World Wide Web Consortium, and they have the latest HTML spec online. There are excellent online HTML guides, including the Web Design Group, a large FAQL. Jakob Nielsen has been working with hypertext since before the Web. Another reference, documenting common practice, is Index Dot HTML, and there's more links.

If you want to identify yourself properly, consider the Geek Zone, home of the Geek Code. If you want to talk properly, look up the Jargon File. If you want to know what is(n't) going on, I'd recommend the Urban Folklore archive, or possibly the Kooks Museum. For a different slant on things, try the Principia Discordia.

Two good sources for virus information are CERT and CIAC. Most virus scares are hoaxes, and the Computer Virus Myths home page is a good source for debunking the latest rumors.

Everybody wants to find things on the web, and this is difficult. (It's even more difficult to find if something is worthwhile, but that's another, and far harder, problem to solve.) To this end, people have search engines. There are some standards, like Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, Infoseek, and Webcrawler, and an innovative collective approach on Eureka. For searching newsgroups, try Deja News. There's more information on the search engines at Search Engine Watch.

Other strange stuff

Depression is possibly the biggest public health problem in the United States today. A couple of good sites are Wing of Madness and The Black Fog. One thing I find interesting is that Dr. Grohol definitely advocates psychotherapy for depression, in contrast to the patient view (above) that medications are the way to go. I smell some bad psychotherapy here....

Movies are cataloged at the Internet Movies Database.

I have friends in strange places...

There's Jenni Merrifield, whose site is well worth a visit. There's also Donna "Daio" Waltz, also very nice. (Both these women are much more graphically oriented than I am.) One of my friends runs the Bayfield Transfer Railway web site. Not as dramatic, but possibly interesting, is the physicist George Phillies. Bob Heer is heavily into comic books.

Copyright 1997 by David H. Thornley.