Since I wasn't looking to put up a lot of really personal information, I was looking for a novel way to communicate some of my lesser interests. I try to keep my bookmarks down to what I really use or can't afford to lose.

First and foremost, I want to make sure everyone is aware of W3 Schools. The site has been an indespensable reference for me while I try to bring my XHMTL and CSS up to snuff. Thanks to them, I have easily hand-coded both this site and the wedding website.

Comics

My kind of entertainment!

Applegeeks. What looked to start as a college strip is turning into a superhero story with some really wonderful art.

Dilbert. Yeah, well I work in a cube farm and, brother in an electrical engineer, and my father is a mechanical engineer.

Dork Tower. Living 'La Vida Dorka'! This speaks to my gaming roots.

The Dreamland Chronicles. I'm still on the fence for this one. It's the story of a college student who redicovers the fantasy realm he used to visit in the dreams of his (younger) youth.

Girl Genius. Great adventure/fantasy story with steam-powered machinery. Originally published as a comic book, there are two archives to follow. The '101' is color repreints of the comic released 1 page 3 times a week. The 'Advanced Class' is the new material. I haven't read the new stuff yet, I'm waiting for the old to catch up. One of these days, I think I'll pick up the collections for off-line reading.

Megatokyo. This one took a while to grow on me. I love the art and, in recent times, the story has gotten much tighter and better written. Two computer gamers go to Japan to attend a convention and find themselves stranded there.

Nodwick. A D&D related strip that, I think, you don't really need to be a gamer to enjoy. Poor Nodwick is the henchman for a party of adventurer and often finds himself in harm's way as they blunder through adventures. Also check out the other strip hosted here, Full Frontal Nerdity, which does require some geek to translate well.

Penny Arcade!. I'm actually not so hot on this one, but sometimes they hit the nail squarely on the head, and that's always worth seeing. Computer and console gaming related, with jabs at the industry and pop-culture.

Player vs Player. A strip about the an office that produces a gaming magazine. It speaks for itself.

A sample PvP strip

Sheldon. A young boy creates a piece of software that makes him a billionaire overnight. The focus has actually shifted away him being rich to a sort of Foxtrot/Calvin & Hobbes hybrid. Wierd, Geeky, and I love it!

Sinfest Quirky, random, and highly recommended.

Sluggy Freelance Guilty pleasure. Very random at times and sometimes prone to over-extended epics.

VG Cats. A weekly strip focusing on Console and Computer gaming. The two main characters are cats modeled after the artist's pets.

Computer Related

IBM ThinkPad R51e 1844-DGU. My spanking new laptop. I love new gear, but can so rarely afford it.

Ubuntu Linux. I'm running Linux on my laptop. Things have finally reached a point that it runs great with virtually no learning curve for day to day stuff. I already used Openoffice and teh GIMP under windows, so even the 'work' I do on the laptop doesn't require that I learn to use new tools. If gaming support was 1/2 as good as Windows, then I would abandon the other OS in a heartbeat. The laptop runs Ubuntu and my desktop runs Windows XP and Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Document Storage Facility. Forum monitors cull the best instructional posts and save them in a wiki that makes them easy to find without diggin through old threads on the very active Ubuntu forums. I woudl say it is an indespensable resource, but I've honestly had fewer and fewer issues with each successive release of the OS.

Tweakguides. A great site for solid advice on tweaking Windows XP and some of the more popular games for it. I've gotten a noticable performance boost without overclocking and my games run smoother. Well worth browsing.

AVG Anti-virus. We use the commercial version at work, but then I saw it was recommended by Tweakguides too because it not only does the job, but is very resource light compared to other programs. I use the free version at home now.

The GIMP. I don't do a lot of photo editing or manipulation. What few needs I have are handily met by the GIMP.

HTML Kit. My HTML editor of choice (and not a WYSIWYG). I see that it can run under linux using WINE, but I haven't had any luck with that yet. Fortunately, I rarely try anything in coding that can't just as easily be handled through a text editor.

Open Office. Believe it or not, I actually use this at work instead of Microsoft Office. One of the best 'free' alternatives out there for an office suite.

Trillian. My IM client of choice. I've had to sign up for screen-names under all the major IM services at one time or another. I refuse to run 3-4 different bloated clients at once when I can do it all at once with Trillian. Not to mention the fictional character reference and some nifty skins.

Notepad 2. A replacement for Notepad under Windows. I love this editor and actually have been using it for all of my web programming for this site.

Foxit PDF Reader. Another incredibly useful, single-file app. I dislike Adobe Reader for numerous reasons and this tiny app is an easy choice for when I am looking to keep the system clean or providing tech support on olde rmachines where I don't have internet. As a bonus, unless the document is protected, I can cut and paste text out of the PDF. Let me tell you, that rocks!

Entertainment

Digitally Imported. I like me some ambient, chilling-out music.

Sky.FM. The same folk that bring us Digitally Imported give me my classical fix, as well as Tina's favorite Salsa music station.

Soma FM. Check out Secret Agent, and Beatblender.

Shoutcast. Still looking for music to stream?

Winamp. My music player of choice, under Windows.

Family

The O'Niels. My cousin's home page.

Mom's home page.

Tina's artistry.

Tina's online business.

Tina's writing

Games

Free Gamer: Free Software Games Compendium & Commentary. I've found some good games through hear. Also, a large number of the games he looks at are cross-platform, so I can get my game on under linux.

Planarity. Another effective diversion.

RPG Related

The d20 System Home Page. I'm cheap. I spent nearly $100 on the 3rd edition books and they went on to do a massive update to iron out the kinks. I wasn't going to reinvest that much money in erratta and balance issues, so I use their free system reference document. This is also where I found out about the d20 Modern variant, which I now love.

The Hypertext d20 SRD. The D&D SRD made beautiful, with plenty of cross-referencing, great search filters, and all the official erratta corrected. I've paid the yearly subscription, so I get to dl a copy of the site for off-line reference on the laptop. Amazing work which is well worth supporting. This makes DMing with my laptop a snap!

d21: RPG blog. A gaming blog with a RP focus.

Guardians of Order. Publishers of Big Eyes, Small Mouth. You can get a free PDF from the site for their basic game system. It needs some polish and elbow grease, but there's a lot of great ideas in there and I can't wait to use them. Unfortunately, it seems that teh company has quietly gone out of business before releasing their third edition, which was supposed to contain many necessary fixes.

News

Ars Technica. My first and only stop for tech/science news and related politics.

National Public Radio. For following up on what I listen to on my daily commute to work and back.

Reference

Merriam-Webster. Geeks need dictionaries too.

Wikipedia. Maybe not what you want for serious research, but great references for fan-related materials.

Weather Underground. If it's weather, it's here.