Bookmarks

This is a growing collection of links, facts, lessons, and other things I've found useful or interesting. I keep it here as a personal reference, but you're welcome to browse through and see if anything catches your eye.

Technology

• Eurion Constellation is a pattern on most banknotes that helps stop counterfeiting. Many image editors and printers block you from editing or printing money images if they spot this pattern.

• Don't save future timestamps in UTC because timezone rules can change for political reasons. Read my blog post on this topic.

• QWERTY took about 30 years to evolve. The first keyboard used ABCDEFG order. Read my blog post on this topic.

Science & Math

• The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Astronomy Department has a great set of animations about astronomy. Some of my favorites:

  • Seasons demonstrator
  • Seasons and ecliptic simulator
  • Motions of the Sun simulator

• Benford's law is an observation that in many real-world datasets, smaller digits appear as the leading digit more often than larger ones.

Art

• I usually suggest OK Go music videos for their exceptional practical effects and ultimate creativity. Especially videos like Obsession and Upside Down & Inside Out (also watch how they made it)

• "Windowpane" by Opeth (YouTube / Spotify) is a song I stumbled on in a Sunday column back in 2010. It's been on my playlist ever since and one of my all-time favorites. I always say that I want a QR code to this song on my tombstone so others can discover even after I leave.

History

I hated history in school — it felt pointless back then. But over time, I started getting curious about how we ended up here, what humanity went through, and what we might learn from it all. These are links and notes on history, old civilizations, and whatever else from the past catches my interest.

• Boustrophedon is a writing style where each line goes in the opposite direction (left-to-right, then right-to-left). I made a code snippet to show this in English.

• A fascinating visualization of 4,000 years of world history: JPEG / interactive version. I revisit this map often when diving into history and civilizations.

Websites

• NEIL.FUN is a blog by Neal Agarwal that is full of mini interactive games and fun web pages built using modern web technology. Brings back the good old Flash miniclips nostalgia.