This is where I keep all kinds of linky goodness. Some of it is really more for personal reference than anything else, whereas other links are of more general interest. At least, I hope so!
A three-course meal for your brain
Hors d'oeuvre: a short virtual trip to Mars.
Main course: Making Light, a blog of infinite variety (and a good place to find roaming Mongooses).
Dessert: the finest killer sudoku site on the Web, for all its occasional glitches.
"Io la Musica son, ch'a i dolci accenti/so far tranquillo ogni turbato core..."
Charles Daniels is a truly outstanding tenor. Don't just take my word for it; there are some audio links on the site, or you can hear a full concert in which he is the tenor soloist.
I can also warmly recommend Rochelle Hart (soprano); Robin Blaze (countertenor); Flavio Ferri-Benedetti (countertenor); CN Lester (mezzo); Daniel Auchincloss (tenor and haute-contre); and Peter Harvey (baritone).
I love the Orlando Consort. They sing mediaeval music like no other ensemble I know, and they're both passionate and immensely knowledgeable about it.
Opera Seria is a young, lively, semi-professional opera company in Manchester.
IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library has literally thousands of free public domain music scores. It's an amazing resource.
The BrightCecilia forum is a great place for all your classical music chat. And many other things besides.
Webcomics, manga and graphics, oh my!
When I first discovered Girl Genius, I was so taken with it that I read through the whole archive. This takes a while; you have been warned. It's a roaring steampunk saga with plenty of comedy and mad science - absolutely brilliant.
Negative One is quieter and more reflective, for the most part, but it deserves to be better known. It's fantasy, and not quite like anything else I've ever come across. See for yourself.
Rose of Versailles is a manga, available in English at the link. (For those who are not accustomed to reading manga, the convention is to read the panels from right to left.) It is based on the story of Marie Antoinette; the author researched the period thoroughly, but took a few liberties with historical details in order to pull the story together, and this works very well on the whole. The real star is not the unfortunate Queen but the gender-bending Lady Oscar, who is not a historical character but I so wish she had been!
Fans of the TV series Sherlock will be delighted to discover that this has been made into a manga. I have trouble with TV; you can't pause and reflect. The manga, which is superbly drawn, solves that problem. I'm told it's very tightly based on the series. (Bonus link for Sherlock fans: Benedict Cumberbatch hates liquids.)
Otto and Victoria have not, to my knowledge, ever turned into a webcomic; instead, you will find at the link several delightful pieces of steampunk-flavoured art featuring an upper-class young lady and her pet octopus.
Manual transmission
Inkscape manuals in various languages. Inkscape is a versatile, platform-independent vector graphics program.
PHP manual (in English)
MySQL manual (in English)
GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) manual (in English)
Python 3 manual (in English)
Learning resources
The Open University. Based in the UK, but you can study through it in several other parts of the world too.
Free open courseware from MIT.
Learn Japanese free of charge.
Mongoose's Ephemera
A scientific study of homophobic men. I don't have access to the full article, but the abstract is interesting on its own.
The Slow-Motion Lynching of Chelsea Manning. An unusual and compassionate perspective on the Chelsea Manning story. I'm not entirely convinced by the main premiss, but I think this is worth reading to balance other articles.
The 16 Most Homoerotic Photos of Vladimir Putin. Apparently I'm not the only person who wonders.
Said Hanrahan. A poem about an incurable pessimist.
The Quiet Place. What it says on the tin.
A three-course meal for your brain
Hors d'oeuvre: a short virtual trip to Mars.
Main course: Making Light, a blog of infinite variety (and a good place to find roaming Mongooses).
Dessert: the finest killer sudoku site on the Web, for all its occasional glitches.
"Io la Musica son, ch'a i dolci accenti/so far tranquillo ogni turbato core..."
Charles Daniels is a truly outstanding tenor. Don't just take my word for it; there are some audio links on the site, or you can hear a full concert in which he is the tenor soloist.
I can also warmly recommend Rochelle Hart (soprano); Robin Blaze (countertenor); Flavio Ferri-Benedetti (countertenor); CN Lester (mezzo); Daniel Auchincloss (tenor and haute-contre); and Peter Harvey (baritone).
I love the Orlando Consort. They sing mediaeval music like no other ensemble I know, and they're both passionate and immensely knowledgeable about it.
Opera Seria is a young, lively, semi-professional opera company in Manchester.
IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library has literally thousands of free public domain music scores. It's an amazing resource.
The BrightCecilia forum is a great place for all your classical music chat. And many other things besides.
Webcomics, manga and graphics, oh my!
When I first discovered Girl Genius, I was so taken with it that I read through the whole archive. This takes a while; you have been warned. It's a roaring steampunk saga with plenty of comedy and mad science - absolutely brilliant.
Negative One is quieter and more reflective, for the most part, but it deserves to be better known. It's fantasy, and not quite like anything else I've ever come across. See for yourself.
Rose of Versailles is a manga, available in English at the link. (For those who are not accustomed to reading manga, the convention is to read the panels from right to left.) It is based on the story of Marie Antoinette; the author researched the period thoroughly, but took a few liberties with historical details in order to pull the story together, and this works very well on the whole. The real star is not the unfortunate Queen but the gender-bending Lady Oscar, who is not a historical character but I so wish she had been!
Fans of the TV series Sherlock will be delighted to discover that this has been made into a manga. I have trouble with TV; you can't pause and reflect. The manga, which is superbly drawn, solves that problem. I'm told it's very tightly based on the series. (Bonus link for Sherlock fans: Benedict Cumberbatch hates liquids.)
Otto and Victoria have not, to my knowledge, ever turned into a webcomic; instead, you will find at the link several delightful pieces of steampunk-flavoured art featuring an upper-class young lady and her pet octopus.
Manual transmission
Inkscape manuals in various languages. Inkscape is a versatile, platform-independent vector graphics program.
PHP manual (in English)
MySQL manual (in English)
GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) manual (in English)
Python 3 manual (in English)
Learning resources
The Open University. Based in the UK, but you can study through it in several other parts of the world too.
Free open courseware from MIT.
Learn Japanese free of charge.
Mongoose's Ephemera
A scientific study of homophobic men. I don't have access to the full article, but the abstract is interesting on its own.
The Slow-Motion Lynching of Chelsea Manning. An unusual and compassionate perspective on the Chelsea Manning story. I'm not entirely convinced by the main premiss, but I think this is worth reading to balance other articles.
The 16 Most Homoerotic Photos of Vladimir Putin. Apparently I'm not the only person who wonders.
Said Hanrahan. A poem about an incurable pessimist.
The Quiet Place. What it says on the tin.