z0b's realm

Links

The link list was previously modified and checked on February 23. 2017. If you find any bad links, let me know.

Applications

  • Celestia A space/solar system/universe simulator. It lets you to explore the universe in 3D. This program should be mandatory in all computers.
  • Stellarium High-quality planetarium software. Multiplatform. As with Celestia, this should be a mandatory for all.
  • Inkscape Vector drawing program. Uses the SVG format and most browsers can view these files natively.
  • VirtualBox Virtualization software. Changes owner more often than some people change socks.
  • WinDirStat Disk space usage analyzer. Uses tree mapping to display results.
  • WinMerge Windows file differencing and merging tool. Open source.
  • ScummVM Allows you to run classic 2D point-and-click adventure games (popular at 80's and 90's) in modern computers. It used to work only with SCUMM-based games (hence the name), but in the last few years the project has evolved into some kind of a multi-platform framework for adventure games.

Programming

  • MinGW Native Windows C/C++ compiler (port of GCC)
  • Code::Blocks Excellent cross-platform IDE, supports multiple compilers (GCC, Borland, MS, etc.). Highly recommended. Try the nightly versions, they're lightyears ahead the stable releases and are, in fact, more stable than the "stable" versions.
  • LodePNG/PicoPNG If you need simple PNG load/write support but libpng is bloated, LodePNG is for you. If you want to just load PNG images, try PicoPNG. It is a fully working PNG loader/zlib datastream decompressor implemented in one function.
  • Function Parser Powerful expression evaluator library. Evaluates stuff like "sqrt(a^2+b^2)" during runtime and gives you the result.

Home pages and blogs

  • Bad Astronomy Phil Plait blogs about space and science. This guy worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, so he knows what he's talking about.
  • Paul Bourke Massive website. Covers anything from brain modeling to textures.

Miscellaneous

  • Atomic Rockets If you're interested in realistic space technology, this site is worth visiting. Don't let the name fool you; the site contains lots of interesting information about almost anything. Subsection of the Project Rho website, so be sure to check other subsections too.
  • An Atlas of The Universe Space is big. Very very big.
  • 365 Tomorrows New short sci-fi story every day. Definitely worth reading, although sometimes it's a miss.
  • TV Tropes A catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction. Covers pretty much all forms of media. Severe addiction warning.
  • GUI Gallery Large GUI gallery. Covers insane number of operating systems.