PocketArCBookmarks
In the same vein as the ‘awesome [thing]’ lists you've seen everywhere, instead of bookmarking websites and never revisiting them, I'm collecting all the links I find useful here (easy to quickly Cmd-F!). Inspired by Giles Turnbull's Shoebox.
This is very much a work in progress, not an exhaustive list (yet!).
Richardson Maturity Model
Classic Martin Fowler article on REST API maturity levels: Level 0 (HTTP as transport), Level 1 (resources), Level 2 (HTTP verbs), Level 3 (HATEOAS).
https://martinfowler.com/articles/richardsonMaturityModel.htmlPublic Suffix List
All known public suffixes (TLDs and effective TLDs like co.uk). Used for domain parsing, cookie handling, and security boundaries.
https://publicsuffix.org/list/HTML5 Bones
Minimalist HTML5 template from the IE8 era. html5shiv, Normalize.css, WAI-ARIA roles. Not much use now beyond nostalgia.
http://html5bones.com/Wordnik API
API for word definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, examples, and random word generation.
https://developer.wordnik.com/docsGit Flow
Vincent Driessen's 2010 branching model that shaped how teams think about Git. I remember when that was new and revolutionary. Still a useful reference for understanding Git workflows.
https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/Unicode CLDR
Common Locale Data Repository. Most i18n things (dates, currencies, plurals) are already solved. Check here before rolling your own.
https://cldr.unicode.orgGamma
AI-powered presentations for the times you can't refuse giving one at work.
https://gamma.appExercism
Practice programming in 73 languages with human mentoring. I'm not sure how actually useful it is, but it seems pretty cool.
https://exercism.orgRocket
Mind-blowing emoji picker for Mac.
https://matthewpalmer.net/rocketChecklist for changing your data model in a web application
A checklist for zero-downtime migrations. First step is to decouple migrations from deployments; they should not be part of the same process.
https://rtpg.co/2021/06/07/changes-checklist.htmlApple Password Rules
How to give password generators guidance on what to include in a password.
https://developer.apple.com/password-rules/The Handbook Directory
A directory of internal onboarding/cultural corporate handbooks.
https://handbook.directory/Prompt Engineering Guide
A guide to prompt engineering, with a focus on the latest research and techniques.
https://www.promptingguide.ai/Random Things to Do
Random activity generator, sorted by category. For when nobody can decide what to do.
https://randomthingstodo.com/A taxonomy of tech debt
Bill Clark discusses classifying and managing tech debt at Riot. Classifying tech debt by type makes it easier to prioritize and manage.
https://technology.riotgames.com/news/taxonomy-tech-debtModern Font Stacks
A collection of system font stacks organized by typeface classification for every modern OS.
https://modernfontstacks.com/Built for Mars
A library of UX case studies and cheatsheets, plus notes on the design psychology behind them.
https://builtformars.comThe Most Officialest SkiFree Home Page!
SkiFree! The classic game from the 90s. Hadn't thought of it in ages, then came across this site and wanted to bookmark it.
https://ski.ihoc.net/Cry Once a Week
A website dedicated to helping you have a good cry for stress relief. It's all videos, and it does work.
https://www.cryonceaweek.comProxyman
A modern HTTP debugging proxy for inspecting, intercepting, and modifying network traffic. Came across it after seeing HN discussion about alternatives to Charles Proxy.
https://proxyman.comTints
Enter one hex value and get a full 50-950 Tailwind scale, tuned by perceived lightness.
https://tints.devASCII Clouds
Interactive ASCII art generator using Perlin noise. Renders animated cloud patterns with customizable wave, color, and threshold settings. Very cool.
https://caidan.dev/portfolio/ascii_clouds/Laws of UX
Collection of ~30 UX design principles (Fitts's Law, Hick's Law, Miller's Law, etc.) with explanations.
https://lawsofux.com/Mochi
Spaced repetition flashcard app where the cards are markdown notes. Local-first, cross-platform. Alternative to Anki with a more modern interface.
https://mochi.cards/Pixel Snapper
Automatically fixes messy or blurry pixels into a perfect pixel grid. Great for cleaning up AI-generated pixel art. Free and open source.
https://www.spritefusion.com/pixel-snapperOpen-Meteo
Free weather API, no key required. High-resolution forecasts, 80 years historical data, air quality, marine, geocoding. Free for non-commercial use.
https://open-meteo.comGuesstimate
Spreadsheet for uncertain values. Enter confidence intervals, get Monte Carlo simulations. I love their UX for this, it's so good for forecasting with value ranges.
https://www.getguesstimate.com/ASCII Characters Are Not Pixels
Technical post on image-to-ASCII rendering, with interactive 3D demos and draggable sliders worked into the explanation. I hope my technical writing is one day as good as this.
https://alexharri.com/blog/ascii-renderingDeckbox
Magic: The Gathering collection manager and trading platform.
https://deckbox.org/JustWatch
Find where movies and TV shows are streaming. Search across a bunch of streaming services.
https://www.justwatch.com/OSHub
Directory of hobby operating systems, kernels, and bootloaders. You can publish your own projects and devlogs there.
https://oshub.org/The True Size Of...
Drag countries around the map to compare their true sizes. Visualizes Mercator projection distortion. Surreal to see how country sizes really compare when you can move them around.
https://thetruesize.com/Stay SaaSy Guides
Guides for scaling product & engineering teams from $0 to $100M ARR. Executive leadership, product management, engineering management.
https://staysaasy.com/guides.htmlYour Data Fits in RAM
Enter your data size, find out if it fits in RAM. A reminder of just how massive a single server actually is these days.
https://yourdatafitsinram.net/Ingredients of an All-Natural Egg
Infographic listing every chemical in an egg. A reminder that 'chemicals' aren't inherently scary. Kind of like the DHMO joke.
https://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ingredients-of-an-all-natural-egg2.jpgGit Mailmap
Map author/committer names and emails to canonical versions. Useful for cleaning up git history attribution.
https://git-scm.com/docs/gitmailmapTunarr
Create classic live TV channels from your Plex/Jellyfin/Emby media. Schedule content like real TV with filler and commercials. I want to use it to build 80s and 90s TV stations for myself.
https://github.com/chrisbenincasa/tunarrKagi Search Stats
Global stats on pinned and blocked sites across Kagi users. Shows the power of community-driven search result curation.
https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboardDiataxis
Documentation framework built on four modes: tutorials, how-to guides, reference, explanation. Very very useful way to think about structuring docs.
https://diataxis.fr/The Elements of APIs
A decent API design guide that covers contracts, resources, versioning, authentication, etc.
https://johnholdun.com/apis/Zotero
Free reference manager for collecting and citing research sources.
https://www.zotero.org/Procedural Map Generation
Overview of map generation techniques.
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/4031/methods-for-generating-a-mapRelative Time Element
GitHub's web component for auto-updating relative timestamps. Server caches HTML, browser localizes to user's timezone.
https://github.com/github/relative-time-elementSafe PHP
PHP functions rewritten to throw exceptions instead of returning false. No more checking return values, just try/catch.
https://github.com/thecodingmachine/safechezmoi
Dotfiles manager. Syncs personal config across machines, with templating and secrets support.
https://www.chezmoi.io/Draggable Objects
Deep-dive on implementing drag with pointer events. Covers pitfalls, constraints via setters, and treating clicks as zero-movement drags.
https://www.redblobgames.com/making-of/draggable/The Spam Chronicles
ChatGPT automatically replies to spam emails and wastes scammers' time. The conversations are hilarious.
https://thespamchronicles.stavros.io/Novelty Answering Machine Archive
The world's largest archive of novelty answering machine greetings from the 80s/90s.
http://www.noveltyansweringmachine.com/audio/index.htmlTech Company Org Charts
The famous satirical comic: Amazon's hierarchy, Google's chaos, Microsoft's warring silos, Apple orbiting Jobs, Oracle's giant Legal dept.
https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-chartsVale
Linter for prose. Checks style, grammar, and terminology consistency across technical docs.
https://vale.sh/Sent.dm
One endpoint for SMS, WhatsApp, iMessage, Viber, and RCS. Auto-detects the channel and handles fallbacks; they claim to be 80-90% cheaper than pure SMS.
https://sent.dm/Type-Safe Object IDs in TypeScript
Branded types for IDs so you can't mix up UserId with PostId. Catches bugs at compile time.
https://www.kravchyk.com/adding-type-safety-to-object-ids-typescript/Visions of the Future
NASA JPL's retro travel posters for exoplanets and other space destinations. Genuinely beautiful.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/visions-of-the-future/YC Startup Library
15+ years of Y Combinator content on fundraising, pitching, growth, sales, and building companies.
https://www.ycombinator.com/libraryGitLab Product Personas
GitLab's detailed product personas. Good reference for how to document user personas.
https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/personas/Afterplay
Browser-based emulator for classic consoles. Play retro games on any device.
https://afterplay.io/VisiData
Terminal-based spreadsheet for data exploration. Opens CSV, handles millions of rows, instant charts, all in the terminal. Badass CLI tool.
https://www.visidata.org/Marmoset Hexels
Grid-based painting tool using geometric shapes. Great for pixel art.
https://marmoset.co/hexels/Free for Developers
Huge list of developer tools with free tiers. More valuable (to me) as a discovery resource than for the 'free' part.
https://free-for.dev/Lighthouse PHP
GraphQL framework for Laravel.
https://lighthouse-php.com/lite-youtube-embed
Web component that renders YouTube embeds much faster than the default one. Lazy-loads the player on click, uses youtube-nocookie.com for privacy. By Paul Irish.
https://github.com/paulirish/lite-youtube-embedRay.so
Create beautiful code screenshots with syntax highlighting, themes, and export options.
https://ray.so/Scorecard
Beautiful iOS app for tracking scores in board games, card games, and sports. Clean UI.
https://www.getscorecard.app/PHP-Nuke
Demo site for PHP-Nuke, the classic early-2000s portal CMS. Web 1.0 nostalgia. I remember using this and a bunch of other CMSs as a kid.
https://www.opensourcecms.com/php-nuke/Toxiproxy
TCP proxy for simulating network failures in tests. Add latency, bandwidth limits, timeouts, connection resets.
https://github.com/shopify/toxiproxyActive GitHub Forks
Find the most active forks of any GitHub repo. Useful when the original project is abandoned.
https://techgaun.github.io/active-forks/index.htmlTextFiles.com
Jason Scott's archive of 1980s BBS-era textfiles, ASCII art, and digital history. I am so glad this is all recorded for posterity.
http://www.textfiles.com/Local-First Software
Seminal Ink & Switch essay on building software where users own their data. Talks about CRDTs, offline-first, real-time collaboration, all that jazz.
https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/Interactive Guide to CSS Keyframe Animations
Josh Comeau's excellent guide to @keyframes.
https://www.joshwcomeau.com/animation/keyframe-animations/Terragen
Photorealistic 3D environment rendering. Used by ILM, Weta, Digital Domain for film VFX. I made scenes with this as a kid.
https://planetside.co.uk/Mozilla Web Security Guidelines
Web security reference. TLS, HSTS, CSP, CORS, cookies, CSRF, referrer policy, SRI. Examples and implementation notes.
https://infosec.mozilla.org/guidelines/web_securityCommand-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster
Classic demonstration that simple shell pipelines (cat/grep/awk/xargs) can process 3.5GB in 12 seconds vs 26 minutes on Hadoop. A reminder to reach for the right tool, not the trendy one.
https://adamdrake.com/command-line-tools-can-be-235x-faster-than-your-hadoop-cluster.htmlWeb Interface Guidelines
Vercel's checklist for building quality web interfaces.
https://vercel.com/design/guidelinesuPlot
Tiny Canvas 2D charting library for time series. Renders 166,650 points in 25ms, streams at 60fps. Crushes Chart.js/ECharts/Plotly on benchmarks.
https://github.com/leeoniya/uPlotTechnical.City GPU Rankings
GPU performance rankings.
https://technical.city/en/video/ratingSquoosh
Browser-based image optimizer from Google. Compare and compress with different codecs in real-time.
https://squoosh.app/Mozilla HTTP Observatory
Scan any site for security headers. Scores your site and gives actionable recommendations.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/observatoryPersonal Status Pages
Merlin Mann's 2005 idea: people should have status pages like sites do. Show current projects, inbox count, now playing, availability.
http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/19/personal-status-pageCSS 3D Adventure Game
Full 3D dungeon crawler rendered entirely in CSS/HTML. Features lighting, shadows, geometry culling using CSS transforms. Impressive demo of what's possible.
https://pantel.is/projects/css3d/EICAR Test File
Standard 68-byte test string for antivirus software. A legitimate DOS executable that prints text, used to test AV without real malware.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EICAR_test_fileSaturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Daily webcomic. Science, philosophy, relationships, absurdist humor. One of the best long-running webcomics.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/color × color
Create accessible color palettes using Okhsl or HSLuv.
https://colorcolor.in/MiniStack
Run AWS locally. Emulates 100+ AWS services (S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, etc.) for dev and testing without cloud costs.
https://ministack.orgFreeDNS
Free dynamic DNS service. Get subdomains on thousands of shared domains or host your own. Classic service, been around forever.
https://freedns.afraid.org/Traccar
Free open-source GPS tracking platform. Self-hosted or cloud, supports 100s of device protocols.
https://www.traccar.org/Google Authenticator PAM
Add TOTP 2FA to SSH and other PAM-enabled services. Works with any authenticator app.
https://github.com/google/google-authenticator-libpamexplain.depesz.com
PostgreSQL EXPLAIN ANALYZE visualizer. Paste query plan, get colorized breakdown of costs, times, buffers.
https://explain.depesz.com/Bullshit.js
Bookmarklet that highlights marketing buzzwords on any webpage. Reveals corporate speak in all its glory.
https://mourner.github.io/bullshit.js/oha
Rust-based HTTP load generator. Modern alternative to wrk/ab for quick benchmarking.
https://github.com/hatoo/ohaUp-Goer Five Text Editor
Write using only the 1000 most common English words. Inspired by XKCD #1133. Great exercise for explaining complex concepts in simple words.
https://splasho.com/upgoer5/Frutiger Aero Archive
Digital museum of 2000s tech aesthetics. 4000+ wallpapers, music, videos, icons from the glossy UI era. Windows Vista/7, PS3, Wii, iDog, skeuomorphism, bubbles, bokeh, and grass. Mid-2000s nostalgia.
https://frutigeraeroarchive.org/GeoNames
Free geographical database with 11M+ placenames in all countries. Downloads and web services for geocoding, postal codes, and location data.
http://www.geonames.org/phpunit-query-count-assertions
Laravel/PHPUnit package that asserts query efficiency in tests, stuff like no N+1, no duplicates, all queries use indexes (via EXPLAIN).
https://github.com/mattiasgeniar/phpunit-query-count-assertionsSWR
React hooks for data fetching by Vercel. Returns cached (stale) data first, then revalidates with a fresh fetch. I haven't needed to use it, but I like the idea of it.
https://swr.vercel.appSlidev
Presentation slides for developers. Write slides in Markdown, powered by Vue and Vite. Alternative to Reveal.js.
https://sli.devCSS Support Guide for Email Clients
Campaign Monitor's compatibility matrix for CSS in email clients. It is -the- reference to check before using CSS in an HTML email.
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/PHP: The Right Way
Community-maintained quick reference for modern PHP best practices.
https://phptherightway.com/Avoiding the FOUC v3.0
Paul Irish's 2009 trick to avoid Flash of Unstyled Content, with a no-js class. I remember it was a revelation at the time, and later got added into Modernizr.
https://www.paulirish.com/2009/avoiding-the-fouc-v3/HTML5 Security Cheatsheet
Catalogue of XSS and JavaScript-execution vectors that exploit HTML5 features. Great reference to consult when testing for XSS.
https://html5sec.org/Every Time Zone
A single-page visual clock across timezones: major cities in a horizontal strip, drag to find a meeting time everyone can stand. My favorite timezone visualizer.
https://everytimezone.com/ColorHexa
One-page color reference: paste any hex/rgb/hsl and get format conversions, complementary/analogous/triadic palettes, and a list of named-color matches.
https://www.colorhexa.com/Regexper
Visualises JavaScript-style regular expressions as railroad diagrams. Great for understanding how a Regex works.
https://regexper.com/intoDNS
Runs all the NS/SOA/MX/glue/TTL checks you can think of, so you can diagnose whatever's wrong.
https://intodns.com/RegExr
Online regex sandbox.
https://regexr.com/RealFaviconGenerator
One favicon in, every asset you need out: apple-touch-icon, Android manifest, Windows tile, PWA icons, the works.
https://realfavicongenerator.net/GRC
Steve Gibson's site, packed with idiosyncratic tools. I mostly know it for its random generators, but it has lots of other things.
https://www.grc.com/Slave Hack
Free browser-based hacking simulation game. A formative bit of 2000s internet that I loved playing.
https://www.slavehack.com/Deceptive Design (formerly Dark Patterns)
Catalogue of deceptive UI patterns. Doubles as a checklist of what not to do and as ammunition when you need to argue against it.
https://www.deceptive.design/Kryogenix — Stuart Langridge
Stuart Langridge's personal site. Web standards advocate and open source contributor; his writing on accessibility and progressive enhancement shaped how I think about building for the web.
https://www.kryogenix.org/Pearsonified — Chris Pearson
Chris Pearson's site. I remember reading his work quite a bit when I was growing up.
https://www.pearsonified.com/Regular-Expressions.info — Unicode
Guide to Unicode in regex. The whole website is worth a read.
https://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode.html3v4l.org
Paste a PHP snippet, get its output across 250+ PHP versions side by side, plus performance numbers and VLD opcode dumps. Amazing way to see differences across versions. I used to use it a lot back when I built software for shared hosting.
https://3v4l.org/Keep a Changelog
Convention for human-readable changelogs. I've used this in previous projects and I still think it's a good practice.
https://keepachangelog.com/Lea Verou
Lea Verou's personal site. Lea was one of the people I looked up to when I was a teenager, I owe a lot of my frontend knowledge to her.
https://lea.verou.me/The Political Compass
Plots your political orientation on two axes (economic left/right and social libertarian/authoritarian) instead of the usual one-dimensional spectrum. Worth retaking every few years to see how you've drifted.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/testYou Might Not Need jQuery
Side-by-side cheat sheet of native browser APIs for every classic jQuery operation. More of a fond nostalgia piece now that jQuery is dead, but it was very impactful at the time.
https://youmightnotneedjquery.com/Incident Report: CVE-2024-YIKES
Satirical post-mortem of a fictional supply chain attack.
https://nesbitt.io/2026/02/03/incident-report-cve-2024-yikes.htmlColor Palette Pro
REALLY advanced color palette generator. Supports all the things.
https://colorpalette.proColor Picker
Open-source color picker. Includes plain-English explanations of how each colour model actually works.
https://colorpicker.devLadda
Loading indicators merged into the submit button itself. I -really- like this idea.
https://lab.hakim.se/ladda/Animating the Cloud Modules Icon (Parse Blog, 2012)
Parse's 2012 walkthrough of the pure-CSS animation behind their Cloud Modules icon: glowing dots tracing a curving arrow path against a cosmic purple background. Wayback Machine capture since blog.parse.com is long dead. Mind-blowing at the time.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130114225142/http://blog.parse.com/2012/11/09/animating-the-cloud-modules-icon/Use The Index, Luke
Markus Winand's SQL indexing tutorial. Covers B-tree anatomy, the WHERE clause, joins, sorting and grouping, pagination, and the DML cost of indexes, across Db2, MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, and SQL Server. Free web edition of his book "SQL Performance Explained".
https://use-the-index-luke.comSingle-Serving Sites
Curated directory of single-serving websites: one page, one domain, one purpose.
https://singleservingsites.coolboringBar
Windows-style macOS taskbar. Organizes windows by virtual desktop, with thumbnail previews, pinned apps, notification badges, and desktop switching.
https://boringbar.appSadServers
Broken Linux boxes you SSH into and have to fix. It's a great way to practice DevOps, and it's used as a hiring assessment.
https://sadservers.com/Top key metrics for monitoring MySQL
List of things to make alerts for in MySQL. Useful as a starting dashboard idea.
https://sysdig.com/blog/mysql-monitoring/Adventure Game Studio
The engine behind a bunch of point-and-click adventures. I'm fairly sure one of the demo games I had as a kid was built with it.
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Reiner's Tilesets
Reiner Prokein has been giving away sprites, tilesets, and 3D models for decades, and making games for that long as well. I found his work at 13 and Arunderan left a mark on me.
https://www.reinerstilesets.de/Compromise
NLP that runs in the browser in about 200kb. It's not SOTA but it's pretty great.
https://compromise.cool/How to catch Mew in Pokémon Red/Blue
How to do the glitch that spawns Mew. I'm keeping this for my own personal reference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QGILo0SZyIThe A11Y Project Checklist
WCAG as a checklist of things you can work your way through. Great reference.
https://www.a11yproject.com/checklist/Problem Details for HTTP APIs (RFC 9457)
A suggested standard shape for HTTP API error bodies. Worth following instead of inventing an error format nobody else can parse.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9457.htmlJSON Web Token Best Current Practices (RFC 8725)
The IETF's catalogue of ways JWT implementations go wrong. Run any auth implementation against it.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8725.htmlLitestream
Streams SQLite's WAL to S3 continuously, giving you point-in-time recovery and a read replica for SQLite.
https://litestream.io/The Endless Acid Banger
Generates an infinite acid techno song in the browser. It's actually pretty good for being all algorithm-driven.
https://www.vitling.xyz/toys/acid-banger/News API
REST API for headlines and articles from thousands of news sources. Worth bookmarking in case one day I need news data for a project.
https://newsapi.org/Workspaces
Pictures of a bunch of real desk setups. Inspiration ideas for what to do with one's home office.
https://workspaces.xyz/