7 Unique Websites I’ve Bookmarked Throughout the Years

Some dead poet guy by the name of Henry D Thoreau was quoted as saying “I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” Never met the guy personally, probably because you know… he’s dead. But in the last couple of weeks, I have been doing a lot of deliberate living things. Questioning some choices. Coming to terms with others.

One of the things I’ve been doing is clearing out my Bookmarks. Over the multitude of years of using Firefox, I have bookmarked – that is, saved for some reason or another to find for later – a lot of websites! It is a confusing mess! So I’ve been going through them and removing a lot of them. Some simply don’t pertain to me any more. Others have been superseded by better links. Others still simply don’t work, lost to the ebbs of internet time.

I thought it would be neat to share a few of them, so with that in mind here we go:

1.) The Secret Teachings of All Ages – This website contains the transcribed work of Manly P. Hall, which was written in 1928. Mr. Hall was a Canadian born lecturer and occultist. The practicality of his works is certainly debatable, but I find the work to be an interesting source to pull from. It’s a solid source for learning about popular metaphysical religions and organizations at the time like The Golden Dawn or Masons, and could be useful if you are a fiction writer trying to write a story ground in some of these beliefs. It’s also an interesting look back at what sort of non-Christian faiths were prominent in North America during this time period. Fun fact: in 1930, this book cost $100 – which would be about $1400 in today’s cash. And you thought your college textbooks were expensive!

2.) Katamari website hack – this is a fun little diversion that will take the website you are on and allow you to roll it up into a ball, much like in the hit puzzle game Katamari Damacy.

3.) RumChata Cheesecake Pudding Shots – I never did get around to making these. Maybe some day I will. They take a popular alcoholic drink known for its sweet tasty and milky texture and turn it into a desert. That will get you drunk. That’s a thing that will end well, I am sure.

4.) Five Key Ways to Build Customer Relationships – This 13 year old article from Entrepreneur is just as relevant today as it was then. Something to consider for anyone looking to start a business or improve their own customer service skills.

5.) Free CSS – Solid website templates. I’ve played around with a few of these. I like that they stand on their own almost right out of the box, but found it frustrating to hack any of them down when they had features I didn’t care for or need.

6.) Worldbroadcastingsystem.com – In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, text chatting and role playing were pretty big. The Ethereal Realms script was an ambitious project that allowed like minded individuals to gather together in rooms, create characters all under one account, upload media, and otherwise participate in a fluid non-commital community. The Ethereal Realms website itself has closed, these days simply showing off its script. There was once several dozen iterations of the project that used the software; now there is maybe three or four left. Of those, WBS remains the most constant. It’s a great way to see everything that worked, and also everything that didn’t, about that software.

7.) Ren’py – Ever want to create a visual novel, or a dating sim? Ren’Py is an option that makes it easy. Also, it’s completely free, even for commercial use.

None of these are affiliate links – I get nothing out of them if you check them out. I just appreciate the opportunity to share a few places I’ve been, as I clear out literally three hundred and some odd pages I’ve saved throughout the last eight years.