A few neat links...

I'll grant you that there is no organization whatsover to these links. But what the hell... this is sort of a network admin's junk drawer of links. If I find something I like, I stick it here. When I need it again two months later, I know where to look. Someday I'll categorize these... really, I will. I mean it. Seriously. Stop laughing.

Xefteri: Articles for Web Developers
This is a really, really well-done site; there aren't that many article there yet, but they are all very well-written and well-illustrated. Wanna know what good tech writing looks like? Browse through some of the article here. Nice design, no clutter.

Robert David Graham
Robert Graham used to have a terrific network security site. The original site is gone, and it has been replaced by a blog, without much content thus far; but this is a guy who is worth listening to.

Security Alert Consensus
Excellent links to security topics.

Dave Dittrich
Some excellent articles on security, with especially good articles on forensics. The rootkits faq is old, but still worth reading.

Max Vision's Whitehats
A very good collection of security resources.

SANS Security Mailing List Archive
A collection of past issues of the Security Alert Consensus mailing list.

SQL Security
An excellent (and scary) collection of security notes for Microsoft SQL Server.

IIS Answers
A nicely organized site, with lots of good news and tips for IIS administrators.

W3Schools ADO Tutorial
A very, very nice introduction to ADO database access.

DNS Stuff
A really neat collection of online tools for name resolution stuff. You can do forward lookups, reverse lookups, find MX records... practically anything you would ever want to know about DNS or whois.

Backup Central
Lots of detailed info on backup strategies. Tends to be pretty technical, but chances are you'll learn at least a few things.

FreeBSD Basics
Very well-written articles, by Dru Lavigne, covering the basics of FreeBSD.

MSExchange.org Exchange Tutorials
Heroic Gods of All Things Exchange. Giant truckloads of tutorials, going deep into the dark heart of Terrifying Microsoft Exchange.

Geektools
Nice web-based whois, traceroute, and so on.

The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide
A comprehensive list of BIOS options, and what they do.

Free-Backup-Software.Net - Freeware Tools
I don't know exactly why this site is named "Free Backup Software." It's mostly zipping tools and a few other bits of freeware. But they've got some very neat-looking, useful tools here.

Password Reset Tool by PNorhdahl
Lost the local admin password for your NT/2000/XP system? Here's a terrific free tool that will allow you to boot from a CD or floppy to reset the password. It can do other tricks, too!

Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages
A nice collection of command-line script examples and tools.

Textism Word HTML Cleaner
An online tool that lets you clean up HTML documents created with Microsoft Word. If you've ever looked at the cluttered, crap-filled code that Word generates, you'll appreciate this tool. The online version will do only small documents, but if you subsribe to the service you can do larger files, too.

Registry Guide for Windows
Lots of tips for modifying the Windows registry.

HFT Forums: Restoring Active Directory
A good article on backing up and restoring Active Directory.

KB Update Info
Well-organized site that makes it easy to find information on Microsoft's latest updates.

Hi-Tech Support: Beep Codes
Some very helpful charts showing POST error beep codes.

FreeTechMail.Org: Technical Mailing Lists
A seriously butt-kicking collection of technical mailing lists. Very nice.

F.P. Schultze's Batch Scripting Site
Another nice collection of batch files. Some of them can be fussy (they may need to be executed from within the Windows directory, for instance), but these look pretty cool nonetheless.

W3Schools
A collection of free HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DHTML, XML, XHTML, WAP, ASP, SQL tutorials with lots of working examples and source code. They've got a neat little online tool that lets you play with CSS attributes and view the results. Nicely done!

AOL SMTP Diagnostics Page
Lets you run some tests if you are having trouble sending email to the aol.com domain. Helpful for viewing configuration errors.

Tom's Hardware Guides
Lots and lots of informative reviews of computer hardware.

Crazy PC Components
More computer and computer hardware reviews.

Blinkenlights Archaeological Institute
A neat little site on computer history. Be sure to check out the pop quiz on the world's first portable computer. It probably isn't what you think...

Zupancic Perspective
Yet another tech blog. This one gets thumbs up for providing the answer to a really annoying VSS problem.

Crazy PC Components
Wanna build something like the bizarre, high-tech, show-off PCs that you saw on the link above? Check out this site.

Bart's Way to Create Bootable CDs
Kinda cool page with lots of info on making bootable CDROMs.

Web Developer's Virtual Library
Very good site, with really neat page on getting syndicated news for your site.

Free Web Templates
Links to several page template sites.

Network Security Library
More good security links.

GFI LANguard Network Scanner
A free network security scanner for Windows. I've used some of GFI's other products in the past; their FAXMaker product was great. I haven't tried this scanner yet, but it's gotten good reviews.

Public DNS Service
These people will host your DNS for you, and they'll do it for free. This would be ideal if you want to set up a simple web server in your own domain, but don't want to have to learn to maintain DNS records. It sounds like a cool idea, but I've never used their service.

ZoneEdit Free DNS Service
These people haven't been around as long as Granite Canyon, but I give them a tentative thumbs way up. I've used their service for a while, and it has been pretty reliable. In about three months, I've had two occasions where their servers didn't seem to be responding. In both cases the problem seemed to be cleared up within about 15 minutes, but still... 15 minutes would be a long time to be down if you really give a damn about your site. On the plus side, they've got a nice management interface, it's easy to use, and it includes email forwarding. And what the hell... it's free.

Windows NT DNS FAQ
All kinds of stuff about running DNS on NT.

Siteplayer Tiny Webserver
I have no idea what the hell I would use this thing for, but check it out... it is sooooooo cool.

IT White Papers
A massive collection of technical white papers from many different sources. You need to register to access the papers, but it's free, and they do have a great selection of topics.

Internet Firewalls: Frequently Asked Questions
A not-at-all pretty but wonderfully informative FAQ on firewalls.

Rich Geib's Universe
I stumbled across this site when trying to track down the exact context of the well-known Marx quote about "the ash heap of history." I wound up wasting quite a bit of time on a collection of thoughtful and well-written essays.

Javascript Stuff
Nice collection of free Javascript stuff.

Borland Compiler
A free C++ compiler from Borland. I like Borland. I used to mess around in C, using an old edition of their C++ tool.

Borland Delphi: Free Personal Edition
It's damn cool that Borland gives away a C++ compiler (above). This is even neater: you can get a free copy of Delphi! The only restriction is that you can't sell the programs you create with it; if you share them with anyone, you have to give them away fro free. Hey, I that... they'll share with us if we share with somebody else. For what it's worth, as of this writing, I've never used Delphi. I do know, however, that it is very highly regarded, and those who use it swear that it's far superior to Visual Basic. Who am I to argue?

DSLReports: Connection Speed Explanation
This is very good article explaining what speeds you can realistically expect from various network connections. Check out their home page, too... nice info on DSL providers in general.

Web Spider Identifier
Wonder where that robot that crawled your site is from? Find out here.

The Free Site: Free Hosting Sites
Want space for hosting a free web site? Look here.

DigitalFAQ: Capturing MPEG with an ATI Card
Very nice tutorial on using ATI video capture cards.

USBMan Guide to Motherboard Cable Assembly
Everything you ever wanted to know about USB pinouts. OK, so you probably won't need to know anything about them, but I do, so I'm putting this link here before I forget.

Xset
Supposedly Cool Interface Tweaking Thing. I don't think I ever tried it.

Beware of Cat Graphics
I have no idea why you would need a truckload of cat graphics, but if you did, this would be the place to get 'em.

Microsoft IIS Security Checklist
A good checklist for security configuration issues when using IIS.

Red Hat 7 Hardware Compatibility Search
Want to know if it will work with Red Hat Linux 7? Check here.

Cygwin Utilities
Free UNIX-like utilities for Windows. Indispensible!

Free ASP Stuff
It's, uh, free ASP stuff.

Zarr's VB Web Site
I dunno who "Zarr" is, but I stumbled across this site looking for some sample VB apps so that I could figure out how to make a goofy little link-formatting utility. It's a neat site, and if I were really into VB I'd be there all the time.

Planet Source Code: VB
A great site with tons of sample VB code.

Web Positioning Newsletter
Nice tips for helping improve your position in search engine rankings. I've applied things I've learned from these newsletters in building my pages for the Mekong Network. Go to Google, and search for "Cambodia Photos," and look at where my Cambodia photo pages show up to see how well these ideas can work.

Super Computer Sale
This is the website for one of those big-ass computer shows. Once or twice a year this shows up in Rosemont, and I can never remember when it takes place. This is the site to check to find out.

Microsoft Fresh Start for Donated Computers
If you work with a school to set up donated computers, you might want to take a look at these Microsoft pages, which describe how you can obtain a verified license for older computers (Pentium II or equivalent or earlier) which are being used for educational purposes.

Traceroute Utility
A nifty web-based traceroute utility. I've been using this site for a couple years.

Driverzone.com
Drivers for practically everything under the sun.

Apple Spec Database
Technical specifications on all Macintosh models.

Windows95.com
Loads of Win95 stuff.

Developer's Library (or, uh, something like that)
Nice programming info site. Has a links page to add your site to their list.

Sam Spade
Want to know the origin of that jerk who keeps running portscans against your firewall? This site has lots of tools for tracing info on domains and addresses, and other aids to combat hacking.

CKnow.Com Acronyms: File Extensions
Wonder what that file suffix means? Check it out here.

RFC Web
A big-ass archive of Internet RFCs. If you don't know what an RFC is, chances are you will never need one.

Pine Information Center
Pine... a damn fine email program for those of us who still read our email from a UNIX or Linux shell account.

Mac Orchard
This site has a great collection of Macintosh server Internet software, and their collection of Macintosh server apps in unrivalled.

SANS Institute Online
Lots of good security info. They've got a great mailing list, too.

SolarWinds Subnet Calculator
A neat Windows-based tool for calculating addresses within a subnet.

PC Technology Guide
An excellent reference site for all topics related to PC hardware.

WSG's RedHat Linux Security Details
A nice page of security tips for Red Hat Linux machines.

PlayTool
It's not much to look at, but this site has some excellent articles on hardware, particularly video cards and power supplies.

And now for something completely different...

Kartoo
A very, very unusual search engine... enter the address of a website in, and watch it creates a funky little visual map of related topics. I don't know what it would be good for, but it's kinda cool nonetheless.

Time.gov
I just kinda like that map that shows where it's dark and where it's light.

Sodaconstructor
A fun little push-it-around, flip-it-over, drag-and-drop toy. I can't describe it. Just play it.

The 50 Most Averagest TV Shows of All-Time
Now this is funny as hell... the most run-of-the-mill TV shows of all time! OK, granted, there were two or three on the list that I thought were actually a little better than average (The Pretender, Kate and Allie, Hunter) but for the most part, yep... those are average. And I love some of the comments. Especially the stuff on "Jake and the Fatman.".

An Entirely Other Day
Very, very funny observations on the odd events of any given day. Not sure what the creator has planned for the site, but the archives are still there, and still worth reading.

The View-Master Ultimate Reel List
View-Masters rock. End of story.

Monty Python Songs
Lyrics to the great Monty Python songs.