3rd Party Links

  1. Broadly Helpful
  2. Mindfulness
  3. Humor
  4. Quotes
  5. Poets
  6. Visual Art
  1. Science, Math, Education, Calculation
  2. Business & Entrepreneurship
  3. Visionary
  4. Tech Info
  5. Why This Page?
  6. More ...

(Coming Eventually: Electronic & Electro-mechanical Hardware; Fabrication Services; Raw Materials.)


Addressing Life, Work, Relationships, Mental Health, Habits, and Culture

  • Mark Manson

    (Blogger and Book Author. Wrote NYT Bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.)

  • Eric Barker

    (Blogger and Book Author. Wrote WSJ Bestseller Barking up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong.)

  • James Clear

    (Blogger and Book Author. Wrote NYT Bestseller Atomic Habits. Be sure not to miss his 3rd party Great Speeches section.)

  • Derek Sivers

    (Many things, including an innovative thinker and engaging writer. He is currently working on his next book Useful Not True. Two snips: "Adopt perspectives like placebos for your current situation. Use beliefs as tools to ...strategically influence your mindset." The perspective "Everything is my fault" is empowering.
    Also, check out his extensive book notes. And finally, fun — Naïve quitting.)

  • Stephen Guise 

    (Blogger and Book Author. Wrote several very popular books on habits and How to be an imperfectionist. Interview with Brian Johnson regarding latter book.)

  • Rich Roll Podcast

    (Podcaster, Book Author (have not read his book), Ultra Endurance Athlete. Great variety of guests. Kindness and honesty shine through.)

  • Impact Theory Podcast with Tom Bilyeu

    (Very thoughtful interviewer — does lots of preparation. Has fascinating array of guests. Pretty "intense" guy.)

  • Yuval Noah Harari

    (Fascinating speaker/writer. The 2 Most Important Skills For the Rest Of Your Life interview with Tom at Impact Theory above. Book Sapiens (read Kindle sample so far).)

  • Blaz Kos

    (Creator of Agile Lean Life blog.)

  • Jordan Peterson — an interview with him by Tom above.

    (Lecturer, Book Author, Speaker. Wrote the best-seller "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos". Extremely articulate, interesting, highly controversial character. When I have time, I am going to write a blog post on this matter, where, as several thoughtful people have said (though a tiny minority compared to those claiming he is either the 2nd coming of Christ, or the devil incarnate), the most interesting thing may not be Peterson himself, but society's wildly polarized reaction to him — as well as the near incomprehensible shallowness and misrepresentation evidenced in some of his early, prominent interviews. (He deserves to be challenged for what he says and believes, not for what he does not — and as viewers we deserve that too.) In the meantime, regardless of what you may have heard-of/think-of him — benevolent, wise, common-sense, compassionate, loving, savior ... or ... misogynistic, racist, right wing, patriarchal, Christian, fascist — I encourage listing to the above interview.)

  • Sam Harris

    (Book Author, Speaker, Podcaster. Very clear and deep thinker — and into meditation. One of the members of "THE FOUR HORSEMEN The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution".)

  • Tim Ferris

    (Book Author, Blogger, Podcaster. Wrote the best-seller 4-Hour Workweek. He is in the process of deep personal introspective and change; he discusses that in an interview on the Rich Roll Podcast.)

  • Ken Honda

    (Book Author, Speaker, Counselor. Wrote Happy Money: The Japanese Art of Making Peace with Your Money "... his writings bridge the topics of finance and self-help, focusing on creating and generating personal wealth and happiness through deeper self-honesty. He is the first person from Japan to be voted into the Transformational Leadership Council." He is deeply kind, human, and honest. Here is an interview of him on the Adam Markel podcast, and another The Zen Millionaire’s Secret to Creating Abundance | Ken Honda on Impact Theory.

  • James Altucher

    (Book Author, Blogger, Podcaster, Business Guy. Wild, amazingly honest, and well worth your time. Been interviewed by many podcasters, including on Impact Theory.)

  • Joe Rogan

    (Have very much enjoyed the several podcasts I have seen so far, as well as his conversations with Lex Fridman. Joe appears honest, sane, thoughtful, kind, and deeply curious. He has an enormous following and very diverse guests. In this regard, I feel the recent (2022) failed attempts to "cancel" him were and are misguided.
    Interestingly his comedy — he is also a professional comedian — from the little I have seen, is far from my style. This has nothing to do with the quality of his material — rather, I find the emotional tone of his act too "harsh" to be able to enjoy the content; I feel to some degree "assaulted" — "unsafe" even. What I find striking about this is that it is the exact opposite of how I feel listening to his podcasts. If I ever have a chance to talk with him, I would be curious to explore whether he experiences any of this same dichotomy. He is also apparently a skilled martial artist, but I do not know enough to say more on that front.)

  • Positive Thinking / Motivational Speakers/Writers etc. (And, for balance: Mark Manson Vigorously arguing against the entire Positive Thinking movement.)

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Mindfulness, Self-Compassion, and Healing: Teachers, Writers, Support

(Prior self help category includes element of this too but is typically more general in scope, including politics, business, athletics, and more.)

  • Eckhart Tolle

    (Book: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.)

  • Jon Kabat Zinn

    (Early pioneer — MBSR and more. Lots of books.)

  • Tara Brach 

    (Radical Compassion, Radical Acceptance, and more.)

  • Pema Chödrön

    (Wonderful writer/person. One of her books When Things Fall Apart. One of her quotes "This righteous indignation, this panic that someone is going to do it wrong, this dogma you feel that the world will go under if things don’t go your way, is actually a form of aggression. This is true even if the belief is so called good: ...")

  • Jack Kornfield

    (Nice interview in Tricycle magazine.)

  • Kristin Neff

    (Self Compassion)

  • Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

    (NYT Best-Selling author, funny, and playful. From his site "Mingyur Rinpoche integrates traditional Buddhist practice and philosophy with the current scientific understanding of the mind and mental health.")

  • Rick Carson — Taming Your Gremlin®

    (Personifies and extends consideration of negative self talk.)

  • Brené Brown

    (The power of vulnerability, and more.)

  • "4000 Weeks" by Oliver Burkeman.

    (Many superb insights. Get the audio-book, narrated by Oliver himself — he is a delight to listen to. More on this latter when I get a moment. NB: 4000 Weeks is about a human lifespan...)

  • More Specialized
    • Jonice Webb, Childhood Emotional Neglect
    • CMC Foundation For Change: Helping starts with science and kindness.

      (See Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change by Jeffrey Foote & Carrie Wilkens.)

    • Engaging TED talk on depression by Andrew Solomon:

      ("The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality ...". Offers striking study showing depressed people see the world "more accurately.")

    • See also Johann Hari reference along with his TED talk at top of Guiding Principles page. (“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.”) 
    • SMART: Self-Management And Recovery Training.

      (Respectful, supportive, secular, and useful program, with free online resources and local meetings. Deals with addictive behavior of all kinds — alcohol, eating, work, shopping, sex, gambling, etc.)

    • Internal Family Systems (IFS)

      (From Wikipedia, IFS is "an integrative approach to individual psychotherapy developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s. It combines systems thinking with the view that the mind is made up of relatively discrete subpersonalities, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities.". The IFS Institute.)

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Humor

  • New Yorker Cartoons:
  • XKCD "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." See for example #162, #2620, #489, #1022, #699, #688, .
  • Cartoonist Dave Coverly.
  • Chuck Norris Jokes/Facts and yet another compilation. Out of many greats: Chuck Norris counted to infinity… twice., Some people wear Superman pajamas. Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas.
  • Great snippet on man-woman relationships by humorist Dave Barry.
  • Santa Physics.
  • The fantastic Smithsonian Barby piece!
  • Programming Sucks. A small snip: Most people don’t even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn’t make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.
  • Great BC Cartoon by John Hart Studios.
  • Steven Wright". Too much to list, but here are a few gems:
    • You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
    • A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths.
    • I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.
    • I replaced the headlights on my car with strobe lights. Now it looks like I'm the only one moving.
    • Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.
    • I saw a man with a wooden leg, and a real foot.
    • It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
    • (Hover here to see a few more culled delights. Web has 109 more...)
  • Monty Python. Quality can, in my opinion, vary, but the good ones are absolutely fantastic. One of my favorites — . (Be sure to also scroll down and read the "" comment (search comments for "GrahamChapman") recalling dialog between two men who "sat down next to him".)
  • The Simpsons. Lots of good stuff. One of my favorites — .
  • Family Guy. Tons of great stuff. A representative three:
  • George Carlin. Too much to list, but here is one .
  • Woody Allen. Too much to list, but here are three:
    • Richter! F. thought. That fatuous bore, who carried on an illicit love affair for years with the burgomaster's wife, until she found out! Side Effects
    • Woody Allen and Mia Farrow are tied up, with a mafioso type garding them. (Roughly) Mia: Let's work our way out of the ropes and overpower our captor. There are two of us and only one of him. Woody: Yes, but he has an axe, so soon there will be four of us and only one of him. (.)
    • Years ago, my mother gave me a bullet...a bullet, and I put it in my breast pocket. Two years after that, I was walking down the street, when a berserk evangelist heaved a Gideon bible out a hotel room window, hitting me in the chest. Bible would have gone through my heart if it wasn't for the bullet.
  • Ricky Gervais. Want to listen to him more. Here is one skit which, while I don't find uninformly funny, has pieces I certainly enjoyed much — . (I like the person I experience, as much as I like the skit proper.)
  • Trevor Noah — funny, and also a deeply nice and thoughtful guy. See a 2020 collection of his stuff .
  • Peter Sellers. Pink Panther movies (at least). .
  • Lewis Black. Too much to list, but here is one, where sample is actually of him reading a fan-submitted rant onstage:
  • Gary Larson. Too much to list, but here is one. (He's back!)
  • Demetri Martin. Great charts and Venn diagrams. A few samples: Venn #1 (static), , , X-Y #2 (static),
  • A Bob Newhart classic —
  • Two fun Bill Burr skits:
  • Sebastian Maniscalco. Not my "style" personality-wise, but a friend sent me the following and it is in my view very well done and a hoot —
  • Rodney Dangerfield. Not generally my "style" personality-wise, but wanted to share a couple of his excellent jokes nevertheless:
    • My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met.
    • When I was born I was so ugly the doctor slapped my mother.
  • . (This may not be particularly entertaining for those for whom this is a regular part of their normal life and business, but for me, it is a hoot.)
  • Origin and/or Exact Wording Unknown/Multiple/Disputed Origin — and potentially embellished:
    • I just finished child-proofing my house, but they still keep getting in.
    • He who has his head up his ass need not worry about putting his foot in his mouth.
    • I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
    • There was a government meeting. A man in the audience stood up and started talking, and talking, and talking. The chairman made eye contact with the rambling speaker to indicate he should stop and sit down. The speaker acknowledged the chairman, and from that point on simply refused to make eye contact and continued talking.
      Eventually the chairman lost patience and lifted his gavel to bang it down on the podium, and/but on the back-swing hit a visiting dignitary in the head with the mallet.
      The visiting dignitary’s response was "Hit me again — I can still hear him."
    • Ferrari vs. Moped
    • From, I believe, the same comedian, but heard 30 years ago and can't now find reference...
      • When I was a kid
        - My mother said "This is the last time I am going to tell you to take out the garbage." I said, "Thank fucking God."
        - We were driving, and my father turned around and said "If you and your brother don't stop fighting, I'm going to stop the car and come back there." We were like "Go ahead, make our day."
      • I was in New York at LaGuardia Airport, flying to Las Vegas. The woman at the ticket counter asked if I wanted to check my bags all the way through. I said no, leave them off somewhere in Colorado.
        And then I get to Vegas, and it's 114 in the shade. And people say, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." And I'm like "No, it's the fucking heat."
    • Hysterical couple bottle "magic trick reveal" .
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Quotes

  • Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.  Oscar Wilde
  • The Optimist says this is the Best of all Possible Worlds. The Pessimist sadly agrees.  (Attribution Unknown/Multiple/Disputed.)
  • I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.  Maya Angelou
  • The future just isn't what it used to be.  (Attribution Unknown/Multiple/Disputed.)
  • There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.  Peter Drucker
  • In sports, one of the primary sources of advantage is choosing how to play the game. In life, one of the primary sources of advantage is choosing which game to play.  James Clear  |  Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.  Peter Drucker
  • On finding life's purpose: Everything sucks, some of the time. ... what struggle or sacrifice are you willing to tolerate? Are you able to stay up all night coding? Are you able to put off starting a family for 10 years? Are you able to have people laugh you off the stage over and over again until you get it right? ... your favorite shit sandwich is your competitive advantage.  Mark Manson
  • I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.  Abraham Lincoln
  • Smart people don't get into bar fights, but dumb people don't build atomic bombs.  (Source Unknown)
  • Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.  Eckhart Tolle
  • Most entrepreneurs fail because they are working IN their business rather than ON their business. If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!  Michael Gerber
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Poets

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Visual Art: Primarily Techno/Kinetic

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, Education, and Calculation

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Business & Entrepreneurship

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  • Lex Fridman

    (Love this guy — on many fronts. AI, Machine Learning, and Robotics Researcher, Podcaster. Diverse guests, including in particular those related to AI, science, mathematics, and more. Kind, deeply open to "possibility", near zero hubris, loving, and appears (from my listening) to overlap with me in some deep ways re Affectionate Technology. Here he is being interviewed by Andrew Huberman in the Huberman Lab Podcast:  Dr. Lex Fridman: Machines, Creativity & Love)

  • Eric Drexler

    (Author of The Engines of Creation. Early articulated of much of what nano-technology might come to offer. Was involved in founding Foresight Institute. I attended some of his early IAP lectures at MIT.)

  • Ray Kurzweil

    (Books include The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. One core idea: People do not appreciate exponential growth.)

  • Brett Victor

    (Focused on computer UI design (in its deepest sense), with significant math and physics background.)

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Tech Info

  1. Software Utilities
  2. Visualizations, Mind Maps, Flowcharts
  3. Code Development
  4. Windows Tech and IT
  5. Wacky-ass technical shit no one (or almost no one...) should ever have to deal with
  6. Miscellaneous
  7. Web Hosts I Like
Software Utilities

Utilities I find useful, including at least some that are not so common everyone has heard of. [I did not specify which are free vs. paid because too many nuances to make sane — e.g., feature-differences, personal vs. commercial use, etc.]

  • The Journal by David Michael

    (Great journaling program. Powerful enough to be almost a complete office management/organization app — at least in terms of note-taking, TODOs, archiving, etc. Features include: Arbitrary-depth tree-structured organization; clickable links to any content — within journal, within office, or on Internet; search; keyword and topic tagging; calendar, alarms, timers; image and doodle support; and more. (Another option that I have used much less, but from my reading and quick playing is also impressive — offering a substantially different feature set — is Diarium by Timo Partl) {Both Windows} Also, just discovered Obsidian — very interesting; check out plugins Calendar, Dataview, Day Planner.)

  • Balabolka (free), TextAloud (paid), and ReadAloud (free).

    (Reads text back to you at any speed. Useful for many things; I offer here primarily as final step in proofing important docs for typos. I find this method catches WAY more errors (assuming one is a native speaker of the language - I have just explored English) than (only) using Word, Grammerly, or the like. (ChatGPT, online, is also becoming an alternative.) {Windows})

  • How to add formatted text (bold, italics, etc.) to LinkedIn chat (and other supporting normally-text-only apps) YayText {Online}
  • FastKeys Automation Software

    (A wonderful Text Expander, Clipboard Manager, Macro Recorder, Custom Mouse Gesture Creator/Recognizer, and more (e.g., make any window stay on top, and a zillion other things). Great time-saver. Built on top of, and extendable through, AutoHotkey. {Windows})

  • Tidy Tabs

    (Adds tabs like browsers have to any Windows application. A really handy little utility.) [Script for FastKeys (and presumably AutoHotkey) to allow Ctrl-Alt-T command to allow function as a Windows Explorer "Duplicate Tab" command for TidyTabs.] {Windows})

  • dtSearch Desktop

    (Powerful indexed search engine that can find things like one word near another but not near a third, within terabytes of data, in seconds. Allows quickly finding items decades old, and where one has only vague recollection of details. {Windows} Note that I have recently discovered a free alternative (relevant because dtSearch has not insignificant cost). I need to assess it further before fully recommending, but in the meantime, here it is DocFetcher. Similar to dtSearch, and unlike many other Windows offerings, it does full file content indexing, as well as offering a "powerful query syntax" (like "within N words of") as described in prior link. However, DocFetcher does not appear to index filenames for file types whose contents are not also indexed. Thus, you may wish to examine the very nice non-file-content-indexing program Everything. It has very powerful file name, folder name, hierarchy, and meta-data searchability options. See https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/searching/ to get a sense of its power.)

  • WinDirStat

    (Shows disk usage in beautiful graph design. {Windows, but shares links for Mac and Linux as well})

  • WinMerge

    (File and folder comparison utility, with built-in Windows Shell functionality (very handy). {Windows})

  • FS Capture

    (A lightweight screen-capture utility, offering among other things the very handy functionality of auto-scrolling long web pages etc. in order to capture an image larger than fits on the screen. {Windows})

  • PixelRuler — "The screen ruler for graphic artists & web designers"

    (A pixel ruler, on-screen RGB color picker, multi-monitor-functional (x,y) coordinate displayer, and more. {Windows})

  • Image Eye

    (No border image viewer. {Windows})

  • See Through Windows by MOBZystems

    (Makes any window semi-transparent, optionally transparent to mouse clicks, and optionally always on top. (Unfortunately does not provide method to turn off auto-starting with Windows, but easy to disable with built-in Win 10/11 Startup list or Sysinternals Autoruns.) {Windows})

  • MediaInfo

    (Provides detailed info — file wrapper, codec, and more — for video and audio files. {Windows, Mac, Linux, More})

  • DoubleKiller Pro

    (Finds and removes duplicate files. Utility has not been updated in more than decade, however works fine on Windows 10. Why do I recommend it? Because it is the only duplicate file remover I have encountered that includes the critical execution-time-saving concept of a "reference library" - that is, a library of files that are not compared to each other, but rather, "fresh" files are compared to each other and to the library. (A program which I have just begun evaluating, and which does not quite have the desired structure above, but might be similar if multiple de-duping passes are applied, is AllDup) {Windows})

  • Rename Master

    (A batch file renaming program that I just encountered and have used once and seems nice. Quite old - last updated 2010 I believe. But works fine on Windows 11 and donations to site (it's freeware) remain current. And seems better (for my needs anyway) than newer free alternatives I examined.)

  • Neat Video/Image

    (Professional grade video and still photo image cleanup utility. {Diverse app and OS integration} Good alternatives include spatial and temporal filter built into DaVinci Resolve Studio (not part of free version).)

  • RapidTables Online Calculators & Tools

    (Hard to classify — check it out. {Online})

  • FreeFileSync Open Source File Synchronization

    (One of the few such tools that appears to intelligently handle moved or renamed files/folders — something that matters a lot with terabytes of (say) video files. {Windows, Max, Linux})

  • AlphaConv by Adam Najmanowicz — A 32bit image converter (PNG, BMP & TGA)

    (A handy little utility for converting, for example, transparent PNGs to 32 bit BMPs. {Windows} His link of http://www.najmanowicz.com/temp/AlphaConv.zip at https://blog.najmanowicz.com/search/alphaconv/ does not currently appear to be working (was recently, 2022...?); I have provided it here.)

  • MPEG Streamclip: video converter for Mac & Windows

    (One of the few ways left (tested 2022 on Windows 11) to, with high quality, generate PHOTO-JPEG/MJPEG QuickTime .mov movies, following Apple's/Adobe's unfortunate deprecation of same. (We have not found FFMPEG to provide high enough quality even using its highest quality setting — in addition it being far from trivial to use. Another option, but more complex: Blackmagic Davinci Resolve (free or paid version).) {Windows, Mac})

Visualizations, Mind Maps, Flowcharts
  • XMind

    (Mind Mapping. {Windows, Max, Linux, Online, More})

  • VUE

    (Information organization. Tufts University project. {Windows, Max, Linux})

  • Lucid Chart

    (Diverse information organization. {Online})

Code Development
Windows Tech and IT

Primarily software-based information on hardware:

  • Microsoft Sysinternal by Mark Russinovich

    (Diverse useful utilities. {Windows})

  • NirSoft by Nir Sofer

    (Diverse useful utilities. {Windows})

  • Hard Disk Sentinel

    ("Hard Disk Sentinel is a multi-OS SSD and HDD monitoring and analysis software. Its goal is to find, test, diagnose and repair hard disk drive problems, report and display SSD and HDD health, performance degradations and failures.". It also provides the hardware sector-size. (See "Disk hardware sector size" below.) {Multi OS})

  • Belarc Advisor

    (Provides vast amount of detail regarding ones PC. {Windows})

  • CPU-Z

    (Provides diverse PC hardware info. {Windows, Android})

  • PC Benchmarking by PassMark Software.

    (Includes both benchmark utilities for your PC, and vast database to explore/compare-against. {Windows, Mac, Linux, More})

Wacky-ass technical shit no one (or almost no one...) should ever have to deal with:
Miscellaneous
  • Vimeo: To move video by one frame, hold Shift key down when pressing left/right arrow keys. (Note that if uploading 60/59.97 fps videos, arrow key appears to perhaps move two frames at a time, and where which frames are seen may not be the same moving forwards and backwards.)
  • Amazon Subscribe and Save Order History: [As of 2022-07-31, there is no way to display a comprehensive order history for purchased products ordered in this way. (Weird: I have made a feature-request to add,) You can see an individual item's order history by: a) Going to "Subscribe and Save Items"; b) Selecting the "active shipping address" for the item you care about (where history will presumably be as delivered to that address only) — irrelevant if you have only one address; c) Selecting the "Subscriptions" tab; d) Clicking on the item in question. d) Clicking on "View delivery history".
    Yeesh... I will not tell you how many offshore customer service reps I had to go through to even get to this — after failing to find on my own. Dramatically different than my experience otherwise with Amazon, where their design and website ease of use I find outstanding.]
Web Hosts I Like
See additional tech info on TechnoFrolics site.
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Why Did I Post This Page?

  • I made a commitment to myself in 2021 to get more of what I have considered, created, etc., out into the world. I chose this path because what I am certain of is that if it all stays substantially private, whatever value it may have is substantially lost. This page is one small part of that process.
  • In aggregate, this compendium provides a window onto some of what engages me personally (should such a thing be of interest, vs. something to flee... ;-).
  • (I must admit to being somewhat pained posting this page, due to leaving out 1000x more than I am including — that I know about that is, and 109x more that I don't... I will be adding more, including extended summary text of existing and future entries, if/as I am able to find time.
    Note also that someone being left out may simply be because they are so well known, I felt there was no point in mentioning them. For example, my omitting listing the Dalai Lama does not mean I think he is without merit, but rather, because of the assumption that, no matter where in the world you are, you have probably already heard of him...)
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More ...

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