Cool hangouts on the web

Brain Dead Fannish Stuff                                            

The Stephen Ratliff MSTing Archive -- Be afraid, be very afraid. This archive contains what is possibly (hopefully?) the worst fanfic on the face of the earth, MSTied to make it possibly the funniest fanfic on the face of the earth.

Not So Brain Dead Fannish Stuff                               

Survival Instinct -- Excellent Archive of fanfic devoted to Battlestar Galactica's William Adama and Laura Roslin.

Nathan and Kristin -- Yahoo group for fans of seaQuest's Nathan Bridger and Kristin Westphalen.

Fanfiction.net -- The grandaddy of fanfic sites. They may not have everything, but it's a good starting place to look for just about anything, no matter how obscure.

Really Useful Stuff                                                      

BugMeNot.com -- Y'know all those sites that now demand you register just to read them? Annoying, isn't it? Well, go to BugMeNot.com and plug in the url, and there's a pretty good chance they've got a username and password on file that you can use. 

GRC.com -- Home of SpinRite and Shields Up. My favorite security site on the web. Test your computer's online security, find out how to make it more secure against hackers, and download a few small bits of software to seal any possible leaks. 

Stuff that Laughs at the Absurdity of it All         

Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- Bwahahahahaha! Really it's quite beyond explanation, so I'll simply say that seeing political activism and humor melded in this manner just makes my cynical heart soar. Also, it's funny as hell. Btw, if you go, you must check out the game. Bwah!

Scambaiter.com -- Fighting Scammers Worldwide for Fun and Justice. Learn to protect yourself from online scams while you laugh your head off. 

Worth1000.com -- Photo fakes, tutorials, bad comedy, and assorted insanity. What could be better?

Smart Stuff                                                                    

Bad Astronomy -- Everything you always wanted to know about astronomy...and more...much, much more.

BizarreLabs.com -- Bizarre stuff you can make in your kitchen. 

James Randi Education Foundation -- Feed your inner skeptic.

Silly Stuff                                                                      

Hard Drive Craft Projects -- Learn how to take your old hard drives apart for assorted craft projects. Me, I just wanted to know how to take them apart...which is very cool, and the platters are mucho pretty. Only do this with hard drives you want to kill permanently!

Free Stuff                                                                       

Ad-Aware Personal Edition -- Take it off, baby! Get rid of the spyware folks are always trying to sneak onto your computer. Btw, I recommend you also check your system with Spybot Search and Destroy (listed below) since both programs miss things that the other will catch.

AVG Free Edition Anti-virus software -- It has some limitations, but the anti-virus scanning engine is first-rate. 

DVD Decrypter -- Excellent, totally free software for DVD ripping. It's toward the bottom of the RareWares page.

DVD Shrink -- Simply the best freeware program I know for backing up or re-authoring your DVDs. Also handy for making copies that are region free.

Firefox -- An excellent, reliable browser with a wider array of plug ins, skins, and extensions, plus my favorite thing ever, tabbed browsing. Nothing in this life is perfect, but Firefox makes a good stab at it. P.S. Thunderbird's pretty cool too.

Freeware Arena -- One of my favorite sources for the best in 100% freeware (no shareware or spyware).

Freeware World Team -- Everything freeware, shareware, nagware, etc that's out there can be found here. Be a bit careful, but they have some great stuff. 

Spybot Search and Destroy -- Take it off, baby! Get rid of the spyware folks are always trying to sneak onto your computer. Btw, I recommend you also check your system with Ad-Aware (listed above) since both programs miss things that the other will catch.

SourceForge.net -- The home for open source software. You can find almost anything here, but I recommend a bit of care. There is some very good software here, but in the development stages, some things may be pretty buggy. Also, some projects are not available as compiled binaries (programs you can just install and run). 

Womble Video Editors -- Okay, so technically this is not freeware. In fact, it's demoware, but their video editors are all 100% functional (no limitations) for a month (and frankly, well worth the cost as well), and they edit VOB files (ie, those on DVDs...including those made on DVDRs) which very few programs do (despite any claims to the contrary...most crap out on VOBs). I'm particularly impressed with the fact that I've yet to have sound and image go out of sync with their products, and they're the only ones for which I can say that. 

Zone Alarm Basic Freeware -- Strangely, their freeware version seems to be less buggy than their payware version. So much so that after purchasing the expensive one, I went back to the freebie.