On this page you’ll find web resources that I enjoy. I hope you’ll find something that interests you. To start, here is a short post about why I created this page.
http://graphicrants.blogspot.com
Brian Karis’ (known for Epic Games’ “Nanite” virtual geometry system) blog. A bunch of interesting hardcore real-time graphics work from someone working at a triple-A studio. It’s rarely updated and most of the posts are from 5+ years ago.
http://advances.realtimerendering.com
This SIGGRAPH track has heaps of information about state-of-the-art graphics techniques, mostly used in games. There are lots of technical talks and slides.
Nate Soares’ blog. The themes that stand out most for me are around agency, competence, and motivation. While they haven’t posted in many years, I’ll still be coming back to what they have already written in the years to come.
https://www.readthesequences.com
A compilation of blog posts about rationality. These had a huge impact on me and my way of thinking during my early 20s, and I still re-read them now and then. I don’t know the right philosophy words to describe the genre. Materialism is one that I do know.
I know some people who don’t like this series because to them Yudkowsky comes across as arrogant; a sort of “look at me I am very smart” vibe. I personally have never felt anything like that when reading these posts.
Casey Muratori is a game developer. They’ve written a lot about API design, and I still benefit from re-reading posts such as Semantic Compression. Their posts on software performance also stand out in my mind.
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/
Eric S. Raymond (esr) is an old-school Unix hacker who’s been publishing essays on the internet since the
90s. I find a lot of value in their analysis of Unix technical culture and design principles. My
favourite work is The Art of Unix Programming, from which
I continue to gain insights on software design.
Alex Kladov’s (known for Rust Analyzer) blog. They seem to care about good software in ways that I relate to. Some values of “good”: well-structured, refactorable, understandable, efficient.
Nikita Popov’s blog. They have worked on the PHP VM and the LLVM compiler. I like it because they talk about fairly low-level programming language performance (interpreters/VMs and compiler performance).
http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
Paul Graham’s essays touch on topics like software design, motivation, startup advice, and writing itself. Here are some that I enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/@FZDSCHOOL
Feng Zhu is a concept artist who runs a concept design school school out of Singapore. On this channel he draws while talking. He often talks about drawing fundamentals, advice for beginner/student artists, and his experience in art school and industry. There is a lot of content and he rarely posts new videos.
Blog: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JamesGurney
I learned about James Gurney because he wrote a highly recommended book, Color and Light. He is an extremely good artist. His blog is mostly about painting/visual art, and often includes art-related philosophy and neuroscience. On his YouTube channel he posts wonderful narrated videos of plein air painting.
Gwern is a pseudonymous American writer and researcher. They write about a range of topics too broad to list. To gesture somewhat in their direction, they are connected to the [San Fransisco] “bay area rationalist” community, have a GitHub profile, use the Haskell programming language, and contribute to to Wikipedia.
Original site: https://slatestarcodex.com
Substack: https://astralcodexten.substack.com
Bay-area rationalist psychiatrist who writes a lot. I simply find his opinions and cognitive style interesting, whether or not I agree. So far, I prefer his old content (Slate Star Codex) to his new content (Astral Codex Ten).