Hidden internet gems

Background

I wanted to post something completely different. There has been some tech post lately about Docker and images so I thought it could be nice with something a little bit more easy to read. Do you remember back in the days when internet started. You could buy magazines full of links to certain websites. This was before Google. Later on there were CDs full of text files and links. Now you can search for everything. However there is so much info so it may be hard to find what you are looking for. So I just wanted to share some nice, interesting and sometimes useless programs or sites that I like.

Apps & Programs

Uptime Kuma

Uptime Kuma is awesome. Both for personal use or as an corporate internal status page. You can add both cloud services or local services. The best thing is that it resides in your local network. If you were to use a cloud service you would not be able to contact your local resources in a simple way.

Link

Cool Retro Terminal

There is something magic about an old crt screen. And you can install your own. I have used WSL so I can actually start it from Windows. There are many variants like DOS, Amber or green. Some time ago I ran Slack Terminal in Retro terminal.
Link

Diskover

Have you ever used tools like Treesize, SequoiaView, Windirstat, WizTree or similar tools to visualize your hard drive or network shares. I did found out about Diskover some years ago and it is amazing. You can compare over time and get details about your files. It is also very fast. The installation is hard and not for beginners. It is free if you are using community edition. If you want the paid versions it is very expensive.

Link

Mapscii

This program is most likely quite pointless. But it is cool. If you want to impress your friends with an alternative to Google maps. Or maybe it is google maps?

Link

Clipchamp

You might ask why I have included Microsoft Clipchamp here? It was acquired by Microsoft in 2021. You might have used movie maker before and not been impressed. I usually use Davinci Resolve so why would Clipchamp be of any use? The reason is text to speech. Lets say you have some kind of footage where you want speech in English or your native language. In my case Swedish. There are loads of companies providing this but you would end up with one voice or just some characters. After this you will have to pay. In clip champ you can generate voice and save it. And later import to your normal editing program. You could buy clipchamp as well but it will only give you 4k export and some other things. I do not need this to make audio.

Figlet

Figlet is kind of useless for most situations. However there are times where you really need to create a good looking ansi/ascii logo. Install Figlet and some fonts. I usually use Figlet for MOTD on my servers or in similar situations. Figlet is installed via apt or similar in Linux.

YT DLP

Note that downloading from YT might be illegal. So check this first. I have my CD collection in the attic and no interest in capturing CDs to mp3. Sometimes I need music for my Davinci video projects. So I use YT DLP to download music. I have also used it to download kids sport movies that the team has shared on YT. I use the command:

yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=code

You might think that this is also illegal. And it might be. However I usually edit the video, insert music and then upload it to YT. When doing this it will tell you that you are using copyrighted music. You will then get a presented with a choice to give all the revenues of commercials regarding to your video to the owner of the music. And this is fine with me. They get money and I can use the music. I suppose there are situations where you have a paid YT channel and are making money yourself. In this case it might not work very well. So in general I do not understand why many are looking for royalty free music to use in non profit channels on YouTube.

Link

WLED

If you like to build things and do some soldering this is for you. During the last years led stripes has become very inexpensive and you can buy any kinds. I did a post some time ago about desktop leds that you can find here. And another one for the fish tank here. Use it with your phone, set timers or build whatever you want to.

https://kno.wled.ge

Sites & Links

Geotastic

You might have used Geoguesser or something similar before. Geotastic is far better and free. However you should support them as it costs money to keep this running. You have all kinds of challenges so just start exploring

Link

Thetruesize

Another maps site. I always known I live in a small country but still Congo is very big.

Link

Min karta

In general I do not think to much about Swedish authorities. But Lantmäteriet has actually made a map that is very useful. You can see so many things here. Only Sweden though.

Link

Driveandlisten

Simple, cool and quite pointless. Drive around in many cities and listen to local radio stations.

Link

MyRestroTVs

If you thought the previous link was strange this is even more odd. Your personal old crt TV in your browser. Pick your TV, pick a year and your channel.

Link

Timeguessr

A little bit similar like the links above. You will se an image. Pick a year and a place.

Link