Ben's Link Collection

Ben's

Collection

This is a collection of links to websites that I have learned from, and enjoy connecting to. Through the sharing of these links I hope that other people will be able to trace my footsteps on the internet and have enjoyable explorations and learning experiences as well, and also gain a greater understanding of some of the influences on my personal development. You should also know that for someone who is even somewhat easily sidetracked or distracted, compiling a links collection can take a very long time. Also note that unvisited (hot) links are red, and visited (cool) links are blue, and new links are indicated with this symbol:

Art Links

Site Title	Description
AARTIKA! original fractal designs	An amazing collection of fractal art that will give you goose bumps
Amano's World	The artwork of Yoshitaka Amano, of Final Fantasy fame
Aust Manufacture	A refreshing gallery of sculpture, paintings and povray created art
Kobe Dolls	A longtime family friend who is in the business of helping others realize their potential through the creation of amazing sculptures that just happen to be dolls. Her art dolls are very inspirational and full of lively energy.
The Concept Design Forum	A neat place where skilled artists go to develop their illustration skills
Polykarbon	Another good art forum, with great tutorials for manga style illustration
Feng Zhu - Concept Artist	A strong collection of artwork for games and entertainment by the artist Feng Zhu
Art of Seung Ho Henrik Holmberg	A very clever, gifted, and hopefully not too starving artist
Saunders' Creative	A showcase of the concept artist Phil Saunders' works
Lex's Page	A bright, witty, and courageous artist, also some of the most humorous material I've read on the web
Joseph Wu's Origami Page	A clever and impressive collection of origami works in a well crafted site
A Hayao Miyazaki Fan Page	Everything you want to know about the greatest creator of Japanese animation and more
ScottMcCloud.com	The visionary author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics
PVP Online	In case you didn't know, there are some great web comics out there, this one by Scott R. Kurtz being one of them
Lomography	a fascinating take on photography, and a vibrant worldwide community
Digital Photography Review	A great resource for digital camera reviews and news. Check it out if you're thinking of getting into digital photography. It also has forums, a glossary, and an FAQ.
deviantART Photography Gallery	A very odd art gallery site, featuring a lot of very odd, yet talented artists. The photography section is not to be missed. It's a shutterbug's paradise.

Computer Art Links

Site Title	Description
Pov-Ray	Stands for The Persistence of Vision Raytracer, it is a very powerful, free 3d computer graphics generating program
The Internet RayTracing Competition	An extraordinay collection of ingenious raytraced images, and an exciting competition
The Pov-Ray Newsgroups	A very active community of people who love to use Pov-Ray
Povray.co.uk	The Britain based Pov-Ray news board. Very cool
Bookmarks For Ken	If you need to find anything related to computer graphics, you'll find a link to it here
Isosurface Tutorial	updated for Pov-Ray 3.5, it is a good explanation of all the basic isosurface forms and techniques
The Museum of Computer Art	Works that would be at home in the Guggenheim. It also has a great competition
Computer Graphics World	The website for the long running and well respected computer graphics magazine
CGNetworks - Creative Computer Graphics	A site for CG news, art, and more. Very cool.
The Gimp	A free and potent image editing software package for most platforms
Irfanview	An awesome worldwide image viewing freeware program
The Fractint Homepage	The biggest and most powerful free fractal generation program around
Fractovia	An amazing fractal art site.
Cristoph's Page	A skilled programmer and artist who blends scientific method with observation to create powerful programs for use with povray, and amazing art
H. E. Day's Homepage	A CG artist and povray user who is well beyond his years in skills and accomplishments
Oyonale Graphics Experiments	Home of Gilles Tran, the IRTC champion and creator of "The Book of Beginnings", a fascinating exploration of dream and reality
Paul Bourke's Pages	An enormous amount of pages dealing with various topics, including Pov-Ray and math
Homepage of Friedrich and Andrea Lohmueller	A huge gallery of Pov-Ray artworks showing great artistry and technical skills. Also has many good Pov-Ray tutorials
Graphics Gallery Cyberbust	Povray's math man, he's on a great artistic journey. A lot can be gleaned from his generous collection of source files
Pixar Animation Studios	The site for the studio that has revolutionized cinema. You can see trailers and short films, and learn about some of the artists and the process that goes into making their movies.

Music Links

Site Title	Description
Anime in the Limelight	A hilarious and entertaining anime radio show with great music
The Jazz Messengers	An episode guide for the music of the amazing anime series Cowboy Bebop, composed by Yoko Kanno
OS Anime	A lot of great "old school" anime music, from shows such as Macross DYRL, Venus Wars, Lensman, and more.
The Yoko Kanno Project	Who is Yoko Kanno? You shall soon find out
MaayaSakamoto.net	All Maaya, All the Time! Discography, Biography, and music samples. This is very enjoyable music, much of it composed by Yoko Kanno.
The Ultimate Nobuo Uematsu Fan Page	The life and music of Nobuo Uematsu, the brilliant game music composer
Fantasy Reborn	Michael Huang has made many brilliant arrangements for solo piano of songs from the Final Fantasy Games. You can download sheet music for all of these in Finale .mus format, and also hear many of his amazing performances of them.
Video Game Music Archive	I wish I had found this earlier when I was collecting my favorite Nintendo midis
The Classical Midi Connection	An excellent collection of classical music midis, with plenty of information to boot
Minnesota Public Radio's Website	Hear some great music, or buy some from the public radio music source.
American Mavericks	This is the website for the fantastic award winning public radio show that features essays, interviews with and info on contemporary composers, videos, and a ton of far out music.
MakeMusic! - Coda Music Technologies	Here you can download the free NotePad program, buy the Finale software, and find many more useful things
Apple - iTunes	The best free digital music player/manipulator ever!

Technos Links

Site Title	Description
Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters	An extremely informative news board that's a worldly geek's paradise
The Weekly Geek	Check out this totally hilarious, video game reviewing, interviewing, satirizing duo, Frodo and The Geek.
The Art of Motion Control	Bruce Shapiro has been inventing, creating, and teaching for years, and I've only recently realized that many of the cool things I've gone to see at the Science Museum of Minnesota most of my life were created by him. If you are interested in robotics, electronics, and art that can be created with them, then this site is a must see.
Scaled Composites	The company site for Burt Rutan, the maverick of the aerospace industry. Here you can stay up-to-date on the progress of his various projects, including SpaceShipOne, which I am hoping will win the X-prize.
Mathworld	Eric Weisstein's mathematics cornucopia is a valuable research tool for any mathematician
The Buckminster Fuller Institute	Here you can learn about the creator of geodesic domes and other efficient ways of living
Realstorm	If you've ever dreamed about realtime raytracing, you should know that it's already here
The Complexity and Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems	An great introduction to the sciences of cellular automata and artificial life. Not the greatest layout ever, but hey, content is king
The Primordial Soup Kitchen	An interesting and fun site dealing with cellular automata and related topics
Mirek's Cellebration	The best [free] cellular automata lab I have found
Boids	A distributed behavioral model for flocks, herds, and schools. A fascinating algorithm
Sam Barros' PowerLabs	An up-and-coming physics whiz whose webpage chronicles his numerous amazing and hair-raising experiments
The HTML kit	The tool I used to write my webpage. 'Nuff Said
Zany Video Game Quotes	Quote from the NES game Strider: "HA, HA, HA...Hiryu! You'll be sent to your grave by me Mr. Kain!" This site includes screenshots along with the quotes. Freakin' hilarious.
Classic Gaming	Emulators, roms, and information on all your favorite classic games

Misc. Links

Site Title	Description
( web home of chris mueller )	A good friend with a keen observational eye. He is very good at expressing himself through his shared observations and creations. A fellow artist, thinker, dabbler; a kindred spirit.
The Anagrammy Awards - Monthly anagram competition	Whether you know what an anagram is or not, you've got to check this site out. It has the combined thinking power of a small army of nerds, all working to make you laugh and go "hmm".
Internet Anagram Server / I, Rearrangement Servant	Anagramming: fun, addictive, and now really fast!
Brinkster	A good host; the one I am using for this site
Google	How I've found every one of the sites listed on this page
Chinese Cultural Studies Dao De Jing - Excerpts	These concepts have brought increased awareness and peace to millions of people throughout the world over the millenia
Dao De Jing	Another translation of the classic work
Lee Scheele's Online T'ai Chi Ch'uan Notebook	He's my uncle. He's cool. I like Tai Ji. There you have it.
The Online Ethics Center for Engineering & Science	A site I have used as a reference in my studies, and will refer back to when I am in the field. An interesting look at the complex profession that is engineering
Learning Strategies Corporation	Check out PhotoReading. It will change your life (for the better)
Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, U of MN	The homepage of the department in which I study. It's an exciting place to be
University of Minnesota Libraries	My university's world class library system. Let me count the ways I love thee. One...your awesome selection. Two...your amazing structures and cavernous storehouses. Three...your generous check out times and renewal policies. I could go on.
The U of M's Manga and Anime Society	A great club with weekly anime showings. The site has weekly anime Mp3 downloads!
The Anime Web Turnpike	The end all and be all of anime resources. The definitive anime webpage links archive
The Official Animerica Homepage	If you like anime and you're between the ages of 8 and 18, you need this magazine. If you like anime and you're not in that age range, you probably still need this magazine.
The Right Stuf International, Inc.	This anime, manga, and related products distributor has great selection, good deals, and is very reliable.
The World Footbag Association	A great source for footbag products and information
David Siegel's Homepage	He's the man for typography, website design, and much much more. As he calls himself, "A master of all trades and jack of none". His site is a treasure trove.

Misc. Links 2

Site Title	Description
Minnesota Landscape Arboretum	One of my favorite places in the world; I have biked, run, walked, and driven around it hundreds of times. It is a world class arboretum of around 290 acres that is supported by donations, maintained by volunteers, and is constantly growing and changing.
Science Museum of Minnesota	It is billed as "Minnesota's Favorite Museum", and it is definitely mine. There are so many amazing things there that can be appreciated on so many levels. It has especially good youth oriented programs, and a gargantuan omnitheater.
Backfence	A witty, dry, hilarious column that is featured in the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Variety section. Topics and discussions are simultaneously off-the-wall and close-to-home.
Mountian Bike Review	Mountain bike product and mountain bike trail reviews. For each one, many people write in and give a rating and a brief review, making a wide range of views available.
China the Beautiful	A great collection of Chinese art, literature, and interesting information
Chinese Art Net Online Gallery	An awesome site for traditional and contemporary Chinese arts and artists.
Rikai.com	I found this site to be a most useful language study tool. You can have the online program analyze Chinese (or Japanese) text anywhere on the web and provide you with the pronunciation and meaning of each word or phrase when you mouse over them.
Project Renaissance with Win Wenger, Ph.D.	Wow. Every student, educator, scientist, inventor, musician...okay, everybody has got to check this site out. Win Wenger is an awesome guy who will show you a powerful way of looking within and without, and you'll have a great time along the way.
Veritas Publishing David R. Hawkins, MD., PhD	Ever wonder what this existence is all about? Read David Hawkins' books to get some very thorough explanations from a man who knows. To paraphrase Will Smith in the movie Men In Black, "This is some next level stuff, and I'm in." Just check some of the items listed in the index of his book Power Vs. Force for B: behavioral kinesiology, Bell's theorem, Bhagavad-Gita, big bang, biochemical pathway, birth level of consciousness, Bohr, N., brain function, Buddha. Oh Yeah.
WIL WHEATON dot NET	The most consistently funny, touching, real blog out there. I don't read too many, but this one is very special for me, maybe because I'm Just A Geek too.
The Onion \| America's Finest News Source�	If you ever get fed-up with your normal sources of news due to their political bias, sensationalism, or grim outlook, just turn to The Onion for a thoroughly tongue-in-cheek approach to the news. It is a parody news-source that is done in a way that will perplex very gullible people, and leave the rest in stitches.
Japanese Engrish	Have you ever seen some imported asian product that has really messed up english on it? Well my friend, what you saw was an example of engrish. Now, what happens when people from all over send in photos of these to be collected on a website? You get one of the funniest dang websites out there.
BitPass	A remarkable new concept that I'm sure will gain steam rapidly over the next couple years. Here you can find links to sites where you can purchase the right to view comics or artwork, listen to music, and unlock all kinds of interesting web content for less than the cost of saving a poor, starving, child...er, I mean a cup of coffee.
Apple - QuickTime - Movie Trailers	If you've got a broadband connection, you can now easily watch trailers for a ton of upcoming or recently released films.

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