Websites of Note

A list of useful websites.

I have included a representative quotation from each website.

A curated index of digital tools, databases, and archives. These are not passive feeds to scroll through; they form the actual infrastructure for serious research, acoustic microscopy, and programmatic problem-solving.

Advent of Code An annual set of programming puzzles that functions as a brilliant gauntlet for algorithmic thinking. While ostensibly Christmas-themed, the challenges rapidly escalate in complexity, requiring genuine data-structure intuition and optimisation. A perfect companion to esoteric puzzle titles like Shenzhen I/O.

Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary The definitive, digitized dictionary of Old English. Far surpassing basic glossaries, this searchable database includes the exhaustive citations and philological context of the original printed volumes, making it an indispensable tool for parsing Ælfric or dissecting Germanic historical morphology.

Every Noise at Once An algorithmically-generated scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, built on Spotify's internal classification data. It is a staggering statistical visualisation of music taxonomy. You can click on wildly obscure genres—from "deep progressive trance" to "vintage swedish pop"—and instantly hear audio samples, mapping the exact acoustic boundaries of niche musical subcultures.

Hooktheory (Theorytab) An interactive database of chord progressions and melodies transcribed from commercial music. It strips away the audio wash to reveal the underlying harmonic architecture of a track, making it an exceptional tool for analysing exactly why a Steely Dan chorus resolves so satisfyingly or how a specific circle of fifths operates in a pop context.

IMSLP (Petrucci Music Library) The International Music Score Library Project. A monumental public-domain repository of sheet music and original manuscripts. Whether you are hunting down obscure Elizabethan keyboard polyphony to arrange for guitar or verifying the exact voicing of a classical counterpoint, this is the definitive digital archive.

itch.io The premier platform for independent digital creators. This is where you find the weird, the wonderful, and the aggressively mechanics-driven games that bypass the bloated AAA industry entirely. It operates as a vital ecosystem for experimental game design, niche tools, and raw, unfiltered interactive art.

OverClocked ReMix An organisation dedicated to the appreciation and arrangement of video game music. It treats early chip-tune and MIDI soundtracks with the rigorous analytical respect usually reserved for traditional composition. A superb archive for tracking how composers like Jake Kaufman or Nobuo Uematsu manipulated severe hardware limitations to create legendary motifs.

The Pangloss Collection An open archive of endangered languages, featuring high-quality audio recordings tightly synchronised with phonetic transcriptions and translations. It is heavily populated with the boots-on-the-ground fieldwork of scholars like Michel Ferlus. Absolutely essential for listening to the precise physical mechanics of tonogenesis in Vietic and broader Austroasiatic languages.

Python Challenge A brilliantly maddening programmatic riddle game. There is no simple user interface; advancing to the next level requires writing a bespoke script (traditionally in Python) to parse image data, manipulate text strings, or decrypt hidden page elements. It turns coding into an active, cryptographic puzzle.

SEAlang Library An indispensable set of tools and text corpuses for Southeast Asian linguistics. It aggregates dictionaries, historical archives, and bilingual bitexts for Mon-Khmer, Tai-Kadai, and Tibeto-Burman languages. If you are tracking the etymology of a Sino-Vietnamese borrowing or a specific Austroasiatic root, the hunt usually starts here.

Sound on Sound The absolute gold standard for audio engineering and music production journalism. Their "Inside Track" mix breakdowns and exhaustive hardware reviews treat music creation as a rigorous technical discipline. It is mandatory reading for anyone utilizing Logic Pro and attempting to understand the microscopic panning and EQ decisions behind classic mixes.

Vietnam Journals Online (VJOL) A crucial repository and centralised platform hosting Vietnamese academic output. It bypasses the Western-centric academic silos, providing direct access to local sociological, historical, and linguistic research published within Vietnam, making it a critical hub for deep-dive regional scholarship.

WALS Online (The World Atlas of Language Structures) A massive database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It allows you to statistically map how specific typological features—like tone systems or word order—are distributed geographically across the globe. A brilliant intersection of linguistics and data visualization.