Something is terribly wrong. Something is terribly wrong. Something is terribly wrong. Something is terribly wrong.

A regularly updated list of online bookshops that sell DRM-free ebooks, digital comics, magazines, and RPGs.

BookWyrm is ad-free, anti-corporate, and federated. You can seamlessly follow and interact with users on other BookWyrm instances, and on services like Mastodon.

Online tools for making the internet fast, accessible, expressive, and green.

miniPaint is free online image editor using HTML5. Edit, adjust your images, add effects online in your browser, without installing anything...

An ascii art chat room,
info about ascii art, among other things, can be
found on this site.

A large collection of flowers, hearts, hugs, Valentines, and other romantic ASCII art pictures.

A large collection of ASCII art drawings and other related ASCII art pictures.

It's often pointed out that many of the devices in 19th- and 20th-century science fiction are now a reality. We have instant telecommunication devices; we have digital newspapers; we have flying machines; we have automatons that build things for us; we have self-driving quadricycles; we have superfood that survives wild climatic variation and is stuffed with nutrients. We even have ways of obliquely planting ideas directly in people's minds, through propaganda in the press and psychological manipulations in advertising.

If we have all these things, why doesn't the world feel like what we imagine science fiction worlds to feel like? There are many reasons for this, but I'm just going to focus on one aspect here: naming.

Quickly create, copy, and paste unique Unicode text calendars that work everywhere online.

This map generator creates volcanic island style maps.

This application generates a random medieval city layout of a requested size. The generation method is rather arbitrary, the goal is to produce a nice looking map, not an accurate model of a city.

Create a globe using your own images or generate one from scratch!

Superpowers creation guide. Helpful tips, information, and ideas on creating superpowers for your heroes.

While I was constructing a magic system based on necromancy, it occurred to me (in hindsight) that there are three things a writer should know before attempting this at home:

Expand what you already have before you add something new.

If I were to ask you about Superman’s magic, you’d probably talk about his ability to fly, his super strength, the lasers he can shoot from his eyes. You may go from there to his invincibility and perhaps some of his lesser (and more inconsistent) powers. But if we stick with those four, we’ve got a pretty strong setup for what Superman is capable of doing.

However, is this what makes Superman interesting?

I’d put forth that it is not. There are lots of people with magic powers who can fly and who are invincible. There are a lot of strong, fast, or smart people. What makes Superman interesting, then? Two things: his code of ethics and his weakness to kryptonite.

Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

Since the WordPress archives are far from the easiest thing to navigate and it can be difficult to find what you are looking for even though it is, I am putting together a couple of ‘index’ posts linking to things I’ve written on this site on a given topic.

Future timeline, a timeline of future events, based on current trends, long-term environmental changes, advances in technology such as Moore's Law, the latest medical advances, and the evolving geopolitical landscape.

The following list of questions is meant to aid authors of fantasy fiction who are seeking to create believable imaginary settings for their stories. While many of these questions may be helpful or crucial to certain stories, they will not all apply to every story. It is not necessary for an author to answer all, or even any, of the questions in order to start writing, (or to finish writing, either). The idea is simply to provoke people into thinking about the ways their settings and backgrounds hang together … or don't. If it's useful, use it. If not, don't.

A suite of calculators and guides to aid in the creation of life-supporting planetary systems

Some links that are useful for the creation of new worlds or for information on real ones.

This encyclopaedia provides latest detections and data announced by professional astronomers about exoplanetary systems. It is about objets lighter than 60 Jupiter masses, which are orbiting stars/brown dwarf or are free floating. It provides also a database about planets in binary systems, and a database about circumstellar disks.

Generate Analemma for any planet

Create an idea for your next fanfic.

Word-tracking spreadsheets and more.

WordGrinder is a Unicode-aware character cell word processor that runs in a terminal (or a Windows console). It is designed to get the hell out of your way and let you get some work done.

Joplin, the open source note-taking application

Obsidian is the private and flexible note‑taking app that adapts to the way you think.

A markdown-like text editor designed for writing novels and larger projects of many smaller plain text documents.

It is designed to be a simple text editor that allows for easy organisation of text files and notes, with a meta data syntax for comments, synopsis, and cross-referencing between files, and built on plain text files for robustness.

Zim is a notepad like desktop application that is inspired by the way people use wikis.

Yon is a little UI for knowledge designed to be used every day. Add your notes, write your diary, and connect thoughts with bidirectional links. Explore your text through an acme-inspired 2-column interface to dive deep or go wide and always find your way back. It's contained in a single html file with no dependency, so that you can open the lid and tweak any part of it and make it your own.

Text editor - Notes & ToDo (for Android)

Available on Mac, Windows and Linux

Pluma is the official text editor of the MATE desktop environment. While aiming at simplicity and ease of use, Pluma is a powerful general purpose text editor. It can be used to create and edit all sorts of text files.
Pluma features a flexible plugin system which can be used to dynamically add new advanced features to Pluma itself.

Kate is a modern text editor built on the KDE Frameworks and Qt.

Writing Morse code as sheet music emphasizes that the rhythm of the letters is more important than their visual representation.

A musical description of the tones produced by telephone buttons.

The tones produced by telephone keypads are part of a scale that divides the octave into 14 pieces.

This Mario Paint inspired composer tool is easy and fun. You can create simple and beautiful songs right in your browser and share them with the world!