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What is this place?

a warm gun is the personal web site of multimedia artist and resident geek Ian Adams, based out of Seattle, WA.

Where is everything?

The most recently posted stuff can be found on the front page. Older posts and articles are listed, by category and date, in the archives. There is also the Link Blog, which is my (almost) daily list of interesting links and brief commentary on AWG-related topics.

Additional areas on this site can be accessed by using the navigation links on the far left. (Or far bottom if you’re visiting this site using an alternative browser like Opera Mini.)

Bookmarks

What’s on this page:

Click one of these shortcuts to go directly to that section.

Social Networks
Various social networks of which I am a member.
Friends
The personal web sites of people whom I consider to be friends.
Blogs
I like blogs. Presumably, so do you. (After all, you’re reading this one, aren’t you?) This section contains links to blogs I like, and hope you will, too.
Web Standards and Design
Links to helpful sites or individual articles articles for learning and implementing good designs that use web standards.
Advocacy
Organisations both online and offline which I publicly recommend and support.
News
Not really an exhaustive list, but a list of some news sites I frequent.
Mac OS X Software
Use a Mac? Good for you! In this section you can find links to sites that offer software for your Mac, or modifications to your existing Mac software or OS.
Dashboard Widgets
Looking for Dashboard widgets? Then check out some of the sites in this section.
Online Comics
Comics are a bit of a passion of mine. Here’s a list of online comics I read regularly.
Online Games
Work got you down? Relax with the help of some of my favourite online games!
Other Funnies
Random pages or articles which I think are funny enough to deserve being in everybody’s bookmark list.
Miscellaneous
Things that don’t really fit in to any of the above categories, but which I still feel deserve attention, can be found in this section.

Social Networks

Facebook
My Facebook profile. I log on at least once a day.
Flickr
My Flickr page, where I post my photos.
Twitter
Although my tweets get posted here as well, you might like getting them from the source.
Tribe
I’m hardly ever on it, but I suppose that has more to do with the fact that I only know one person who is. Add me, and I might log on more.
MySpace
I’m taking an indefinitely-extended haitus from MySpace, logging on only if I need to contact someone for whom I have no other contact info.

Friends

Jay Bazuzi
The personal blog of programmer, father, sailor and friend, Jay Bazuzi.
Bit Rationale
Rationale thought
Chondros, Records, Friends
The pictoral view of a working-class hipster.
Cybergeisha
Technology, Video Games, Industrial Music and Other Girly Stuff
Daniel Andrews
The personal weblog of Daniel Andrews, a new media artist in the Atlanta metro area.
Dopefiend.co.uk
The web’s favourite cannabis podcast network.
ephemerons {dot} com
When I lived in Utah for 7 months, I didn’t make many friends. But the few that I did, like Richie Jackson, are definitely a cut above the rest.
fuquad!
Like Sylvia Plath’s Kitchen: Where words go to die.
Travel. 旅行. Spielraum. Recorrido. Voyage. Перемещение. Curso.
So much for vagabonding...
Post’s Posts
My cat’s blog. Yes, you read that right—my cat. He doesn't update it much, though.
Vocino.com
Travis Vocino — Diabolical Super-Villain™
Wesaturtle.net
News and goings-on from the other side of Capitol Hill in Seattle.

Blogs

Airbag
The World’s Safest Website — Greg Storey’s personal weblog.
Anil Dash
Anil Dash is Vice President, Professional Network for Six Apart, Ltd. Dash is a recognized expert on the weblog medium and on the blogging industry, having appeared on television, radio and print in addition to having founded one of the earliest and most popular weblogs on the Internet. In addition, Dash has given presentations around the world speaking about the future of the weblog medium, the relationship between blogs and journalism, and business blogging.
Call Me Fishmeal
“I write software, I’m obsessive-compulsive. I like good stuff. Kittens are fuzzy.”
Authentic Boredom
A savvy blend of marketing and design by Cameron Moll.
Bearskinrug
The professional webspace of illustrator and designer, Kevin Cornell.
The Daily Report
Jeffrey Zeldman presents The Daily Report: web design news & info since 1995.
Daring Fireball
Mac Nerdery, etc. — if you only read one blog about Macs, then John Gruber’s excellent site should be it.
David Galbraith
Scottish, based in New York, former architect at Foster and partners, founder Wists, co-founder: Moreover, co-founder: the Origins Network, co-author RSS 1.0.
FatBits
John Siracusa’s Journal on Ars Technica.
furbo.org
His name is Craig Hockenberry and furbo.org is his place to write for the web.
I Love Typography

iLT is designed to inspire its readers, to make people more aware of the typography that is around them. We really cannot escape typography; it's everywhere: on road signs, shampoo bottles, toothpaste, and even on billboard posters, in books and magazines, online...the list is endless, and the possibilities equally so.
Jane in Progress
Jane Espenson's blog offers great insights on spec script writing.
Jason Santa Maria
Volume Three in a series of inconsequential observations and humourous asides.
Johnaugust.com
A tonne of useful information about screenwriting.
Kottke.org
Home of fine hypertext products.
Life Reboot
If you’re unhappy and you know it, change your life. It’s really that simple.
Linkbunnies
Interesting web stuff for short attention spans.
Mark Simonson’s Notebook
The blog of freelance graphic designer and type designer, Mark Simonson. A great read if you’re into typography.
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
Burns sage, not flags.
Mezzoblue
Design, typography, and the web: live from Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
My Boring-Ass Life
Kevin Smith’s online diary. Shame on you if you don’t know who Kevin Smith is.
passiveagressivenotes.com
Passive-agressive notes from roommates, neighbours, coworkers and strangers.
Possummomma (a.k.a. Atheist in a Minivan)
After being dubbed "that atheist mother" by some of the women in her community, Possummomma decided she would take the idea and run with it.
PostSecret
See a secret… share a secret.
Presentation Zen
Garr Reynolds’ blog on issues related to professional presentation design.
Rebelpixel Productions
Markku Seguerra’s weblog on web design, photography, and other things of interest.
Rogue Librarian
Shooshin’ and stampin’.
Ronald D. Moore
Ron Moore is one of my favourite television writers, probably now most famous for developing the new Battlestar Galactica series on SciFi. He normally blogs at SciFi.com, but in light of the WGA strike, he decided to set up a personal one.
RoughlyDrafted Magazine
“Writing for people who read.”
Signal vs. Noise
A weblog by 37signals about entrepreneurship, design, experience, simplicity, constraints, pop culture, their products, products they like, and more.
SimpleBits
Dan Cederholm’s design blog. What? You mean I actually need to tell you who Dan Cederholm is?
Strange Maps
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by maps. This site tickles that part of my brain.
UNEASYsilence
Fun stuff from a group blog in Seattle.
Veerle’s Blog
Apple, Web, and Technology news from Belgium.
Warren Ellis
Creator of many fine stories.

Web Standards and Design

W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium
The organisation that writes the standards.
A List Apart
From pixels to prose, coding to content: A List Apart, for people who make websites.
Designing with Web Standards, by Jeffrey Zeldman
Don’t even think. Just get the book. Now.
css Zen Garden
A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design.
Zen Garden, the book
A fantastic book not just on CSS, but also on design in general.
CSS Remix
A fresh blend of the best in CSS web design.
Browser Specs
The importance of browser specs.
the noodle incident
Some web development resources, including the Sane CSS Typography demo that formed the basis of the typography on a warm gun.
CSS Panic Guide
An excellent resource for CSS-based designing.
Little Boxes
Clickable CSS layouts.
Position is Everything
Modern browser rendering bugs explained in detail. It’s the place to go if you want to know what all of IE6/Win’s rendering bugs are.
Alertbox
Jakob Nielsen’s newsletter on web usability.
The Layout Reservoir
Steal these CSS layouts!
Real World Style
CSS layouts, tips, tricks and techniques.
Stylegala
A publication about web design and standards.
Web Standards Awards
Form and function. Combined.
NYPL Online Style Guide
XHTML and CSS basics. Converting from HTML to XHTML.

Advocacy

WaSP: The Web Standards Project
A grassroots coalition fighting for standards that ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
No www.
By default, all popular Web browsers assume the HTTP protocol. In doing so, the software prepends the “http://” onto the requested URL and automatically connects to the HTTP server on port 80. Why then do many servers require their websites to communicate through the www subdomain? Mail servers do not require you to send emails to recipient@mail.domain.com. Likewise, web servers should allow access to their pages though the main domain unless a particular subdomain is required. Succinctly, use of the www subdomain is redundant and time consuming to communicate. The Internet, media, and society are all better off without it.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that offers copyright licenses with a flexible range of protections and freedoms for the creative works of authors, artists, and educators. They have built upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. They are a nonprofit organisation, and all of their tools are free.
Save Orphan Works!
Over the past forty years, Congress has extended the term of existing copyrights 11 times, thereby stopping the flow of creative material into the public domain. The biggest supporters of these laws are individuals and corporations with extremely valuable copyrights that are about to expire (for example, Mickey Mouse). The biggest effect of these laws is to make unavailable an extraordinary range of creative material for next generation’s creators. Just as Walt Disney used the works of the Brothers Grimm to produce some of the best of the Disney stories, so too should the next Walt Disney be able to build upon the stories told by Disney.
But more important than the few valuable copyrights that these extensions protect, this case is about freeing the vast majority of creative work still under copyright that no one seeks to protect—indeed, work which the current copyright owner doesn’t even know he or she owns. Many films from the 1920s and 1930s are decaying in vaults because current copyright holders cannot be identified. Many books and songs published in the early part of the century are unavailable because the cost of finding the copyright owner is just too high. Congress sacrificed all these works, just to protect a few valuable copyrights. But as the Supreme Court has said, “you can’t burn the house to roast the pig”—not even to save The Mouse.
Apostrophe Protection Society
Preserving the correct use of this much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English language.

News

AppleInsider
One of the best sources of Apple news on the Web.
The Cult of Mac Blog
Wired News’ blog by and for Mac users.
Disinformation
More than just news.
MacNN
Apple, iPod and Mac news.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog
Pretty decent source for Apple-related news. Noticing a trend?

Mac OS X Software

Marathon (using Aleph One) for Dummies
Although the page says it’s about installing Marathon on Windows, you can use the instructions to also get it going on your Mac under OS X. Oh, and don’t use the icons they give; their icons suck. Use these instead. Either way, get it so you can play the best game series ever made!
Open Source Mac
Free, open-source software for Mac OS X.
Pimp My Safari
Pimp My Safari was started as a reaction to the sites cataloguing Firefox extensions. Many excellent plugins for Safari have been developed, but because Safari doesn’t have an official “extension architecture,” many don’t know of these extensions. So if you’re like me and love Safari, you should check out this site.
ResExcellence
Everything you need to customise your Mac OS.
Safari Standardised Feed Icon Installer
The developers of the ever popular Firefox and the Microsoft development team working on IE7 have shaken hands and agreed to use the same icon to indicate the presence of newsfeed functionality. If Mozilla and Microsoft can agree on something, maybe we should get in on it too. To that end, we have created an installer that will replace Safari’s default icon with the icon agreed upon in the Mountain View Accord.

Dashboard Widgets

Online Comics

Applegeeks
New comic every Monday and Thursday.
BodyWorld
A new serialised webcomic. Well worth checking out!
Cyanide and Happiness
Comics for people with a dark sense of humour. You know, people like me.
DavidGaddis.com
Read David’s great pantomime comic, “Piercing.”
demian5.com
Home of “When I Am King” and other great online comics.
Dr. McNinja
Chris Hastings’ hilarious comic about a doctor who is also a ninja.
Mac Hall Comics
Created by Matt Boyd and Ian McConville.
Nowhere Girl
Justine Shaw’s wonderful online comic.
Nuklear Power
Home of 8-bit Theatre.
Penny Arcade
Gaming and general nerdery from Seattle.
The Perry Bible Fellowship
A comic strip for you.
Sinfest
Don’t mess with a missionary man.
Sluggy Freelance
Is it not nifty? Worship the comic.
This Modern World
It’s got a blog, too! Web comics and a blog! How can you beat that?
VG Cats
Videogame-related humour, updated Mondays.
xkcd
A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language.
The Zombie Hunters
Jenny Romanchuk's outstanding comic follows a team of zombie hunters as they battle hordes of undead in an attempt to save the last remnants of the human race. Updated every Monday. (And occasionally Thursday.)

Online Games

Avoid the Cubes
Kinda reminds me of Spectre VR.
The Anti-Bush Online Videogame
A fun and fact-filled adventure about the most appalling presidency in the history of the United States.
Bloxorz
Yet another flash game to kill your day.
Falling Sand Game
A highly addictive game, although I’m not sure what I’m doing.
Fly Guy
Trevor Van Meter’s wonderful black and white dream world.
Gravity Pods
Think you’re good at geometry? How about when gravity comes into play?
The Last Stand 2
You can play the original, too, but the sequel is much better. Find your way to the evacuation point in a zombie-filled countryside.
Newsgaming.com
I highly recommend playing “September 12th.”
Notepad Invaders
It’s Space Invaders, but on notebook paper.
Portal
A 2D flash version of Portal. It can get to be pretty difficult in some places, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty fun.
Statetris
Statetris is an interesting game mixing aspects of the popular game 'Tetris' and geography. Instead of positioning the typical Tetris blocks, you position states/countries at their proper location. Fun, challenging and educational!
The Streaking Game
Also by Trevor Van Meter. Avoid security guards while streaking at major events to get attention for your sponsor!
Which-Way Adventure
A bizarre, non sequitur adventure game.
Zombie Infection Simulation
Not actually a game, but still pretty neat. Watch the spread of a zombie infection in a simulated cityscape.
Zombiegrinder 60000
Side-scrolling zombie goodness. But come on, I had you at “zombie.”

Other Funnies

The Best Page in the Universe
Definitely not to be taken seriously, but well worth a read.
LOLsecretz
Lolsecretz is the meeting of two of the internet's most famous memes – PostSecret (the blog where people anonymously confess their deepest darkest secrets) crossed with Lolcat Macros (the phenomenon where people ascribe poorly spelled human emotions to animals). Enjoy!
Office Slang
A glossary of office slang, most of which is real.
Sloganizer.net
Instant slogans.
Strong Bad Email
If you haven’t heard of Strong Bad by now, there’s probably something wrong with you.
Stuff on my Cat
Pictures of things on cats.

Miscellaneous

BugMeNot
Bypass compulsory web registration.
ColorBlender.com
Free colour matching tool. It’s got the best interface of any I’ve seen.
Dropcash
A simple way to organise a fundraiser.
marathon.bungie.org
For the Marathon lover in you.
Neat fonts
Discover free fonts from all over the web.
Pixel Fonts
WebSiteTips’ download site for pixel fonts.
Pixelgirl Presents
Free desktop pictures!

Copyright © 2004–2009 Ian Adams

Home
The front page — where you’ll find the most recently posted stuff
Archives
The archives — older articles, listed by date
Link Blog
The Link Blog — an (almost) daily list of interesting links
About
A brief biography of the author, Ian Adams.
Colophon
Background information and history regarding this web site.
Contact
Want to send me an email? Then this is the place to go.
Bookmarks
An extensive, maintained and organised collection of links to sites I like.
Newsfeeds
This site’s RSS feeds will let you know when new posts are published.