TT #10: Thirteen favorite websites
Thirteen favorite websites I visit regularly
I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. These are the websites I spent most of my time on. They’re in no particular order, although Amazon and BC would pretty much top the list anyway. If you can think of some more websites that might interest me, feel free to mention them in the comments and I’ll check ‘em out.
1. Amazon.co.uk
Ok, this one was really obvious. The one-stop shop for all my books and DVDs. You might wonder why I didn’t put the german Amazon-site here. That’s because I read all my books in english and for some reason it is much cheaper for me to order them from England. Go figure. It’s the same with most DVDs. Besides the english version is mostly out much earlier. I just don’t like to wait is all.
I do use german Amazon to order stuff for my computer, though. And my Canon camera came from there as well.
2. BookCrossing.com
My second home on the net. I am spending way too much time over there, especially in the forums - signing up for the umpteenth bookring or just generally having a look around for new books I might wanna put on my wishlist.
3. Bookmooch.com
This site I found only a few months ago. It’s a book-swapping site, much like paperbackswap and many others. The reason I choose this one specifically was that it is truly international. Many of the other swapping sites I checked out were mostly restricted to either America or Germany. On Bookmooch I’ve received books from Australia, America, Switzerland, Portugal, and the UK so far. Plus, I like the points system. It’s concise and easy to understand, no fuss and no complications. And it actually works, which is always a plus.
4. LEO
My favorite online english-german dictionary. If a word isn’t listed in there, it’s pretty much not worth knowing. This site is almost always open when I am writing anything longer than a few sentences. Although my english is pretty good (if I may say so myself), sometimes there are words I know I should know, but just can’t remember. In such moments it’s good to have LEO at my side.
5. Whedonesque
A blogging community for all things related to my personal God and saviour Joss Whedon and all the people involved in one of his present or past projects (like Buffy, Angel and Firefly). I always find interesting news about somebody or other there. And, of course, I don’t want any new project of Joss ever to pass me by again like Firefly did in its original run…
6. my MySpace
Yeah, well, what can I say? I don’t remember anymore why I signed up there in the first place, but meanwhile I am mailny using it to keep in touch with a lot of people I met on my travels. Plus I made a few new friends over there, which I find remarkable, because most people on MySpace seem kinda weird to me. Luckily there are some nice ones strewn in between. With 2 of them I will hopefully meet up in London for the Serenity screening in June. I hope we’re getting it organized in time.
Besides, Nathan Fillion and Matthew Gray Gubler have their own MySpace pages, too, which I added to my friends list so I can keep up with what’s going on with them as well. Nathan especially writes hilarious blogs when he is in the mood. Now I just wish to God that Adam Baldwin would have his own page.
7. photo.net
I am a big fan of good photography. Unfortunately I don’t have neither the patience nor the equipment to be a very good photographer myself, but I love to see the work of others. And this site is one of the best I have found so far. I love to look through the gallery and download shitloads of photos to my computer to use them as wallpaper or as the basis for TT banners or whatever. In some cases it boggles my mind what you can do with a camera, if you know how to use it.
8. fontgarden.com
I am a bit of a font freak and I love to find new ones. Of course, there are hundreds of font sites on the net. What I like about this one in particular is that they use whimsical one-liners or quotes to show the font examples, like this:
9. TheDarkTower.net Forum
Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series belongs to my favorite books ever (it shares the top of my list with “The Lord of the Rings”) and this forum is all about the books, the comics and everything else connected with Roland’s world. How could I ever stay away from there?
10. CSS ZenGarden
This site is dedicated to showing people “the beauty of CSS design”. I love CSS and although I am fiddling around with websites not nearly as much as I used to, I enjoy looking at all the designs collected over there (almost 200 by now), getting ideas, and trying to figure out how they did that.
11. fireflyfans.net
I’m a fan of Firefly, so I guess this one was inevitable. They’ve got everything over there: news, a chat, a forum, fanfic, wallpapers, funny Joss quotes, whatever. I am not even halfway through reading everything interesting. Funnily I haven’t signed up yet. Ah well, maybe next week. For the moment I enjoy lurking.
12. HughLaurie.net
The title of this blog should tell everybody that I am a big fan of Dr. House, but an even bigger one of Hugh Laurie. This site is truly a work of love. No matter what you wanna know about Hugh – you will find it there. Together with tons of pictures and up to date news. Just fantastic.
13. Miami Ink Forum
Here I only go for a laugh nowadays. I used to watch Miami Ink quite regularly for a while, just because I am a big fan of tattoos – and through watching it became a big fan of Chris Garver. The thing is, it’s a reality show, which means that there is nothing whatsoever real about it. Everything is scripted and they show only very selective footage, exaggerating little things out of proportion and generally giving a pretty skewed image of the people involved. After a while I just couldn’t take the crap anymore and now I will only watch it when I happen to come across it and there’s nothing else on.
The thing with the official TLC forum is that the people posting there seem to a huge degree to be not the brightest tools in the shed (apart from some of the regulars) and the mods seem to be pretty trigger happy about deleting things they don’t deem “appropriate” (meaning: everything in the least critical of the show). So it’s sometimes really funny to watch the goings-on over there. The only good thing is that Garver himself posts from time to time, which is always interesting.
If I want the real news, though, I go over to the dark side, an inofficial forum by fans for fans, which actually encourages critical discussion of the show and of the fact that more or less nothing on it is as it seems.
Did I mention I hate reality tv?
These are some awesome sites! I had no idea about the Dark Tower one, and I’m going to check it out. I love those books so much.
And Joss is a creative god!
those are all cool sites! and i like fonts too! i usually download from dafont.com! i answered a tag like this but only 6 websites. great tt!
Interesting sites! I didn’t know there was a Miami Ink forum. Garver’s an amazing artist, I’d be thrilled to add one of his tats to my collection!
Wowie, some really awesome sites! I’ve run across some of these but not all — I’m going to have to check them out.
Happy TT, and thanks for visiting my blog!
Excellent sites! I’m definitely bookmarking that dictionary.
Yep, Joss is brilliant. No argument there.
And nice to see a fellow BookCrosser/BookMoocher! Look me up and if you ever want to do some trades, holler. (I’m WestofMars in both places, of course)
Happy TT and thanks for visiting.
We share a lot of those! The others are worth checking out too. Thanks for the tips.
My TT shares 13 things about the blue moon.
Nathan Fillion is a hunk and very talented. Did you watch him when he was on “One Life to Live”? I did and was very sorry to see him leave that show, but I knew he had a bright future ahead of him. He worked with my dear friend, Clint Ritchie, who played Clint Buchanan for 20 years.
Thanks for stopping by!
Interesting websites.
I love fonts and in fact haven’t downloaded any in a while. I’m on fontgarden.com now. Yippee!
Some of these are right up my alley, thanks for sharing them.