Blue's Guide to the Internet

28 Jul 2026

Sick of the algorithmic internet? Wish a friend would just recommend you something fun to do? In this list, you’ll find my collection of all the cool stuff I’ve found online over the years. At the time of writing, all of these websites are active (or at least readable) and are universally awesome. They are presented in vague categories: Learning, Entertainment and YouTube. The three genders. Enjoy browsing!

Learning

Sometimes, you can learn stuff on the internet. Some of these are actually really useful things that can teach you employable skills, and some of them will just give you a real advantage on one particular pub quiz one day. Nonetheless, all knowledge is good knowledge!

Interactive

Advent of Code - During Advent each year, daily programming challenges are released, getting harder each day. They can be played any time of year and you can set up a leaderboard to compete against your friends.

Cut The Knot - A website full of mathematics interactives and puzzles to explain common concepts. The founder of the website, Alexander Bogomolny, passed away in 2018, and the Wolfram Foundation now stewards the site.

Learn Git Branching - An interactive tutorial explaining how to use Git for version control.

Nand Game - Build a computer from scratch, learning about logic gates and various components along the way.

ROSALIND - A series of programming challenges intended to teach the user about bioinformatics and common pipelines therein, starting from a baseline of no programming experience. It focuses on Python but can be completed using any language.

Visdeurbel - In Utrecht, fish migrate upriver in the spring. However, a manually operated lock blocks their way. The solution? Have the entire internet watch a camera mounted on the lock, and ring the visdeurbel - the fish doorbell - when fish are present to have the lockkeeper open the door! The site also hosts a lot of educational content on migratory fish.

Static knowledge repositories

The Embroidery Stitch Picture Dictionary - A collection of pretty much every embroidery stitch, complete with pictures in case you don’t know the names and tutorials with videos and pictures.

The Fukushima Disaster - An Imgur gallery detailing the story of the Fukushima Daichii nuclear power plant disaster. There used to be a (better) one about Chernobyl as well, but that got turned into a book and taken off the internet :(

A Guide to the Orders of Trilobites - A very old website which remains perhaps the greatest resource on trilobites on the web, or maybe the Earth. There’s a quiz, and a Facebook group where they post Trilobite Of The Month.

Ian’s Shoelace Site - Everything you could possibly ever want to know about shoelaces.

Wet Roads - A guide of every ford, watersplash and tidal road in the UK, rated on a 5 start system according to exactly how wet they are.

Entertainment

Now for the fun stuff!

Art

Every Noise at Once - A complete(!) list of every music genre in the world, as well as the artists who produce them. The guy who makes the project used to be in charge of Spotify’s genre system, but they laid him off and replaced him with AI which is why it’s now crap. ENaO is still awesome though!

Listen to Wikipedia - A site that shows real-time edits to Wikipedia, playing you a note for each edit.

Pinky and Pepper Forever - A graphic novel and webcomic by Eddy Atoms based on the short-lived mid-2010s line of toys called Pinkie Cooper and the Jet Set Pets. It is also about lesbian sex, bondage and suicide.

Welcome Home - An ongoing (as of 2025) horror ARG based around a 1970s puppet TV show, and a team excited to restore it from its status as lost media.

Personal sites

Chris Fieggen - A beautiful and fascinating account of the life of programmer Chris Fieggen, written by his son Ian (the guy who made the shoelace website).

“Helpful” resources

DDR Finder - A map of Dance Dance Revolution machines and other rhythm games available to play in arcades across the world.

Flowey’s Time Machine - A website which allows you to create custom Undertale saves, for when you start to feel too guilty about the horrible things you’ve done.

Funny

The Death Generator - Allows you to substitute text from a number of iconic video game screens, for meme purposes.

Kirk Ripped Shirt Archive - A detailed archive of every time in Star Trek: The Original Series when Captain Kirk’s shirt is ripped, destroyed or otherwise removed. For manboob lovers everywhere.

Games

Decipher - A daily game where you have to guess letters and fill in a phrase.

Kid Pix - A public domain, online version of the Kid Pix drawing software.

neal.fun - A collection of excellent web games by a guy called Neal. Includes Internet Roadtrip, Stimulation Clicker, The Password Game and many more.

OpenGuessr - A free GeoGuessr alternative. Get placed somewhere on the world and guess where you are.

Parseword - Another game by the creator of Wordle. designed to teach you to play cryptic crosswords.

Tetr.io - Online Tetris, either singleplayer or multiplayer.

TimeGuessr - Another GeoGuessr alternative, except as well as working out where a picture was taken, you have to guess when.

Really Boring Website - An online version of Scattergories, Pictionary and several other word games that you can play with your friends.

YouTube

I’m not linking all of these, you guys are perfectly capable of searching YouTube, but I think I do a better job than YouTube’s algorithm at finding stuff you actually want to watch.

Edutainment

Documentaries

3Blue1Brown - Maths explained visually, great even for those who don’t necessarily get maths.

Alexander the ok - Videos on the history of safety and engineering, made famous by his coverage of the OceanGate Titan incident.

BobbyBroccoli - Feature-length documentaries on scientific malpractice, politics and controversies, explained for the everyman.

Bright Sun Films/Bright Sun Travels - Excellent documentaries on the resort and holiday industry, with everything from histories of abandoned theme parks to cruise ship reviews.

Defunctland - Documentaries on old, defunct theme park rides and surrounding topics including queuing and animatronic design.

Folding Ideas - Documentaries that started out as film reviews and have morphed into high-quality coverage of scams and schemes of all sorts.

Kid Leaves Stoop - Exactly 7 really cool videos on lost media and related media facts.

MentourPilot - Documentaries on aircraft accidents, explained in a kind and informative way. Essentially cured my fear of flying as well as giving me a new appreciation for aerospace engineering and how safe planes are. He also runs a second channel called Mentour BlackBox which covers non-aviation disasters.

NileRed - Long chemistry videos where he does silly things like extracting pure bismuth from PeptoBismol.

Retro Game Mechanics Explained - Exactly what it says on the tin. Documentaries explaining how retro games work, right down to the memory level, with no expectation of any prior understanding.

Summoning Salt - Documentaries on the history of speedrunning in various games.

Video essays

ContraPoints - Long video essays on the political and personal, ranging from incels and transphobia to Twilight and cringe culture.

HBomberGuy - Long-form video essays on topics including game design, the culture surrounding video games and making fun of right-wing morons.

Jacob Geller - On video games as an art form - really putting the essay in video essay.

Scruffy - Well-animated video essays on the techniques behind video game music.

Skip Intro - Video essays on the ways that media intersects with politics and acts as propaganda in some cases.

Tantacrul - Video essays on composition, software design and composition software design. If you’ve ever been personally victimised by Sibelius, this guy’s for you!

Shorter videos

Caitlin Doughty - Known for her series Ask A Mortician, Caitlin explores topics surrounding death and the funeral industry with humour and compassion.

Camwing - Video essays on gaming and animation techniques.

f4mi - Investigative videos on a range of computer-adjacent topics.

Hunter R. - Extremely well-made and in-depth videos on the technicalities of the Animal Crossing games. No, I’ve never played an Animal Crossing game, but these videos are too good to miss!

LTRtrains - Fun and short clips about the inner workings of British trains.

Luke O’Sullivan - The odd and the interesting. Short videos on random stuff that caught his interest, and which will interest you too.

Synthet - Short-form, cute content on the history of sampling and basic music theory.

TomScott - Miniature documentaries on interesting stuff of all varieties. While he’s not running his main series anymore, there’s a massive backlog to watch through and he’s doing a new series about interesting things in specific counties of the UK.

Entertainment

Daily Dose of Internet - Frequent clip videos with all the funny and cool stuff that’s sweeping the internet at any given time. Clickbait video titles are always followed up in the first clip.

FERMATA STUDIO - Really good 3D animations of various comically fast situations.

Neil Cicierega - If you’ve ever found something funny online, odds are this guy made it. Plenty of other undiscovered bangers on his channel too.

Roffle - Potentially the world’s most relaxing gameplay videos - largely Balatro.

SnapCube - Penny posts excellent gameplay videos and also runs a comedy skit series called RealTime Fandubs, most famous for their blind improv dub of Sonic Adventure 2.

11footplus8 - Clips from a livestream covering a bridge which is slightly too low for most trucks to get under.

Art

Dead Sound - Really cool 3D animations about dinosaurs, dystopias and everything in between.

Louie Zong - Lots and lots of excellent music, drawing and animation including multiple top-tier concept albums.

Scruffy - Inventive covers of various music from video games, as well as some original music.

Sim Gretina - While they’re not uploading anymore, this channel hosts an amazing discography of future funk and electro-swing, both covers and compositions.

Vewn - Deep-cutting and touching animations about life under late-stage capitalism.

And that’s that! I hope you found something you liked! If you found something you think I would find cool, or one of these sites particularly made you smile, please do let me know at the email address below!