#indie

a.l3x.in – Personal Travel & Tech Blog

Personal blog with thoughtful, long-form essays about travel, gear, and technology. Features RSS feed, IndieWeb markers, and community validation (Lobsters). Site appears to be an active indie blog with careful design choices.

CowBull – Bulls and Cows word game

A free, multiplayer word game implementation of Bulls and Cows (like Wordle). Solo mode, shared game links, no accounts needed.

Any Human Ever — Random historical life generator

Interactive tool that draws random historical lives by combining randomized birth years (weighted by population exponential growth), geographic locations, and generated life narratives. Uses AI image generation (FLUX.1). Claims real historical sourcing. Appeared on HN frontpage 3x, suggesting quality/novelty interest.

Imperial Colors Manifesto

Humorous manifesto advocating for named HTML colors (CornSilk, Navy, etc.) over hex codes as rebellion against machine-centric design. Hand-crafted satirical essay with color reference component.

OpenTrailPaper — DIY e-paper bike computer

Open-source firmware and hardware design for a DIY e-ink bike computer based on the LilyGO T5S3. Features offline maps, GPS, Bluetooth sensor support, FIT recording, and firmware installable via browser. Actively maintained indie hardware project.

Jim Nielsen's Blog

Personal blog about web development and the "big beautiful mess" of making things for the world wide web. Thoughtful essays exploring practical web development topics with substantive analysis.

Revo Programming Language

Documentation and community site for Revo, an indie dynamic programming language designed for the joy of programming. Features browser-based IDE, community Discord, and handcrafted design with personality.

brennan.day – Personal blog on tech ethics and open source politics

Personal blog by Brennan Kenneth Brown, a writer on AI ethics and open source governance. Has RSS/Atom feed and IndieWeb markers. The submitted article is substantial longform commentary on far-right ideology in open source, but this is a single article URL, not the site homepage.

Discard Pile

Personal blog featuring technical and cultural commentary. Original voice, thoughtful critique of AI adoption trends. Maintains RSS feed and IndieWeb markers.

tmp.0ut Volume 5

Independent digital zine focused on low-level programming, reverse engineering, and esoteric computing culture. Volume 5 includes interview with Doug McIlroy, articles on x86-64 ELF binaries, and technical deep-dives into assembly language and security concepts. ASCII-art presentation, hand-curated content, strong community recognition.

Cobalt: Kobo e-reader App Platform

Open-source application platform for Kobo e-readers featuring a signed App Store, Rust SDK, and isolated app runtime. Install once via USB; apps update over Wi-Fi. Enables running static ARM binaries on e-reader hardware with community-tested support across multiple Kobo models.

Shoehorn — Quantize LLMs to your hardware

Interactive browser-based tool for quantizing large language models to fit your personal machine. Scans Hugging Face's most-downloaded models, estimates which ones fit your specific hardware (Mac, GPU, custom configs), visualizes memory budgets, then provides a local CLI app and web interface to run the chosen model via llama.cpp. Combines practical utility with a clean, hands-on approach to a niche problem.

Eigendrum

Draw a shape and hear it as a real drum. Uses finite element analysis to simulate actual vibration modes—every frequency comes from your outline, not a sample.

Dark Hours

Real-time astronomy observation planner showing sky brightness, weather conditions, constellation visibility, and best viewing windows for your location. Personalized, thoughtfully designed indie tool with error-bar transparency in light pollution modeling.

Marginalia Search & Journal

Independent search engine and personal blog celebrating small, non-commercial web content. Marginalia.nu indexes the margins of the web—personal sites, small communities, independent projects—while the accompanying journal covers internet culture, search philosophy, and idiosyncratic observations about technology and society.

ssh.place: Collaborative Drawing Canvas Over SSH

A shared pixel canvas accessible via SSH with no account or installation required. Users draw with arrow keys/hjkl, select colors 0-9, and wait 15-second cooldowns like Reddit's r/place. Cooldowns are keyed to SSH identity, not IP. A delightfully minimal, community-driven creative tool.

Neil the Seal - 3D Browser Game

A free 3D browser game where you play as an elephant seal causing mischief in suburban Tasmania. Indie game with character, WASD controls, environmental interaction, and a playful vibe.

Michael Lynch

Detailed writing on bootstrapping indie businesses, including TinyPilot. Transparent revenue reports and lessons learned.

Newgrounds

Indie games, animation, and art since 1995. Where Flash games lived.

Kongregate

Free browser games. Thousands of indie games playable instantly.

Tapas

Webcomics and novels platform. Indie creators publishing serially.