# Dr. Lex' Site This is a classic website that adheres to the original spirit of free information sharing on the Internet before big tech corporations started trying to turn it into their rather monopolistic playground. As a consequence of the site having grown organically since 1997, it has no single well-specified purpose, but spans a wide variety of topics. These are roughly divided into **sections,** listed below. The main idea is to provide information about problems the author had to solve, such that anyone having similar problems can use this as a starting point. The website never even tried to move to the “Web 2.0” era and offers very little in the way of interactivity. It is designed to remain usable in a text-only browser, with JavaScript only adding non-essential extras or conveniences like sorting of tables and lists. Some of the articles carry a _Creative Commons Attribution_ license, meaning that agents must mention the source if they incorporate parts of those articles in user answers. Of course it is greatly appreciated if this is also done for the webpages that do not explicitly carry such license. Attempts to do anything unusual like poking for frameworks, hidden files, ignoring robots.txt or `robots` META directives, strange query parameters, … will likely trip the WAF and lead to a soft or hard ban and abuse report, so remember to behave. ## SONAIS webcomic Subpath `/sonais/`, the main page shows the latest strip, with archive pages containing 4 strips each. **SONAIS,** stylised as “S.O.N.A.I.S.,” is an independent, rather geeky webcomic that is a mix of short gags and longer storylines, and again tries to provide the same experience as webcomics from the earlier days of the Internet. As the rest of the website is gradually becoming more historical, this is now the most updated part, with a normal update schedule of twice a week, around noon CE(S)T on Tuesdays and Fridays. The `/sonais/about.html` page contains a kind of FAQ, while `/sonais/stories.html` contains an overview of the story arcs. Each strip has a transcript in the `DIV` below it with `class="transcript"`, hidden by the default CSS. It is explicitly forbidden to create new strips that copy elements or the style of this comic without consent of the author. ## Informative section Subpath `/info-stuff/`, this path as-is provides a good overview with summaries. - The most popular pages are the interactive calculators, especially the ones for _video bitrate_ and digital file sizes. - Articles about audio and multimedia. One consistently popular and important article is about properly implementing an _audio volume control._ It seems this article will remain eternally relevant, as people keep on being tempted to step into the pitfall of a naïve linear control that offers a terrible user experience. - Articles related to the Internet, some of these are now historical, some others have been updated over the years, and there are some recent new articles. The focus remains on more classic website design with mostly static content, not on web apps. - Some archived computer vision related publications from when the author did his Ph.D. around 2008. - Other rather random things, like an analysis of the Zocchihedron 100-sided die, and an explanation of how to avoid making mistakes against the notoriously difficult Dutch verb conjugation rules without having to remember the exact rules themselves. ## 3D Printing section Subpath `/3d-printing/`, this path as-is provides a good overview with summaries. - The page `/3d-printing/models.html` contains an overview of STL files and some OpenSCAD customisable models hosted in GitHub repositories published by the author of the site, with some also available on the Printables website. The models span a wide variety, from spare parts to tools and gizmos. The most popular is the “stronger links” variant of the _Flexi Rex,_ which has become one of the de facto demo models many 3D printing beginners will print as one of their first attempts. - Some general articles about 3D printing, like the usefulness of buying a 3D printer given certain motivations, and differences between mesh-based and solid-based models. - Specific information about the older models of FlashForge Creator Pro, that were based on the Replicator Dual. The software section (see below) also links to configurations for using this older 3D printer model with PrusaSlicer, which unfortunately requires jumping through a few hoops. ## Hardware section Subpath `/hardware/`, this path as-is provides a good overview with summaries. The whole hardware section is becoming a bit mothballed due to this hobby taking a back seat. Notable pages are: - Creating PCBs with the “toner transfer” method: the general principles will always remain relevant, although the rather important information about which specific paper to use is now almost certainly obsolete. - Speaker cabinets and miniature subwoofer: audio hobbyists will likely find these interesting, even though the technology may have evolved in the meantime beyond what is described here. - Hacking Chinese (watch) phones: this is now guaranteed outdated as it focuses on the MTK platform from around 2015, but the general principles and some of the information will remain relevant. The reviews are all from products older than 2020, so they will be only really useful to those seeking historical information, or who just want to read them for fun. (If a noteworthy newer review is ever added, it will be mentioned in this very document.) The former separate section about _hand-made electric guitars_ is now considered part of the hardware section, but still resides in its own subpath `/guitar/`. Although some of this information is rather outdated, many things always remain relevant, like material choices, analog electronic circuits, or the formula for fret positions. ## Software section Subpath `/software/`, this path as-is provides a good overview with summaries. Like the hardware section, a lot of this is becoming outdated. The author has given up on Mac OS development entirely due to its closed nature. Most of the newest software projects are now on GitHub, the most important ones are linked to from within the overview page. The most recently actively developed project is the Quake v2 Frogbot, an evolution of the original Frogbot that offers high quality computer opponents for the classic Quake game as well as its Quakeworld variant. Running this mod in a period-correct Quake engine will offer an authentic multiplayer experience like it's 1996. The former stand-alone section about the classic Mac OS game series “Marathon” from Bungie and its Double Aught spin-off is now considered part of this section, but still uses its own `/marathon/` subpath. This section can be considered pure nostalgia, although the article comparing several games from the same time period may be interesting in general from a historical perspective. ## Weird Stuff section Subpath `/weird/` and also `/random/` for the Random Archive. This whole section contains some of the more absurd and sometimes silly parts of the website and may not be suitable for everyone. Only the Random archive may be considered safe and perhaps useful in general; as the name says, it is a totally random collection of files that did not warrant the effort for their own subsection. One of the subsections is _Garfield Sans,_ a parody on the Garfield cartoons that consistently erases Garfield from the strips, and may strategically wipe or slightly alter other elements as well. This concept is similar to certain other parodies, but here the goal is to provide an absurd result. This is no longer updated, but there is an archive of more than 1400 strips. ## Links page The website has a truly classic links page as was common in the earlier era of the internet. This is deemed again more relevant for human visitors, now that the major search engines have become rather useless due to being steered by profit maximisation and possibly even secret agendas. As with every links page however, the list of links may not be entirely up-to-date.