Links Products

If you must join the consumer culture, do so selectively.  Also, free downloads.

Shoes

ADCshoes, also known as All Day Comfort Shoes, is in downtown Natick, on Main Street, and also out in Western Massachusetts in, I think, Hadley.

Free Downloads

(I can’t say everything meets this standard for freeware, but they meet mine.)

HAPedit is a text-mode editor for developers of dynamic web pages featuring syntax highlighting for PHP, HTML, ASP, JavaScript, CSS, and SQL.  It’s completely free.  Use this link to directly download the HTML PHP syntax highlighting editor.

Bikes Not Bombs operates a full-service bicycle shop in Roxbury (near Boston) where they teach kids how to repair bikes and they help Nicaraguans supply themselves with and repair bicycles (or, more grandly, develop their economy and transportation).  And they fixed my bike for next to nothing when my brother and I’d spent way more money failing to get the exactly correct tire to fix it ourselves (from the clowns at the Ski Shop / Bike Market).  And Landry’s in Natick has also robbed me.  Go to Bikes Not Bombs.  They rock.

Simple Living Cycles in Framingham is my current favorite place for bike repair.

Stearns Outdoor makes inflatable kayaks and all sorts of other outdoor equipment.  Quality products (told that we were stupid and were going to die, we survived the best whitewater in Massachusetts) and unbeatable customer service (they include an extra valve, but when I ran over one with the van I asked to buy another to act as the replacement; they sent two free as soon as they got my mailing address).

Computer

Drak.net terrific, very inexpensive web hosting from pagans.  After extensive search, this was the web site host I chose, and it has been very good: I bought two lifetime accounts, for demcc.com and melanconent.com.

DEM Custom Computers, or demCC.com, my brother Dan’s custom computer and network consulting business.

My Web Anywhere (which I got through Advantage-ISP) is a full-fledged ISP (unlimited 56k dial-up access, 2 free [for now] POP3 e-mails, 10 megabytes web space) with good connectivity for $12.95 per month.  Switch now if you are on one of the “content providers” like AOL.

Stargate is (no longer) the place to register domain names: eight bucks a year (now $13) and all sorts of free services such as one e-mail account and URL forwarding (no, back to $8 but they dropped the free e-mail).

Ad-Subtract - the free version is the most worthwhile download you’ll ever make.

Opera makes a very good browser.  It’s free with a banner ad that a crack can make go away, but we should give them our money so that they can make a perfect browser.

Symantec makes anti-virus software, which I don’t use, but society owes them a great debt for the hoax section of their security updates center.

Winamp.  It’s free and they solve your problems when you complain.

Fairtunes - send some money to the musicians whose music you listen to, or to any other person or group you want to support.

Oh, and I make web sites: BeMWeb.

Books

Abebooks.com, the Advanced Book Exchange, lists “millions of used, rare, second-hand, and out-of-print books” available directly from independent booksellers around the world— and the book you want may be a few towns away.

Fantagraphics Books bills itself as “publisher of the world’s greatest cartoonists” and they back it up by reprinting Pogo, by Walt Kelly, which leaves them free to publish a whole lot of stuff that isn’t very good; but whatever they are, they are never mainstream.

Food

Zoe Foods, a Boston (or Newton) maker of flax and soy granola and bars.

Dilberito from Scott Adams, who has a very good comic strip but isn't as great as he thinks; I have never had a chance to eat a Dilberito but I hope he succeeds with his nutritious meatless foods.

Other

New Balance makes higher quality shoes with much less exploitation, and apparently rarely with leather.  Buy them and others at All Day Comfort Shoes in downtown Natick (41 Main Street), Max Hakimzadeh, proprietor.

WhoNeedsTV.com will provide video capabilities for your website for free or fee and you can watch videos on their site, some of which are quite funny.

The best novelty item I have ever run across comes from Gemini Kaleidoscopes.  This company’s holographic Specs turn Christmas lights into Stars of David!

Alternative Tentacles is the independent record label owned by social activist and performer Jello Biafra (estranged member of the former Dead Kennedys).  In addition to underground music the label has released political spoken word albums.

Laughing Dog Bicycles of Amherst has a pretty simple site.  Go there for the store’s address.  In February “Ride Year Round or Die” graced the top of the page.

Places - Boston

Wally’s Cafe.  I haven’t been yet.

UMass and Amherst stores’ hours and menus and such

Bookstore Hours: Food for Thought Books; and I would like to announce that now that it has been fully privatized (2003 Spring) UMass/Follet stores no longer have hours posted anywhere on the Internet.

Potential Internet Hosts

OneDNR is relatively cheap and claims unlimited almost anything, Veronica’s business MV Technologies is with them; but Drak.Net is still my choice.

Voxel.net kept serving for the Narco News Bulletin after being threatened by Banamex.