Random Bits of Internet

Back at the dawn of the World Wide Web, before every search returned one of, like, six sites, one would often stumble across some bit of wondrous innocence, where someone who was obsessed with aerial tramways or Victorian bustles had just dumped this knowledge out in a wall of text punctuated with a few pictures.

Every now and again I find something that reminds me of those halcyon days, and I thought it would be nice to share those things. Here’s the opener on a page about the British mail system:

In 1784, the British postal system was reformed by John Palmer, a theatre owner in Bath, who had found a way to transport actors at high speeds and applied it to the mail.

Sadly, the author spends no time at all explaining why it was necessary to transport actors at high speed, although the imagination runs riot with the possibilities.

So what sort of charming flotsam and jetsam do you all come across?

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Peter’s Evil Overlord List falls into this thread’s catgory, I think: Peter's Evil Overlord List

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The faster actors could get from one city to another, the more shows they could put on and the more money they could make. Same reason truckers speed today.

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Sadly so much of the early internet vanished in the great GeoCities purge. (And that purge was the push to create the Internet Archive today)

Ahh those early days when everyone had a website they tried to code themselves (I was in a lot of fandoms back then (X-Files, Stargate, The Sentinel (TV show not the movie)) and all of those glorious fan sites with their MIDI bits of music, wild backgrounds, blinking objects, crazy fonts and eye-bleeding colors; all of it tied together through a web ring. I do occasionally run across a site today that still has a webring link at the bottom.

/wipes a tear/

Good times.

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Still got my hand-coded website, and still maintain it as I have since 1996.

I worked for an Internet company in the 90’s and had several web designer friends, so I knew how to make it look presentable at least. I’m proud to say I never had a strobing color bar or a gif of a guy with a shovel that said “Under Construction.”

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weasel.com has a Web 1.0 feel to it, and the rants are pretty epic

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Zombo.com is a classic; been around since the 90s, and it looks like it’s been rebuilt with modern standards since the death of Flash. A great way to burn five minutes of your life. :grin:

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Time Cube was a classic. Some guy in Florida who was absolutely convinced he was the smartest man alive and every physicist was wrong. Time isn’t linear. It’s a cube! And that makes sense of everything! And then he went on to earnestly attempt to explain everything in a way that made absolutely no sense to anyone (except maybe him). Although the site has long since gone offline, it has its own Wiki entry . And, of course, you can view a cached version on the good old Wayback Machine.

But I’m guessing you’re probably thinking more of Peep surgery and The TWINKIES Project?

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I’ve never heard of those!

Time Cube, on the other hand, I know very well. I’m not saying it’s true, exactly, but I spent one afternoon figuring it out and suddenly understood the brilliance of “Stranded In Space”, “Clonus” and “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank”.

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What else can I say but… Hamster Dance!?!

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Wow, Zombo.com is really in a category all its own! I somehow missed out on it back in the day. Thanks for sharing that. :raised_hands:

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