Everything about this is wrong, and that’s ignoring the irony in complaining about blogs on one’s blog.
There are no more quirky homepages.
There are no more amateur research librarians.
Yes, there are. They’re just harder to find among the noise of an influx of several hundred million new content creators, most of whom prefer to focus on creating content and not messing around with HTML. In all likelihood, there are probably more “quirky homepages” today than there were when the web first started, but the fraction of “quirky homepages” to facebook posts makes them harder to see.
And the blog did not “break the web”. What does that even mean? It’s nonsensical. Bah humbug!
The author is right in her context and you’re right in yours. Seriously, you’re definitely right. …So is she.
What would you like to show her?
I’m thinking, tilde.town. But, I don’t mean the site, the space, or the concept. I mean the thing itself, the “content”: in this case, home pages. I clicked random a few times and came across these two: ~joe and ~selfsame…
I dunno dude, I’m not into this stuff. I just know it exists and this style of “amateur 90s web design” has been oddly popular recently. I don’t bookmark them. But I do remember one. I found it because a 90s fanclub aggregation site was recently posted here (and/or HN) that linked to it. It was a very funny looking rental car site based out of England (I think) that’s still operating today. It had a thousand flashing GIFs and various cute things that made me wonder if it was for real or a parody (it was for real).
So you’ve discovered the (in)famous Ling’s Cars. Though to be fair, Ling’s Cars is more early 2000’s (if only due to how much it likes to use flash). Ling’s website has been that way a long time, though it does get updated and changed over time.
The author should check out gopher. It’s still alive and kicking, and browsing it gives flashbacks to 1993. Text based quirky sites and nearly all viewable (since it’s quite small compared to just about anything). No tracking, no ads, no Javascript. Just text.
I think the blog has won for good reasons (“news” being more engaging and entertaining than “libraries”), but non-timeline formats are indeed more suitable for some things. And manually organized hierarchies are still alive as… personal wikis and such. I have a “knowledge base” section on my website. There’s only three entries so far, but every time I discover some obscure knowledge, I try to record it there.
I think the author mostly has the facts right. There is less of a sense of discovery / exploration on the internet now. What I’m not convinced of is that this is a bad thing. The internet has become more useful now. I can find vast amounts of information on these weblogs which I’ll take over animated construction gifs. The internet has matured and useful services have come up that the majority of us use.
Also another thing to note is these quirky home made websites never went away. In fact there are far more now than there ever was before. The only problem is discovery however there are projects like https://neocities.org/browse which let you easily find these kinds of websites.
Everything about this is wrong, and that’s ignoring the irony in complaining about blogs on one’s blog.
Yes, there are. They’re just harder to find among the noise of an influx of several hundred million new content creators, most of whom prefer to focus on creating content and not messing around with HTML. In all likelihood, there are probably more “quirky homepages” today than there were when the web first started, but the fraction of “quirky homepages” to facebook posts makes them harder to see.
And the blog did not “break the web”. What does that even mean? It’s nonsensical. Bah humbug!
I upvoted both your comment and the post.
The author is right in her context and you’re right in yours. Seriously, you’re definitely right. …So is she.
What would you like to show her?
I’m thinking, tilde.town. But, I don’t mean the site, the space, or the concept. I mean the thing itself, the “content”: in this case, home pages. I clicked random a few times and came across these two: ~joe and ~selfsame…
I dunno dude, I’m not into this stuff. I just know it exists and this style of “amateur 90s web design” has been oddly popular recently. I don’t bookmark them. But I do remember one. I found it because a 90s fanclub aggregation site was recently posted here (and/or HN) that linked to it. It was a very funny looking rental car site based out of England (I think) that’s still operating today. It had a thousand flashing GIFs and various cute things that made me wonder if it was for real or a parody (it was for real).
So you’ve discovered the (in)famous Ling’s Cars. Though to be fair, Ling’s Cars is more early 2000’s (if only due to how much it likes to use flash). Ling’s website has been that way a long time, though it does get updated and changed over time.
Lol, that’s the one. :)
The author should check out gopher. It’s still alive and kicking, and browsing it gives flashbacks to 1993. Text based quirky sites and nearly all viewable (since it’s quite small compared to just about anything). No tracking, no ads, no Javascript. Just text.
I think the blog has won for good reasons (“news” being more engaging and entertaining than “libraries”), but non-timeline formats are indeed more suitable for some things. And manually organized hierarchies are still alive as… personal wikis and such. I have a “knowledge base” section on my website. There’s only three entries so far, but every time I discover some obscure knowledge, I try to record it there.
I think the author mostly has the facts right. There is less of a sense of discovery / exploration on the internet now. What I’m not convinced of is that this is a bad thing. The internet has become more useful now. I can find vast amounts of information on these weblogs which I’ll take over animated construction gifs. The internet has matured and useful services have come up that the majority of us use.
Also another thing to note is these quirky home made websites never went away. In fact there are far more now than there ever was before. The only problem is discovery however there are projects like https://neocities.org/browse which let you easily find these kinds of websites.