Oct. 2018

10-31-18 Happy Halloween!
Bible Verse of the Day: Luke 24:37-39
Old-Site of the Day: Weird.com An odd little site with little content. It does have a link to an AltaVista query for the word "weird." Here's what it looked like in 1996. Had a fairly extensive links page at the time. Digging a bit into the current site, there's a memorial page. In an older version of the site, from 2001,there was a long user list, but today most of those folks have moved on. So this was a collection of homepages. 572;151

10-30-18 Ephesians 2:8-9
Old-Site of the Day: Halloween.com Typed this in today since the holiday's coming up, just to see what was there. Since 1994 Halloween.com's objective has been to help people find useful information about the holiday, while at the same time help those with the information find the people." According to their about page this is the new version of their site. I wonder what it used to look like... Here it is in 1996. That's as far back as the Internet archive goes, but that's still not the original site; those graphics were new for 1996, according to the copyright. Funny Line: "The following sites are some of the more interesting offerings about vampires, one of the popular legends that people associate with Halloween. ***Remember when browsing these sites -- do not answer questions about your blood type***" 679;113

10-29-18 Old-Site: Scream Heaven Researching Nara Dreamland today led me to look up their sister park, Yokohama Dreamland. That led me to this page, with lots of photos of the park. It's from a theme park fan site, with lots of videos in RealPlayer or Quicktime formats. The webmaster liked Yokohama Dreamland alot, so he or she made a special photo gallery for it. Since at least 2001. You can download the videos, but the webmaster asks you to not share them online. Just provide a link. (Actually the webmaster said not to upload the vids to video sharing sites. I suppose emailing them to your friends is ok; re-hosting isn't, but that's just my non-lawyer opinion.)
Bible Verse of the Day: Romans 12:1 548;115

10-28-18 457;109

10-27-18 Old-Site of the Day: Sanoyas Ride Corporation Last year, I featured Nara Dreamland's website. Nara Dreamkland was a 60's theme park in Japan, designed to look almost exactly like Disneyland. (Apparently Dreamland's owners were working with Disney, but things fell apart before the park was completed, so they changed the name.) It closed in 2006, & was torn down last year. This company made a bunch of their rides. They also make ships and construction equipment. Online since at least 2000. Good use of frames for menus. Bible Verse of the Day: Acts 4:8-12 419;94

10-26-18 Bible Verse of the Day: Luke 12:6-7
Old-Site of the Day: Alton Towers Almanac "In 2000, Steve Taylor decided to make a website about one of his favourite places to go and have fun, Alton Towers. Back then the internet hadn't really taken off like it has today, so in creating the site, Steve had made a reference point for anybody wanting to know more about the theme park. The site went live in May 2000. Of course, he couldn't do such a mammoth task alone. Helping him were his friends Pitson and Mac, and together they created the Alton Towers Almanac." This is the 3rd main version of the site, dating to May 2006; here's what it looked like in 2000. Last updated in 2014. 547;86

10-25-18 Old-Site of the Day: PDXHistory.com I was researching amusement parks today & came across this Portland history site. For some reason it has an article on Cony Island, across the nation in NYC. Maybe they're just filling in some history to go along with Portland's old amusement parks. Older amusement parks might've been light on theme, but they still had style; I especially like the looks of Council Crest. Can't go wrong with a mountain top. Appears in the Wayback Machine in 2000; 1st working archive I can find is from 2001.
Bible Verse of the Day: Jeremiah 25:10-30757;124

10-24-18 And apparently I've absorbed Pogo's grammer. "right," not "write;" "targeted," not "Target." Oops. :)
Old-Site of the Day: Charles M. Schulz, 'Peanuts' Creator, Dies at 77 Listening to some Peanuts music on YouTube this morning, and I read a comment that said Charles Shultz once said Charlie Brown & Peppermint Patty eventually married. While trying to find that quote, I found this. It's Shultz's obituary from the New York Times, archived in it's original format. Has a history of the strip, a biography of Shultz, comments from the creators of For Better or Worse and Mutts. Two errors: Adults did appear once, in a mid-50's strip where Lucy played golf, & Shults did let a few other artists draw comic books featuring the Peanuts characters for Dell. The newspaper strip was all his work tho. (Actually, if I understand things correctly, the lettering on later strips may have been done digitally by United Feature Syndicate, and the last strip was a collage of his drawings made by the syndicate with his instructions. He was too sick to actually draw it.) :(
Bible Verse of the Day: Isaiah 49:4 661;119

10-23-18 Video: How Facebook Ad Targeting Works. Suggests that Target Ads have helped people become less civil, since reactionary stories get more reactions. But Facebook's software doesn't know the stories are polarizing; it just knows they're getting shared more often. It's a computer! It has no concept of write, or wrong, of denotation or conotation, of context or motivation! All it has are numbers! It only delivers what we react to. To quote Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
(Small part of the comic; should be fair use.) 1061;155

10-22-18 Bible Verse of the Day: Psalm 30:5
Old-Site of the Day: Alpha Omega Portal, in 2001 One of the many sites trying to re-create Yahoo's success in the late 90's, this one with a Christian focus. No longer at that domain. 407;72

10-21-18 165;49

10-20-18 Bible Verse of the Day: Ecclesiates 3:9-15
Old-Site of the Day: Gist.com TV Listings, in 2000 Nice layout. Today Gist.com doesn't lead to a site. Surprising; you'd think someone would've snapped up that domain. Looks like soneone does own it, but they aren't doing anything with it. They won't even tell me their name. Oh, look one of Gists' founders works for HuffPost. 759;160

10-19-18 336;102

10-18-18 Bible Verse of the Day: Psalm 27:13-14
Old-Site of the Day: Red Hot Jazz Archive History of jazz music. Hasn't changed layouts much since '99! 527;110

10-17-18 Bible Verse of the Day: 1 Kings 7:7
Old-Site of the Day: Omnious-Valve.com Found this while researching Cinerama. It's a personal site about old technology, especially analog technology. And Pizza Since 2000, at least.

10-16-18 Sorry I didn't post a Bible Verse yesterday; our internet went down. Here's one for today: Psalm 19:12-14
Old-Site of the Day: PKNet.com, in 1999 Some one on AtariAge is making a Tetris clone. They'd written one before, but lost the code. They managed to find an archive of their old website, which had some source code on it. I hope the Tetris Company doesn't stomp all over this; they have in the past... 721;124

10-15-18 Have to hold my planned update to announce Sears' Bankrupcy. They plan to "restructure" their debt & come back, tho I'm not sure how much hope there is for that. Old-Site of the Day: Sears.com, in 1997 466;84

10-14-18 230;54

10-13-18 Bible Verse of the Day: Jeremiah 29:10-13
Old-Site of the Day: In70mm.com Trying to find info on Cinerama led me to this site yestarday. It's a great resource for larger film formats, like Cinerama, Cinemascope, Todd-AO, etc. Since...1800? That can't be right. The domain 1st appears in the Wayback Machine in May 2001, but it's only a personal site. There is a link to the in70mm newsletter, but it leads to a 404 error page. By December it looks like the webmaster had turned the page into a collection of links leading to the In70mm newsletter's content, but the Internet Archive still didn't get more than the 1st page. By the end of 2003 the newsletter was hosted at the domain. 716;139

10-12-18 Bible Verse of the Day: Proverbs 1:8-9
Old-Site of the Day: ToonZone.net, in 1998 ToonZone was a large animation news site. Recently they've gone through a re-branding. Too few people are interested in western animation these days, so they're tryint to remake themselves as an anime site, animesuperhero. I'm not sure that it'll work; the name sounds like spam, & even Anime News Network has trouble getting visitors these days. This is the earliest archive of ToonZone the Wayback Machine has. 470;100

10-11-18 Old-Site of the Day: Laurel & Hardy Central A 20-year old site about "the boys," Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, comedians from the early 20th century. Lists their movies with reviews and background info. Here's what it looked like in 2001, the earliest version I can find in the Wayback Machine.
Bible Verse of the Day: Jude 1:24-25 493;74

10-10-18 Old-Site of the Day: N1.com, in 1997 Network One was a short-lived U.S. TV Network. They tried to get new, low-powered TV stations to carry them. Didn't last long. Too bad; according to Wikipedia they used to play a lot of old sci-fi shows and anime. Or not. Some of their programming sounds a bit unseemly.
Bible Verse of the Day: Proverbs 19:20-21 731;101

10-9-18 Old-Site of the Day: The Official Footprints in the Sand Page The website of one of a dozen supposed authors who claim to have written "Footprints." Feet follow your mouse! Since 2003.
Deuteronomy 13:4 782;180

10-8-18 Bible Verse of the Day: Isaiah 43:10-12
Old-Site of the Day: StormTheCastle.com First appears in the Wayback Machine in 2002. At the time, it was focused on Sci-Fi & Fantasy books & movies. It still has a sci-fi/fantasy focus, but today most of the articles are about crafts; how to make a model castle, that sort of thing. Same webmaster tho. 257;56

10-7-18 163;47

10-6-18 220;44

10-5-18 237;85

10-4-18 Bible Verse of the Day: Proverbs 27:1
Old-Site of the Day: The Baloon Builders Journal An archive for a 90's hobbiest magazine. First appears in the Wayback Machine in 2005. Back then you could on;y order a CD; now you can download a ZIP file. 443;134

10-3-18Bible Verse of the Day: 1 Peter 1:3-5
Old-Site of the Day: Katzdex A fan page for The Katzenjammer Kids, the comic which ren from the 1890's till 2006(!). The author actually got King Features Syndicate's permission to continue hosting the article. "On May 18, 2002, the 5th anniversary of the creation of the main site, hosting of this page was transferred from Yahoo/GeoCities to an independent server. You are the most recent of the cognoscenti who have ventured to this page since that date." Good info; it's nice to see a surviving Geocities site. 570;154

10-2-18 Bible Verse of the Day: Proverbs 29:25 625;159

10-1-18 According to MistyWorld's profile feed, Yahoo Japan is planning on closing their version of Geocities. I can't put what I feel into words. I know a lot of info will be lost; there's no way Archive.org can get everything. And what they can get will probably be hard to access. I'm sad, & a bit shocked, tho perhaps I shouldn't be. Geocities.jp was a good source for old websites, even if I didn't use it very much. I suppose I should try to save a few pages on my PC, tho i don't know if I will. Goodbye Geocities, we'll miss you. (︶︹︺) Here's a news article about the closure. Says they're shutting it down for "profitability" & "technological" reasons. Geocities Japan will close "in March 2019." Here'a an archived version of the closure announcement. 638;108