Post by transbot on Oct 20, 2006 22:21:15 GMT
Check this shit...
I was down in the lab one night (tonight in fact, right just this minute now), not talkin' to Dracula and his crew, but wandrin' aimlessly across the vast plains of The Internet, casually exploring whichever dark, arcane alleyways it would take me into...
There, I chanced upon this dusty old contraption named 'The Wayback Machine' (well, actually I knew about it before, as I'm sure do most people, but I'm trying to create a mood here). I fiddled with the dials here and there, entered URLs dredged up from the dimmest and dampest corners of my consciousness, and relived past lives through the vague snapshots of long-lost and forgotten webpages it summoned forth...
And lo, upon entering this very forum's address, I was greeted with a cornucopia of dates from the past, frozen in time, held firm within this flickering lcd screen sat before me.
Aware that an Internet year is more like a century, I excitedly clicked on the first date - January 27, 2004 - only to be met by the legend: "Path Index Error. Sorry, we can't find the archived version of this page". With this initial failure in mind, I decided to play it safe, and chose at random one of the dates subsequent to my own appearance on the boards, so many internet decades ago.
October 27, 2004...
Now, as you yourselves can see, a ghostly apparition of our sega8bit forum presented itself to me. Please note the smaller number of forums, with fewer threads and posts within them. Notice the names of the last posters down the right hand side. Also take note of the 'Users Online' near the bottom of the screen. Now, see the 'Last Updated Topic' - strange that I myself would come across that, on my first viewing of this archive, eh? I thought so. A mere coincidence - Or Was It?...
Curious, I clicked to read the '10 most recent posts', as it were (go on, do it). To my surprise, there was no such updated post within the 10 listed - and the date at the top of the screen had turned back one day! It would seem that the thread I saw I had updated... did not exist yet. I was not yet aware of the events which would compel me to pay my sad tribute in a thread on a forum...
Somewhat bewildered, I clicked 'home' to take me back to the forum homepage (go on, do it). The forum clock had turned back, yet again, a day or so!
I scrolled down. I Looked again upon the 'Users Online' that, upon my last viewing just seconds ago, had housed just 1 guest...
I was down in the lab one night (tonight in fact, right just this minute now), not talkin' to Dracula and his crew, but wandrin' aimlessly across the vast plains of The Internet, casually exploring whichever dark, arcane alleyways it would take me into...
There, I chanced upon this dusty old contraption named 'The Wayback Machine' (well, actually I knew about it before, as I'm sure do most people, but I'm trying to create a mood here). I fiddled with the dials here and there, entered URLs dredged up from the dimmest and dampest corners of my consciousness, and relived past lives through the vague snapshots of long-lost and forgotten webpages it summoned forth...
And lo, upon entering this very forum's address, I was greeted with a cornucopia of dates from the past, frozen in time, held firm within this flickering lcd screen sat before me.
Aware that an Internet year is more like a century, I excitedly clicked on the first date - January 27, 2004 - only to be met by the legend: "Path Index Error. Sorry, we can't find the archived version of this page". With this initial failure in mind, I decided to play it safe, and chose at random one of the dates subsequent to my own appearance on the boards, so many internet decades ago.
October 27, 2004...
Now, as you yourselves can see, a ghostly apparition of our sega8bit forum presented itself to me. Please note the smaller number of forums, with fewer threads and posts within them. Notice the names of the last posters down the right hand side. Also take note of the 'Users Online' near the bottom of the screen. Now, see the 'Last Updated Topic' - strange that I myself would come across that, on my first viewing of this archive, eh? I thought so. A mere coincidence - Or Was It?...
Curious, I clicked to read the '10 most recent posts', as it were (go on, do it). To my surprise, there was no such updated post within the 10 listed - and the date at the top of the screen had turned back one day! It would seem that the thread I saw I had updated... did not exist yet. I was not yet aware of the events which would compel me to pay my sad tribute in a thread on a forum...
Somewhat bewildered, I clicked 'home' to take me back to the forum homepage (go on, do it). The forum clock had turned back, yet again, a day or so!
I scrolled down. I Looked again upon the 'Users Online' that, upon my last viewing just seconds ago, had housed just 1 guest...
