XKCD commemerates GeoCities

http://www.xkcd.com/

by rglovejoy • 17 years ago

161 31 17 years ago

linuxrebel• 17 years ago

sigh But we should remember the social site of today is the GeoCities Site of the next decade. Though I think, despite the somewhat trite bleeps and blurps of the GeoCities era, there was a bloody ton of innovation and invention that occurred in and around this product. It's passing is the end of an era. Chat rooms, personal websites, web based socialization all began in the likes of a GeoCities.

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

Yeah, there's really not much different in the taste of the creators of the average GeoCities page and MySpace profile, right down to the gratuitous animated GIFs.

thaumaturgy2• 17 years ago

This incidentally is a great window into what the opinions of many consumers are when it comes to "good design".

ivankirigin• 17 years ago

The social site of today wants to be embedded deep into whatever the * of tomorrow is.

callahad• 17 years ago

The source of the page has a few hidden gems, including:

    <SCRIPT LANGUAGE='SCHEME'>
    (define (eval exp env)
      (cond ((self-evaluating? exp) exp)
            ((variable? exp) (lookup-variable-value exp env))
            ((quoted? exp) (text-of-quotation exp))
            ((assignment?  exp) (eval-assignment exp env))
            ((definition? exp) (eval-definition exp env))
            ((if? exp) (eval-if exp env))
            ((lambda? exp) (make-procedure (lambda-parameters exp) (lambda-body exp) env))
            ((begin? exp) (eval-sequence (begin-actions exp) env))
            ((cond? exp) (eval (cond->if exp) env))
            ((application? exp)  (apply (eval (operator exp) env) (list-of-values (operands exp) env)))
            (else (error "Common Lisp or Netscape Navigator 4.0+ Required" exp))))
    </SCRIPT>

garply• 17 years ago

He should be prompting for R5RS, not Common Lisp.

zemoo• 17 years ago

why not R6RS?

gojomo• 17 years ago

Through early Monday, you can still request a special extra last-minute Internet Archive crawl of any GeoCities pages:

http://www.archive.org/web/geocities.php

(We've already got fairly good coverage, both historically and in extra crawls of the last couple months that don't yet appear in the Wayback Machine. But we're not sure we have everything, so if any sites are especially important to you, please nominate them.)

_ck_• 17 years ago

When do we get to retire myspace, which is essentially geocities 2.0 ?

lupin_sansei• 17 years ago

Angelfire was Geocities 0.9

mahmud• 17 years ago

Tripod.

prakash• 17 years ago

Awesome, spot on!

jlees• 17 years ago

Being able to learn HTML in a weekend and put it up on a Geocities page was pretty much the start of my career (if you can call it that) of creating stuff for the web, something which I'm still loving 12? years later.

A grey, Times New Roman page 'About My Life' might not have seemed exciting to anyone else, but it was the same 'wow, I made that!' moment as the first time a BASIC program printed my name across the screen.

(On reflection, many of these beginnings are egotistical, aren't they?)

It strikes me that Kids These Days Don't Have It So Good. Stuff is complex now. A page with nowt but a <title> and <h1> tag looks rubbish. Back in the day, everything looked rubbish so your first page actually looked kinda cool. Obfuscating the real work through helpful frameworks and builders does help one get started, but there's always the sense that it's not really the same as starting from nothing.

I do wonder what the current, or immediate, equivalent to those magic first steps might be.

jballanc• 17 years ago

I think it's telling of my age that I didn't even do a double take at that site. In fact, I had opened the link in a tab, forgot about it, came back later, and found myself thinking, "Who's embedding XKCD comics on their GeoCities page?"

I sometimes marvel at how much of history is "lost to the ages", even from the relatively recent past (i.e. ~1000 yrs). I find myself sometimes wondering if something similar might happen 1000 years from today. I can't say for sure, but I certainly think it's possible.

RyanMcGreal2• 17 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=851710

johnnybgoode• 17 years ago

This is on the front page, so maybe this is a good place to remind people that GeoCities is being shut down today. If there is some content you want, make sure to download it and/or have the Internet Archive crawl it ASAP (See gojomo's comment).

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

It isn't over until the fat lady sings. Stay tuned :)

alex_c• 17 years ago

This wouldn't have anything to do with that "rush job" you posted about, would it? :p

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

http://www.reocities.com/newhome/

Yep. Spot on!

RyanMcGreal2• 17 years ago

Lots of easter eggs in the source, nestled among the 94 errors and 4 warnings. My favourite:

    <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="QBASIC">IF $BROWSER = "IE" THEN GOTO 50</SCRIPT>

noamsml• 17 years ago

Does anyone get the scheme joke on that page? The only thing that comes to mind is that I think the (cond) construct used there doesn't exist in pure scheme.

pmjordan• 17 years ago

Maybe the fact that JavaScript was originally supposed to be Scheme but ended up having C syntax for political reasons.

shrughes• 17 years ago

(cond) exists in pure R5RS, and probably all the others.

aliem• 17 years ago

  GOTO 10

I love this guy

kenfurlong• 17 years ago

Nicely done.

zandorg• 17 years ago

Truly genius website parody.

XKCD commemerates GeoCities

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