Sunday, May 31, 2015

Exploring the Lost Cities of Geo

Here is something that I thought I'd never see again. It's my first website! Like many people back in the late 1990s, I decided that the world needed to hear my opinions and sample my creative work.
Well, that hasn't changed, apparently, but the level of sophistication has. To be accurate, the sophistication of the tools has improved; whether my thinking or my content has improved is really not for me to say.
Back then, kids, we didn't have this fancy WordPress or Blogger; we had Geocities and you actually had to know a little HTML. Which is why the pages often looked so bad; we were not skilled enough in HTML nor experienced enough in design to make an attractive webpage.
To give myself a little credit, I never had red lettering on a chartreuse background. Nor did I use flashing text. There are limits even to my poor judgement.
Geocities was closed down in 2009. The operator, Yahoo, certainly gave us plenty of advance notice and we were able to download our materials. But it closed down, and the rest was history.
But there are those who wish to archive everything on the web, and there is a new Geocities: www.geocities.ws
And so I can go back and see my first website in all it's glorious lack of consistency, taste, and value.
Actually, I am being too hard on myself. Other than big plans and small effort, it's not really all that bad, but it never really got much of an audience, and I lost interest and became too busy to think of it much. This, of course, is how adult life goes. My front page gives the usual apologies for the lack of new content, and makes the usual promises of more activity.
And there it has sat for 11 years. The three-year-old child referred to is now a young woman of fourteen, I'm officially qualified as an old fart, and I still write at a snail's pace.
Geocities.ws will actually let you reclaim your old pages and edit them. Unfortunately, It does this by scanning your page for email addresses and assuming that one of them is yours. One _was_ mine, but it was a _Mindspring_ address which has been purely defunct for many years. I am sure I can get control by contacting the good folks at the new Geocities.
But why bother? Let archives be archives. The old pages are there should anyone want to see them. My efforts should be going to newer work and I should be moving on. All the same, there they are. Look on my works, ye mighty, and be kind.

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