Neocities: Geocities' Optimistic Younger Sibling

Author's note: This post was originally written for the science and technology section of Paper Droids. It can be found in its original form here.

Remember Geocities? That inexhaustible collection of gifs, seizure-inducing backgrounds and clown-vomit-coloured websites has been the subject of some nostalgia lately. Rather than just checking out Wayback Machine and remembering what a hideous place most of Geocities was, someone decided to do something about it.

As much as Geocities was the home to countless affronts to the eyes, it was also the platform where so many of us learned the basics of coding, and where we presented some part of ourselves to the Internet, perhaps for the first time. Geocities is a big piece of Internet history. When Myspace and other social sites stepped into the picture, Geocities faded away, and there has really been nothing like it since. Sites like Facebook, Blogger and WordPress allow you to create a website or an online presence for free, but with heavy restrictions, and usually no need to be familiar with coding or scripting.

Kyle Drake (@kyledrake), the creator of Neocities.org, has set out to create Geocities’ successor. Though some of us may shake our heads and wonder why you would ever want that many gifs in one place, Drake sums up his noble goal in 140 characters or less.

I want to make another Geocities. Free web hosting, static HTML only, 10MB limit, anonymous, uncensored.
— Kyle Drake (@kyledrake) May 23, 2013

His plan is to take away the comfortable but restrictive WYSIWYG and drag-and-drop layouts of most modern web sites, and allow people to present whatever information they want, in whatever format they see fit. His idea is to create an environment where people can be completely creative, without the hand-holding of guidelines and forms like those of Facebook and WordPress.

In its current state, Neocities provides 10 MB of free hosting, with no content restrictions, as little censorship as can be managed, and complete freedom to put whatever you want on it, ad free. While it does away with the “cities” part, where the sites were divided into sections based on content, you still need to know how to code. The price of creative freedom is that you need to actually understand the HTML and the CSS that goes into your page. A secondary part of Drake’s goal is to create a vehicle for people to learn more about the internet and its building blocks. He feels that it is becoming more and more important to know how to code or program, and he wants to create a place that makes that easy and accessible. Neocities is also working towards having HTML tutorials so that the absolute novice can get started, all at no cost.

Though the service is free to the user, all of the hosting and resources require funding. The site is currently funded by donations, and there are no plans to implement an ad program. The Neocities website states that “[t]he technology has become affordable enough where we can provide this creative space without requiring a business plan that involves selling people out to the marketing industry.” Through donations alone they have secured the funding to host two million sites for two years, according to Drake.

As for the monitoring and censorship issue. The terms on the site make no statement about disallowing any types of content, but it does say that any suspected unlawful activity can be reported to the authorities. If lawful process requires your personal information, they retain the right to give that to the authorities as well. “Uncensored” has to have its boundaries, after all. Luckily, providing any personal information when you register is completely optional. You don’t even need to submit an email address to register.

While this project was started with noble aspirations for a free and unobstructed creative place on the web, there is a lot of potential for mischief here. Like with any anonymous forum, there is a significant chance that the denizens of the murkier places on the web will latch onto this and fill it full of various flavours of vitriol and deception. So far there are people using it to share useful information, introduce themselves, or just straight-up confuse people. (Watch out, that last one is loud.) There are also many sites that should surprise no one.

For those with aspirations of learning HTML and CSS, it is a great way to get started and make something that is completely yours, even if that ends up being a flashing neon scrolling banner declaring your love for banana peppers. If you’ve already got some coding chops, you can make an elegant, stylish place to present yourself. Better yet, find yourself a newbie. Get them started with some basic skills and watch the fireworks.

Whether the platform gets adopted by the creative community, taken over by trolls, filled with auto-playing midis and blinking yellow scrolling banners, or an exciting combination of the three, it will be interesting to see. Who knows? Maybe Geocities was just ahead of its time.

Drawing Strangers on the Internet: The Sequel

If you recall, in my last post about drawing strange people on the tubes, I mentioned that I had found two resources that were helping me practice a bit. The first one was a specific part of Reddit, and I neglected to mention the second one. Since I'm sure you were waiting with bated breath, wait no more!

The other really cool resource that I have been using to hone my meagre skills is a website called Selfless Portraits. The idea is that you submit your Facebook profile picture to be drawn by someone, and you draw one that is randomly assigned to you. The results are sometimes awesome, sometimes silly, and... well, sometimes it just doesn't work.

I'm not so great at likenesses, so I thought doing a few of these might be some good practice.

I am not really happy with this one, but doing the relief thing turned out to be way harder than I thought. My original idea was to draw him with a big creepy smile, a la A Clockwork Orange, but I think this is creepy enough.

This is definitely the one that I am happiest with, out of the portraits that I have done on this site so far. The face could be narrower, but I think the photo might be squashed, so it evens out. (That's what I am going to tell myself.)

This was the first one that I did, and man was I ever mad that my first one was a duckface. Turns out that they are really hard to draw, in addition to being weird looking!

And lastly, I of course must share the ones that others have drawn of me! I think it's a good likeness, no?

My Little Children's Show

After all the hype that has been happening about this stupid show, I decided to give it an honest try. I watched three whole episodes, thinking that there must be something to this show that is drawing all of these people in. Turns out that no, it is just a children’s show that has drawn an inexplicably large following of adult men from the internet.

And I like to draw while I watch television. There you have it.

I Don't Know How to Internet

I recently sorted out that I seem to use Tumblr wrong. My interpretation was that it was made for sharing original things; for blogging and sharing one's own thoughts and works. This was how I used it for a good long time. It seems that it has since mutated into some badly implemented substitution for email forwards for people who are too computer literate to get in with email forwards.

So now I am left with a blog full of my own things that I put a lot of time and effort into, that I no longer want to use at all because the community at large uses Tumblr for something else altogether, and I just look like an idiot for using it like a blog. So here I am, back with the old standby. Blogger. It has been around forever, and has never really changed. I'll share my thoughts here, and maybe if I am energetic I will make a Wordpress or something where I try to be entertaining like I did on my Tumblr. I have two choices: Stubbornly stick to my methods of posting real content to Tumblr and denying the trend of just reblogging images that make me giggle, or I can leave my Tumblr to die and be buried in images of stills from movies with quotes written on them.

Well Tumblr, it's been a lark.

I Really Like Getting Mail

Today I walked for half an hour in the blazing ten billion degree sun (that’s Centigrade, for anyone who’s wondering), braving road construction and unfinished stairs and heat stroke to pick up a package from the post office. That is how important getting mail is to me.
I was expecting my package to be full of shirts, because I ordered shirts several weeks ago from TeeFury.com. (For the record, their shipping to Canada is VERY slow.) Instead of my long-awaited tee shirts, I got computer decals, which are good too, I guess. I actually got two of them because I couldn’t decide which one I liked better, so for now I have the one pictured to the left on my laptop. I also got this one.

I bought them on the internet, because I don’t seem to believe in real stores and things anymore, and I am including a link to the store where I bought them because there are some other really cool ones there, and they are totally worth buying and I am not just saying that to get a discount. There is a really cool Iron Man one that was definitely my third choice. As it stands, I am pretty happy with my retro nerdery.

Cool Decal on Etsy.

Magic Eye Nostalgia

Remember magic eye? I used to struggle a lot with them as a kid, but now I can do it without really trying. This one took me a minute to work out. It is probably my favourite one that I have come across. I am now going to take its lesson to heart and crawl into bed like a sane person should be doing at 2 AM.

On the Hunt

Today I am going to apply for jobs. In person. This is always a scary experience for me. I like to apply for jobs from the safety of my own computer where I don’t have to track down managers and try to articulate real words. I just have to proof read my resume and cover letter and click send, and then I am done! But it seems like employers realize that, and don’t like to hire cowards. It makes me wonder why so many companies put up online applications and then don’t actually look at them. Why not just be honest about it? “Look, we’re barely even going to look at your online application, because you were too lazy to come to our location and talk to a real person.”

At any rate, I am sinking to my most desperate of states where I walk over to the Tim Horton’s down the street and humbly submit an application there.Someone has got to want me, right? It’s a far cry from the executive assistant spot that I had a month ago. I am still kind of bitter about that, but you can’t win ‘em all.

The End of An Era

It has finally happened. I have been waiting for this for a long time, but here it is. Today, at approximately 14:35, I got bored of Farmville.

This is when it happened:

It hit me like a wall; an overwhelming sense of “why am I doing this?”. One second I was happily clicking away at my fully grown fields of peanuts, the next moment it seemed kind of dumb. Right now, my fields are sitting empty and fallow. That’s like a sin. I’m only one field-plowing away from level 40. Why quit now? I’m so close…

To be completely honest, I am not sure what draws people into this game. It doesn’t really need any skill; any person can be amazing at Farmville with enough spare time. It uses the same principle as games like WoW in that it rewards you frequently to begin with, and then spaces them out more and more as you progress, and for some reason that keeps people playing it. I will be the first to admit that I thought the game was the best thing since toast when I started it, and sunk an awful lot of time into it. I think it just registered in my mind that the whole game centers around just clicking across a screen around 1500 times a day, if not more.

I wonder if my level 50 friends will ever hit that same wall, or if I just only have so much attention span in me.

I bet you thought I was going to write about Mel’s burning down. Here’s a secret: I’ve never been there. I am kind of sad about Sugar Mountain though.

Teal Deer

I made this. Sort of. It’s a present for the internet.

Edit: It seems that no one actually understands this on first looking at it, because every time I show it to someone it’s met with blank looks, so I should probably explain. First of all, the specific colour of this deer is teal. Secondly, the phrase ‘too long; didn’t read’ is often shortened to ‘tl;dr’. If you had to try and pronounce that, it would sound like…?

Keep Broadband Competitive

These are not my own words, but the words of a friend of mine (Solstice_sings on LiveJournal). He has put things much more eloquently than I would have, and I feel the need to spread the word:



Unless you make your voice heard, a CRTC decision sets the stage for rapid increases
in prices for your telecommunications and broadband services. You can reverse this
decision, and making your voice heard takes only 30 seconds.

http://www.competitivebroadband.com

Very rarely do I feel strongly about an issue to send it to every single person I know. I really don't like spam in my inbox more than anything. But the truth is, unless people do something about this and lend their support to the campaign, the Internet in Canada will become a lot more expensive.

Simple fact is, the CRTC has recently ruled that Bell can force small ISPs to cap their internet at 60gb per customer, or they can levy a per-gigabyte cost. If Bell's infrastructure had been built on their own funds, this might NOT be an issue, but Canada's phone and internet systems were publically subsidized with tax money. This amounts to a private company imposing a tariff on all other companies using publically-funded phone lines and infrastructure, while THEY don't have to pay the same.

The only competitive advantage that small companies like Acanac, TekSavvy and MTS Allstream have right now is their ability to offer their internet at cheaper prices. As soon as they're forced to charge with UBB (usage-based billing) at the the same or higher rates as Bell and Rogers, they lose any chance of competing, as these two companies will temporarily lower their rates until the others are out of business, then jack up prices to astronomical levels.

It's actually already happening in BC for television. A local, smaller company
called Novus was recently granted the ability to sell television to 225 high-rise condo and apartment complexes. The local big-money competitor is offering their services at a price that is far below cost or anything that Novus could afford. What do you want to bet that as soon as Novus is out of business, Shaw will increase prices even higher than they were before. And this may even be on a private
network, not public infrastructure like DSL was built on.

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2009/08/24/novus-shaw-television-predatory.html

What do you think Bell will do when THEIR competition is destroyed by the
foolishness of the CRTC?

Please, send this to the people you know. Do you really want a future where our internet is more expensive, lower quality, and with less choice than some 3rd world countries? Do you really want a future for the internet in Canada where doing something as simple as streaming a movie trailer or sending a family video of a child's first steps has to be weighed and measured as 'too expensive'?

35 Seconds to Live

Have you ever wondered how long you would survive if you were chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor? I know I have. 35 seconds for me. Comment on how you did, if you want. I suspect most will be quite a bit longer than mine.

http://www.bunkbeds.net/velociraptor/index.php