Updates to the site, interesting-looking links, thoughts and miscellaneous other rubbish.
Archive: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006
Updated every day: In the ascii chat yesterday
The yearly ascii page update.
And more...
I find sites listed several times on the same webring. How lame can you get?!
Even lamer! A site has made single paintings "members" of a ring!
Why do I even bother with this? It's obvious that webring.org is infested with spammers. The few good ones aren't really worth the trouble. The ascii art webring is clearly an exception (but I know JRO doesn't let people in just because they apply, they have to actually have some original content). I know that there are tons of good art sites out there (I've seen a few) but they are obviously not in those rings. :-\
The search continues...
Those rings I looked at yesterday seem to have one guy behind them. And he has tons of other rings too, on all sorts of subjects! No wonder there's no quality control! No wonder other people copy his style and spend all their energy joining rings instead of making good sites! It's like those "awards" that are just a way for people to get other people to link to them...
I find pages where people have collected webring navigation boxes but forgotten to put in a link to their own page. This is like when people wonder why they don't get any feedback and it turns out it's because they haven't put their email address anywhere on the site...
Then pages with target="_blank" on every link. There are several things wrong with this:
No, a silly little javascript pop-up will not stop me from copying a picture. All it will do is annoy me (I usually right-click and choose "back" because then I don't need to move the mouse to the back button, and I also can keep the mouse pointer in a context, e.g. which link in a long list that I looked at last).
Another annoying idea is when a site has what appears to be a group of thumbnails. I click on one - and get taken to another page with thumbnails! Those first thumbnails weren't thumbnails at all! I expected to see a large version of a thumbnail that caught my attention but then that one is just gone. *grrr*
I used to be on a very big art webring (I think it had something like 1700 sites!). It got me some very interesting email from people who had never seen ascii art before and who were looking for something new and fresh to look at and who thought that my site was "it". That ring had many different types of art on it, which is one reason I liked it. I fit right in precisely because I didn't fit in. Unfortunately that ring died. One day it was just gone! Since then I've been thinking about trying to find another ring to replace it.
Recently I've been looking at webring.org and not had much luck.
What I have found so far:
Some people seem to be collecting webrings. I can see the point of having one ascii art webring and one more general art ring on my page (seeing the subject from a couple of slightly different angles). I cannot see any point in having ten web pages full of webring banners (as I saw on some site).
There are lists of links entered on some rings, i.e. sites without any content of their own. There seem to be an awful lot of "art sites" out there that don't seem to have the first clue about the art of managing a web site! They seem more interested in getting "hits" than in showing any real content! (I think the most hits I ever got was when a big site linked to my ascii page because of the content! I got lots of attention, all of it positive. No tricks involved, somebody with a big audience just happened to like my page... Actually, when I think about it, this has happened more than once...)
One idea would be to make my own ring, but that would only add to the problem of there being too many of them already... :-\
Requirements for such a ring would be:
Basically I want both interesting content (quality and quantity) and technically competent web design.
Suggestions are welcome! Write to vk@ludd.luth.se.
David has (again) declared my chat dead! So (also again) I'm inviting you to a chat party. VIP invitations to the party can be found in alt.ascii-art. If you are not familiar with Usenet you can still come in through the regular entering page.
And some links...
OK, here's an update (there has been some nagging, which is a Good Thing).
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
I keep running into people who just don't get these things:
Communication
Words
Communication works when two people attach the same meaning to the same word.
How you string the words together can affect the meaning.
Poetry that rhymes should have line breaks in the correct places.
Change
The word does not imply what kind of difference is made.
Progress
Change does not automatically become progress just because you're the person behind it.
Deterioration
Progress and deterioration are not the only kinds of change.
The same change can be described as "progress" by one person and as "deterioration" by another. That does not have to mean that one of them is wrong.
Intelligence
There are different kinds of intelligence.
A good memory is not the same thing as intelligence.
Knowledge
Can also happen without going to school.
Education
Education is not the same thing as intelligence.
Education is not the same thing as knowledge.
(This rant was not aimed at any specific person or event.)
And, finally, here they are, today's useless links: