Saturday, May 02, 2009

Preserving My Web History

Back at the dawn of the Internet I had a GeoCities Web Page. For its time, it was marvelous. All you had to do to keep up with the terms of service was to make sure each page had a link to the GeoCities home page, and upload files through a somewhat clunky web interface.

I haven't touched the thing since about 1997, but it's still up on the web.

Not for long, unfortunately. Yahoo, which bought the place in 1999, is boarding up the site sometime this fall.

So, for posterity, I've downloaded my contribution to early web culture and uploaded it to my current free web site. That I was able to do this tells you something about why GeoCities is about to go the way of Thylacinus cynocephalus: AwardSpace gives me free web space so long as I register my domain with them, with minimal restrictions, and I can manage it with standard ftp. All I have to do is remember to keep my domain registration active.

Looking back on the thing, the only part that might still be relevant are my book reviews, most of which I did as a paid-for-connect-time science advisor for GEnie. They aren't particularly dated, but I obviously needed an editor to go over them. I've also mis-remembered some of the reviews. For example, I was certain that my review of The Curse of the Bambino started with the line Red Sox fans whine a lot, but that turns out not to be the case. (And, the curse having been obliterated, this is the most dated of the reviews.)

Anyway, it's a new home for old web pages, at least until AwardSpace disappears, hopefully in the far, far future.

The Science Hodgepodge Archival Edition

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