ck/ck

In Memoriam: Geocities

I’m glad to see the passing of Geocities being noted today, here on Tumblr and elsewhere. Even if it’s been more or less irrelevant in this decade, for those who’ve been around the internet block for a while, Geocities played a big role in the early days and it’s hard not to feel a bit sentimental and nostalgic hearing that it has finally been shuttered.

I had my very first website on Geocities, I had my own spot in the Hollywood neighbourhood. The way Geocities categorized and assigned your website address back then seems utterly laughable these days, but then it seemed perfectly normal to pick a neighbourhood and then pick a number, as if you were moving to a house. But a lot of the early web was like that in my mind, emulating pre-existing things as to make them seem more familiar and relatable.

I wish I still had a record of my first website somewhere, but I think it has gone by way of the dinosaurs, but you can take my word for it, it definitely looked a lot like today’s xkcd’s tribute, which is eerily familiar.

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Twitter: Fake AP Stylebook »

The fake AP stylebook has to be the best use of Twitter at the moment, although its solid gold is probably lost on you if you don’t know about stylebooks.

While I’m at it, I should also give a shout-out to Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago), once a vocal opponent of Twitter who finally joined up earlier this month and has turned into one of the best tweeters around.

I tweet too (@_ckck) but not as consistently or impressively.

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What 90% of Swedish urban residential areas look like.

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All Too Familiar

I have to admit it’s been tough, photography-wise, coming back to the (relatively) small town where I was born, grew up in and has spent the most of my life so far in. I expected it to some degree since few things can rival living in New York City, then going on a long road trip and seeing some of the biggest cities and most scenic places along the way, but it’s actually been worse than I anticipated.

Coming back to the things you’ve seen a million times, to those things that are all too familiar, it’s not easy then to find the bits and pieces to interest you enough to want to break out your camera. My output in recent months has been abysmal and that in itself becomes a downward spiral where the camera is left at home more often than not.

I suppose I just gotta keep at it, and accept that those great shots are fewer and further apart here, and remind myself that I’ll be making my way elsewhere in a not too distant future too if all goes accordingly.

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Lower Falls, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

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Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

The Beats Lebowski.

272 plays.

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Flickr People Tagging »

Flickr has just rolled out a new feature, People Tagging. It looks to be essentially the same as tagging people on Facebook, and while I’m sure it’ll annoy those who don’t want every drunken, less than flattering photo of themselves directly linked to themselves, it seems like a perfectly natural addition to Flickr as a way to boost the social networking aspect.

To please every walk of life, they’ve added the ability to limit who are able to tag you in a photo, as well as a universal kill switch for removing you from all photos you’ve been tagged in, in case you’ve been very drunken and debauched.

They’ve also slightly redesigned the profile page, a nice step in the right direction although the “In my own words” header seems superfluous. Either way, with People Tagging and the earlier Galleries addition, it’s looking like a good year at Flickr functionality-wise.

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