You all know I have a passion for old school graphics, specifically the old graphics websets from the late 1990s- early 2000s. I have a whole section for that on the website, in case you've only ever read my blog. So many of those sites were on Angelfire and Tripod. I thought for sure they would be around until the end of time.

Something shady, though, has been going on with their parent company, Lycos. They've had a "server outage" since January and even before then the service was very up and down. On about March 6, Lycos put a notice on their front page stating that Angelfire and Tripod users would have to find other hosting as they were shutting down the services in 30 days. And then, in less than a day, they took that notice down. And then, at some point, they put it back up.

Lycos has really done all those users dirty. People have been unable to get into their sites to save anything or transfer anything and service requests and emails to Lycos go unanswered. And, yet, automatic billing has been continuing and users have not been able to get Lycos to stop it. It's surprising to me how many people were still using those sites for hosting and mail services!

I had saved a good number of the sites that I have on my Linkware Websets page using HTTrack so I at least have them. And, starting back in December, I was saving the sites using the Internet Archive extension when I remembered, which meant actually not very often. Not even that was foolproof, however. I messed up on some of the Internet Archive saves by not making sure the Outlinks box was checked before saving so I have a lovely index page with thumbnails but no graphics. And I found at least one website that didn't get a complete HTTrack mirror because the actual graphics were several pages down and on another domain! So, once again, lovely thumbnails, no actual graphics set.

I ended up having to remove about a dozen sites from what I had listed on my Linkware page because the "saves" were so incomplete. I'm just crushed at how much is lost now. That was someone's hard work and it was also part of internet history. Angelfire sites seem to be better saved on the Internet Archive than Tripod ones, probably because in 2019 the Archive Team was systematically going through and saving those although currently the Angelfire archive is locked. I sent an email to the Archive Team asking why and all they had to say about it was, "items may be taken down for various reasons, including by decision of the uploader or due to a violation of our Terms of Use."

Listening

I listened to a few podcasts this week:

I only listened to one album from the One Album a Day thing I talked about in my last blog post. I finished It's Blitz | Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It was a solid 3, not bad, perfectly cromulent. The site gives you new albums every day whether or not you have actually listened to the previous one and now I have such a backlog I feel like Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory.

Ummm ... you all did get that reference, right? It's only like (does some math) oh, crap ... 74 years old. (suddenly feels ancient and withered) Just in case you didn't - I Love Lucy - Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory.

Reading

I finished Wolf Worm this past week. There was body horror but not as much as I thought. There was quite a nice twist in the story, too! I think I would have been OK reading it at night, right before bed. Or maybe not. It would be just my luck to read about bot flies brushing against someone in the story only to have, at that very same moment, some random bug in real life (moth or gnat) touch me while I was reading. Maybe it's best I saved it for daytime reading!

I am currently reading The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson. This story is crazy! I think if an author proposed a story like this to their agent, the agent would be like, "Nah, man, it's too crazy, no one will buy it." The story's about the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying, something called The Feather Underground, a thieving flautist, and a late night museum heist of hundreds of priceless bird specimens collected in the 19th century. You can read the NPR book review here.

I preorderd a book that should be released on April 7 - The Faces of the Dead by Chris Nickson. This is the second book in the Cathy Marsden mystery series set in 1940s Leeds, England. I enjoyed the first book so much and I'm really looking forward to this one! You can read a synopsis on the author's website.

Watching

I finished up season 3 of Royal Flying Doctors Service. I liked this show so much in the beginning but, like I've said, it just got to be more like a soap opera and now I'm no longer in love with it. Will I watch season 4? Maybe. I won't be pining for it, though.

I watched a really interesting documentary on YouTube, The Secret Power of Bhutan's Monarchy - How the Wangchuks Changed History. I don't know a whole lot about Bhutan - it was the first (and still only, I believe) carbon negative country in the world and, while other countries measure their Gross Domestic Product, Bhutan measures the country's Gross National Happiness. This documentary followed the lives of the 5 Wangchuk kings and described how they've led the country. It was very surprising to read that at one point they were absolute monarchs and gave that up to become constitutional monarchs. It was also very interesting to see how each father had a role in teaching his heir kingship things.

I had thought Bhutan was pretty idyllic but then there was a matter of probable ethnic cleansing that was touched on in the documentary but not really addressed. People who were pretty sure they were citizens of their country woke up one day to find out they weren't. And then they were sent to refugee camps. And horrible things happened perpetrated by the state. And that all cuts a little close to home these days. But, overall, a very interesting documentary.

Some time ago I had made a list of movies I wanted to watch based on an article I read. I forget what the article was but the movies were all over the place. A lot of them Best Son said he'd be interested in watching, too. Best Son is quite the cinephile. I just want to be entertained and not think too much - he appreciates movies on a deeper level. Anyway, we finally got together to watch one of them, One of Them Days, a 2025 buddy comedy with Keke Palmer and SZA. Two roommates have until 6 pm to come up with rent money that the boyfriend of one of them squandered. It was fun! Highly recommend. Best Son talked about making movie time a weekly thing so we'll see if we get another one in this week.

Link Lagniappe

OK, that's about it for this week!

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