Complex Numbers

Revisited: "Useless"

Sundays are when I usually dip into the past, and today is a Sunday, so here's a blog entry I did way, way back in 2007: "Useless" 

The internet has changed somewhat since 2007, so the links aren't what they used to be. They're still active URLs, surprisingly enough, but I wouldn't go in there without a condom.

First was the virtual bubble wrap.   As I noted, the bubble wrap makes the popping noise as you mouse over it, but then regenerates. Infinite bubble wrap, right? Wrong! It was Flash-powered, and Flash is dead. The Web lost a lot of awesome stuff that day, including the utterly useless bubble wrap site.

I don't, in fact, know why the URL is even still there. Just to taunt us, maybe. Or perhaps for some more nefarious purpose, hence the condom.

The second URL at the site was http://www.papertoilet.com/

That one is, to my vast surprise, still operating. I guess it's not Flash. So many great things on the internet lost to time, and the one that remains is a virtual roll of toilet paper that you can unroll to reveal... absolutely nothing? Fitting.

And I'd recommend staying away from the third link, even if you're behind seven proxies. It was, as far as I can tell, just a stapler that you could make go kachunk. Well, not a stapler. A picture of one. Or whatever. And it seems to be gone, anyway. Useless to us, maybe not to malware producers.

And so the unweirdening of the internet proceeds. We have lost so much that we'll never, ever get back, and what do we have to show for it? Influenzas and trolls.

Useless.