Way Back Machine: The almost way too coolest net tool ever.

I found out about his a few weeks ago. What it is and archive of websites going back ten and fifteen years ago. It is mind blowing.

Note the title has the word almost in it. It's kind of buggy.

Right in the eye catching middle of the page is a search box. You type into it and are taken to the current site. Not an archived site, the one that is there right now, not the archive. The actual archive search is in teeny-tiny box in the no so eye catching upper left corner of the page.

You need to know the exact URL. No guesses allowed. You would think that Web Site #9 would be website#9.com or something. Nope. Fortunately The MSTing Mine still has a dead link right on the front page.

Sites are not fully archived. You get bits and pieces on one date, and different bits and pieces at a different date. Some sites don't get archived at the right time. Web Site Number 9 only got archived after in was taken down. I did manage to save a couple of fanfics that are not available elsewhere. Video Night at Mako-chan's and the Misery Senshi Neo-Zero Double Blitzkrieg Debacle. However I didn't save La Bleu Sammy. I only regret having read it.

When sites are saved by the Way Back Machine, sometimes the original coding is messed up a bit. Like CSS documents aren't saved and such. Things like frames and scroll bars are scrolled way off where you can't see them.

Bookmarking is a bitch. I can't seem to bookmark individual pages like a normal site. Sometimes it won't work, other times it will take me back to the Way Back Machine's homepage. Once in a while I'm lucky enough to at least be able to bookmark the home page of the site I found.

The Way Back Machine's archive is not searchable by Google. A real major draw back.

One major bug is that sometimes there is confusion of an old snapshot with a current one. Once in awhile the hacked version of The People's Sprites will show up in 2006.

Speaking of which, y'all might find this interesting. I don't put a lot of weight behind that declaration. Remember that the Deccus Wily Sprite had been removed. I imagine for a reason. Too bad the sheet itself isn't there. None of the other snapshots have it. Like I said, it's buggy.

I did look up mine. Interesting, I had forgotten a lot of tings. Like when I was posting a bunch of comics. I was truly mystified as to when certain ones went up. Now I know. I have been wanting to change from calling them seasons and go with the year of publication.

(Yikes! As I write all this out, I am looking at many different pages at once, one of them is mine, (of course.) I just noticed a mistake in the comic posted and promptly fixed it.)

I did go through earlier snapshots and have to constantly wonder why this was saved and not that. I'm not going to comment on the construction; because unlike other comics that annoy me when the cartoonist digs up old comics to (A) apologize for his work, (B) make us feel sorry for him, or (C) brag about how great he is now and we all should bow before his greatness. I try not to be that annoying. I'm mildly satisfied by annoying people by pointing the boney finger of indignation at what annoys me about them.

Weren't we talking Deccus a few paragraphs ago? Here is Those Beyond Time dot com. Yes it really did exist. Unfortunately 2003 wasn't archived. So the actual comic is lost except to those of us that manged to find it originally. You can at least read Warped Reality the way Deccus had intended.

(By the way, if you Google Those Beyond Time you will find a blog about an elf chick who likes to draw elf chicks. Interesting.)

Now I am not at all pissed, ticked, annoyed, or anything negative emotionally at all the bugs the Way Back Machine has. These are people spending what little spare time they have and what little money they have in a labor of love. The archivers are having to deal with over 15 years of thousands of different styles and evolutions in web coding. Trying to make it all work in current browsers that are constantly being changed.

I am happy enough to have finally found Shadey Theatre.

I am currently going through and doing what I should have done 8 years ago. Too bad there's only a handful of comics saved.