The good old days?

Writing a blog entry at almost midnight makes for some odd, existential, artsy-fartsy thought processes. Tonight I found myself wondering if there’s a Golden Age to the internet.

Take for example television and film. We look at old black and white movies, perhaps ones starring Lucille Ball or Charlie Chaplin depending on the medium, and we look at it with respect. “These films and shows are classic,” we think, “and they don’t make shows like this anymore.” Whether this high regard for old films or TV shows is warranted is, of course, debatable. But the truth in those statements is irrelevant for the current discussion.

So with that concept, of respecting and admiring the early forms of modern media, is there a correlating internet golden age? Will we look back on early HTML pages, with its blinking marquee text and repeated pattern GIF backgrounds, as classic? Or will the good old days be slightly more recent, where we revel in the memories of web site intros composed in Flash 4? In ten years will any relics of the internet’s past still exist? It has been much easier to retain old television shows and movies as they existed in physical media: film. But the internet is not physical and requires constant upkeep to continue its existance, so any remnants of a rudimentary website will likely not exist after another decade.

Will time forget the classics of the world wide web?

A lesson in Slurpee history.

This will be the third weekend in a row that I’ve gone out and enjoyed a delicous slurpee. Slurpees are generally a good barometer of when summer arrives. But I swear that slurpee technology has not improved since my childhood, and in fact has gotten worse. It’s become rare to find a slurpee machine that creates consistently good drinks. Growing up, the best slurpees could be found at a family-run burger shop (yes, children, they really did exist) named Tummy’s Delight. It was one place you could go and have a great slurpee, a huge selection of candy, three arcade machines, and burgers. Sadly Tummy’s Delight is no more, but the slurpee machine is still turning out the best at a secret location in Kamloops. Quality issues aside, it also seems to me that slurpees are less “pop” and more “syrup” these days. I remember seeing actual pop-created foam in slurpees, but now you’d be hard pressed to see that phenomenon.

On a related note, mixing soft serve ice cream with slurpee is delicious. Try it.

On an unrelated note, the Netherlands sure has some hot speedskaters.

Mass emailing works!

In an obvious attempt to increase readership I sent out emails to almost everyone I know, telling them of new and readable content here at garrettknights.com. Compounding that, a longtime friend of mine who has been blogging long before it became cool, has given me a mention on his site. Thank you Erwin, of erwintang.com, for the link.

With all this traffic I’ll have to start putting Google ads on the sidebar, so I can make millions without even trying. Hell, engaging discourse and intelligent opinion will always take a backseat to large stacks of Wilfred Lauriers. Anything as long as someday I own a yacht.

But in the meantime, while I save up for luxury watercraft, what to do with this new blog? Plans are afoot to start reviewing anything that deserves a review, be it a new flavour of soft drink, the smell of the air in Burnaby, a movie, my haircut, or any other occurance or item in daily life. Borrowing heavily from my popular lunch blog (typically only available to colleagues) all reviews shall be based on a scale without relevance. Stay tuned.

Why I sold out.

So what happened? Where did all the animated, musical, flashy colours and noises go? Well, that was a long time ago. My website had lay dormant, updated only during stretches of unemployment and flashes of creativity. That hasn’t happened since 2004. I now have a regular job which involves sitting in front of Photoshop or attending important meetings on topics that have dulled my machete of creativity into a soft, rounded nub of indifference. Thus my new outlet shall not be graphics or sound but opinions and commentary, a medium that is essentially frowned upon when working for The Man.

As this is just the beginning, and I’m years behind in joining the blogosphere, this site is going to take time to fill out. Think of it as a scrawny baby I keep in a cage; only through constant force-feeding of delicious and fatty morsels will it plump into a delectable treat for all to enjoy. So please bear with me while I grow my baby, and I promise you in time we shall cook it and feast upon it.

It has to start somewhere.

And I might as well start it here. The old garrettknights.com is gone. The new, and hopefully, regularly updated one is a go.

Oh boy. This should be fun.