Web Wanderings #9
Rediscover the joy of online exploration! Web Wandering shares a hand-picked selection of the most awesome websites you won't find anywhere else.
Hello fellow Internet Explorers (pun intended). 🤭
I recently updated the Cloudhiker homepage and added this very Newsletter to it. Since then a good dozen of you subscribed to it, which is fantastic. It shows, that Web Wanderings is indeed something people want to read.
Today is a rainy day here in Germany, no sight of sun, so I guess summer’s over. Maybe a good day, to throw yourself on the sofa and enjoy a few miraculous websites.
This edition is also available on Cloudhiker as a Collection so you can find, like and collect the sites there: Web Wanderings #9
User Inyerface
The commercial web is shit. Everybody knows it. Cookie banners, newsletter modals, shitty black-hat practices to just keep you on that very site. And there’s even more: people just developing poor shit with giving either zero thoughts about their work, or zero shits.
User Inyerface is a challenge for you. To navigate a user interface that is so bad aliens would destroy Earth with zero hesitation. 🌏🔫👽
By the way, I gave up after a few minutes without managing to complete it. Did you make it?
Tapedeck
Gen-Z’s, scroll further. You don’t know tapes any more. Which is a pity, because they were the Spotify of the 70s-90s.
Any older peeps here: remember 📼✏️? I had a few tapes where I recorded songs off the radio. And Tapedeck brings back a few memories by scrolling through all the various tape brands and unique designs.
After the Tone
I mean, wow, what’s the chance that this site pops up in my list right after Tapedeck? Maybe some of you remember the answering machines. Technology used all over the world for decades, made needless in a few years by smartphones and modern telephone systems.
Press play and feel the nostalgia!
The first Hours of MTV
I usually don’t allow YouTube videos on Cloudhiker, but that one is a very special one. It’s the first two hours of MTV, the most famous music television channel, before reality TV took over.
And man, the comments are sooooo right. There’s so much cool music in this video, it’s incredible! 🥹 Kinda ironic, that the first title they play is “Video killed the Radio Star“…
The Hamilton Dashboard
https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-dashboard
The Hamilton 2.0 dashboard is an amazing tool that tracks and explains what Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments and state-run media are saying online across social media. It makes it easy to see the big stories and narratives they are pushing, all in one place. Pretty interesting to dig through the content and see what’s up. Also, gives everybody a chance to get a different perspective on political news.
Do you like all those websites and want to explore more? Cloudhiker has 27,000+ sites all waiting for you to be discovered! All for free, no account needed.
Under Construction
http://www.textfiles.com/underconstruction
Again a great website to dive really deep into nostalgia. This time it’s not tapes, but… yeah, kinda tapes.. but security tapes. The ones they use for crimes scenes?! You know what I mean!
Anyway, these were used in the earlier web days once images became fully supported. People started their own websites and instead of polishing everything, they just slapped a big “under construction“ banner on it so people knew they might visit again at a later time for more content.
How things have changed…
Maze Algorithms
https://www.jamisbuck.org/mazes
The world is run by software, and most of it is some sort of algorithm which determines what you like, what might be a next step, or how the market will behave. But there’s more, and I’m always keen to explore algorithms for practical uses such as generating mazes. I really didn’t knew there were soooo many to generate mazes! Amazeing!
Guess the Price
Let’s play a game. I show you a picture of something and you have to guess the price. Rinse and repeat. And the better your guess, the more points you get. Post your score after 10 rounds in the comments or on Discord!
Words for That
Even in my mothertongue, there are so many situation where I’m just missing that very one word for a specific occasion. For that one thing.
Thing is, there are so many thing in this world that might have their own name, but not just in your language. Like, how the Danish have “Hygge“ for comport of simple pleasures, or how Komorebi describes the light flickering through tree leafes in Japanese. Words for That collects such words. Cool!
How Products are Made
Do you know how an Aspirin pill is made? Or sticky notes? Or glue? Me neither, but it’s fascinating to explore exactly that. Click through products and read about their history, how they are actually made and what’s important to know about the manufacturing process.
That’s it for todays edition of Web Wanderings.
I’d love to know what you think, because your feedback helps me make this newsletter better. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend who also loves exploring the internet, and don’t forget to subscribe, so the next edition comes straight to your inbox. Most importantly, thank you for reading and being part of this adventure!
Until then, why not hop on Cloudhiker and see what weird and wonderful corners of the web you can stumble into? 👀