I was the accidental instigator of an incident where Mosaic for Windows ended up with April Fool's jokes embedded in it.
It was probably the first time I noticed what others have noticed since then, which is that I have a way of asking questions that causes other people to react (often more than my attempts to directly influence).
All I said was, "Isn't this going to be our last release before April 1?" Everyone got quiet for a minute, their eyes glinted, and we went from releasing at a reasonable hour for once to deploying at 1 am. Unfortunately the lead engineer (who ended up putting an audio clip of himself knocking on his CRT and saying, "hello? Is anybody out there?" on an idle timeout) and I had worked out all of the off-by-one errors on date calculations in Win32 early in the evening when we were still sharp, only for him to change the numbers in a crisis of faith later in the evening. So the whole thing fired on April 2. Which luckily was a Sunday, so few people using it at work or for classes were affected.
It was all fun and games until the emails started coming in informing us that we may have been hacked. I like easter eggs in my games, but I've only ever mentioned this to coworkers as a cautionary tale about impulses and judgement when tired.
I miss the whimsy of the old web. I suspect even the folks who participated in that whimsy and now turn their nose up at a site with an odd design, or sound are to blame.
Whimsy is still out there to some extent but just not as prevalent.
Auto-playing music was obnoxious then and it's obnoxious now. I didn't think there was anything whimsical about it. About as whimsical as getting an air horn blown in my face when I walk into a room.
It's a funny thing. The Gemini people are so about a retro take on the web without any media you don't explicitly click on, but even twenty years ago, most of the history of the web involved media playing.
(Mind, everyone got sick of unwarned, auto-playing media.)
We only like audio or video on a page when the point of the page is audio or video. Youtube. Conference slides. Podcasts.
And even then I have a bad habit, in part due to multiple monitors, of trying to mix tabs and windows and sometimes I cannot for the life of me locate the tab that is playing when someone needs me for something. I may need a new rule about where such tabs need to live (separate window, one monitor, virtual desktop, something).
hinkley|4 years ago
It was probably the first time I noticed what others have noticed since then, which is that I have a way of asking questions that causes other people to react (often more than my attempts to directly influence).
All I said was, "Isn't this going to be our last release before April 1?" Everyone got quiet for a minute, their eyes glinted, and we went from releasing at a reasonable hour for once to deploying at 1 am. Unfortunately the lead engineer (who ended up putting an audio clip of himself knocking on his CRT and saying, "hello? Is anybody out there?" on an idle timeout) and I had worked out all of the off-by-one errors on date calculations in Win32 early in the evening when we were still sharp, only for him to change the numbers in a crisis of faith later in the evening. So the whole thing fired on April 2. Which luckily was a Sunday, so few people using it at work or for classes were affected.
It was all fun and games until the emails started coming in informing us that we may have been hacked. I like easter eggs in my games, but I've only ever mentioned this to coworkers as a cautionary tale about impulses and judgement when tired.
duxup|4 years ago
Whimsy is still out there to some extent but just not as prevalent.
kixiQu|4 years ago
https://www.kickscondor.com <- anything in the kicksverse
http://tetrageddon.com/ <-- nathalie lawhead has some wild net art projects
nkrisc|4 years ago
KMnO4|4 years ago
Semiapies|4 years ago
(Mind, everyone got sick of unwarned, auto-playing media.)
jdrc|4 years ago
hinkley|4 years ago
And even then I have a bad habit, in part due to multiple monitors, of trying to mix tabs and windows and sometimes I cannot for the life of me locate the tab that is playing when someone needs me for something. I may need a new rule about where such tabs need to live (separate window, one monitor, virtual desktop, something).
MisterTea|4 years ago
dinkleberg|4 years ago