WHATS UP?

2024-04-22: Alright kids it's time to show you all this Youtube classic. The fact that 'Ghost Ball' happened is rarer than all the planets in our solar system perfectly aligning. The fact that someone was out there to record it AND managed to say 'ItS a GoWsT BaWl!1!1!' in the funniest way possible is even more unlikely. The celebrations at the end are the icing on a cake of funny Youtube video perfection and another 47 minutes of partying would have been completely justified. But true legends are marked by modesty and thus, Ghost Ball came to be.

2024-04-12: Been a little busy recently with work, private stuff and preparing for a vacation. I have no idea how travel is going to effect my productivity on this site. Either I'm going to be writing and posting a lot more, or not at all. Since this site is a hobby project and I hate creating content just for the sake of looking alive, I'm just going to go with the flow and see what happens. I am currently writing an article about travel and how my views on travel have changed over the years, but I can't say when it will be done yet. I still have loads of ideas for articles and projects, but time is limited.

2024-03-25: New section alert! On the rotations page I will add short write-ups about films, music, books, games and other art I have recently enjoyed. The articles will be sorted chronologically with newest first. I'm note sure yet what this means for my current rotations marquee on this page. I will keep it on for now though.

2024-03-19: Working on some stuff now but my creativity levels are low. Writing an article about Bombay Bicycle Club's latest album. Also I really want to share all the amazing sites I found while GIF hunting but I'm still brainstorming on the format. I was thinking to create a sort of permanent exhibition page about the bygone age of freebie/free materials sites that were prominent in the late nineties but disappeared once people stopped making their own websites. The subculture was especially big in Japan. This will probably take longer to develop but I think it's important to make these wonderful sites and creations accessible to the public. This could totally be a collab project if anyone is interested. I'm looking for people who have a better understanding of graphic design and art than me and/or who can read Japanese.

2024-03-12: Do you ever worry about something so much that it disables you from doing anything fun or relaxing? Like you don't allow yourself to have fun until you resolved the issue you're facing? That's where I've been at for the past week. The issues feel beyond my control and I don't know when they can be resolved. Could be tomorrow, could be next year. The not-knowing what you're up against is the worst part.

2024-03-04: In my search for interesting gif sets, which is proving to be quite the rabbit hole, I found this ultimate Kao archive. I'm not collecting Kao myself because there are already plenty of other people doing it, but this collection is pretty insane. More than 10.000 Kao are collected here. Visit Canuck's House of Kao.

2024-03-01: Began working on the collections page. I really enjoyed hunting the old web for these monkey gifs, through gifcities and reverse image searching I was able to find over 20 so far. I'm going to collect old sets of gifs here that I find interesting and also hope to learn more about their origins along the way. This is proving to be extremely difficult so far, but I like a challenge. It would be awesome if I can give credit to the creators some day.

2024-02-24: My capitalism piece is done! Writing and coding this was hard work! I think I'll work on something lighter after this. Maybe add some sparkles to the about page.

2024-02-22: Just wanted to point out this very interesting project from fellow Neocities inhabitant Astraplex. The Buried Dreams project is an online gallery of artwork found on abandoned personal websites. I think it's such a nice way to but the old web in the spotlight and it shows just how easily the past is buried on the internet. It feels similar to a drawing you once made but stuffed away in a drawer, only to find it years later when tidying up. Check out the Buried Dreams project!

2024-02-19: Sup internet! While working on my capitalism piece I came across this interesting article analysing Ghibli's Spirited Away as an anti-capitalist allegory. While I did understand the anti-capitalist message of the director, I did not realise how deeply the message was embedded in the story. Read here.

2024-02-14: Added podcast recs to the link page. Next is Youtube channels. I'm working on an article about my beef with capitalism. I want it to be engaging and personal though as there are already so many great informative sources on the problems with capitalism.

2024-02-08: Working on an article about J-dramas. Experimenting with Javascript a little bit for the first time. It will still take a few days before it's done. aaaand it's done!

2024-02-05: This excellent video essay by Youtuber Accented Cinema explains how I feel about the current state of copyright laws and enforcement very well. As long as people are cerebrating their love for the original source, through parody, fan fiction or educational means, corporations should hold back with enforcing their copyrights. Also agree that copyrights in general limit the possibilities for creative innovation because inspiration is what drives us all to create. Disney was inspired by old fairytales, but let the world wait almost 100 years to allow it's fans to create their own derivative works based on Mickey Mouse. If you ask me copyrights should expire much sooner in order to create a fair balance. I think 25 years is more than enough to give creators exclusive rights to their work. This allows people to actually create derivative works based on their childhood heroes when they reach adulthood.

2024-01-30: My first article is done! I didn't expect to ever make a shrine, but while I was writing this article I thought it would be nice to have the article have a different design from the main site. From there it wasn't much of a strech to turn it into a shrine instead. If any band ever deserved it it's Pinback. I have so many idea for articles, but not too much free time sadly...

2024-01-29: Sometimes I catch myself feeling pretty tired from browsing Neocities sites, then I realise I'm trying to navigate the old web like I would navigate social media profiles. Neocities sites, unlike social media, don't follow a specific structure, I can't really filter on what or who I will run into. I come across people with vastly different ideas and lifestyles than mine and that's what makes it good. No echo chambers, no filter bubbles. It's a mind expanding experience. It does mean however that I can only visit a few pages before my attention is drained. I love to read people's journals and manifestos and whatnot, but you can't 'consume' the old web like we are used to on the internet of today. I have to accept this fact and slow my pace down a bit I guess.

2024-01-26: Spent all night last night making my buttons. Next step is to make a box with buttons to friend sites so if you want to exchange buttons let me know!

2024-01-25: As I was looking for buttons for my site I stumbled upon some old cartoon network ad buttons. Cartoon Network is basically my childhood in a nutshell so I went down a little rabbit hole today. I found a Github project where they stream CN shows from the golden era! I also remembered how I loved to play the games on the CN website, particularly the Summer Resort games. Another hero on Github made sure we're still able to play them today as the games are no longer hosted on CN's website and the shockwave player is out of order. Play the Summer Resort games here!

2024-01-24: What's up internet? I started adding links to the links page. In addition to links to websites I am also considering making sections with links to my favorite podcasts and/or Youtube channels, but I wonder if it would be in the spirit of the neocities community to link to podcasts and youtube pages. Since podcasts are usually not linked to tech giants and social media I think they would OK to feature here, but Youtube channels will just generate more traffic to Google, so perhaps they don't belong here. If you have any thoughts on this leave a note in the Guestbook!

2024-01-19: If you want to know a bit more about me, then check out the about page I just made!

2024-01-15: A you may have noticed my homepage has seen a sudden increase of primate residents. I found these monkeys gifs while browsing the gifcities archive and I really like them. I would love to know if more of them exist. I found roughly 10 different kinds but I'm not sure where they originate from. Most source pages seem to be from Hong Kong so my guess is they originated there. If anyone knows more about them let me know!

2024-01-11: Been listening to this very relevant episode of the Ezra Klein Show about how we can develop our own taste in the age of recommendation algorithms and it just reminded me of Neocities and all the creativity that people put in their sites. I think the decentralization of the internet can help people discover their own taste! We're creating a rich biosphere of websites here and I'm just getting started but already thrilled to be a part of it! Check out the podcast episode here

2024-01-09: I found this really cool gif archive made by the Internet Archive. Type in any keyword and be amazed by an avalanche of gifs and banners from the heydays! GifCities

2023-08-17: Created this page a few days ago. Getting the hang of HTML and CSS now.The idea is that this page will be the portal to my other pages, but some pages can also be considered as stand alone.I love the idea of a revival of personal websites where people can express themselves like we did back in the Geocities and Angelfire days.However I do attempt to make an unironical website, that is more than a trip down memory lane. Instead I will make D-man's WEB a place where I dive deep into my hobbies and interests in the hopes of sparking the same interests in others.I also want this place to be more interactive in the future, but I haven't decided on how to do this.Please come back here sometime in the near future to enjoy the content that I add. For now, check out some other cool neocities projects on the link below!