Screenshot of the "Athens to Paris by Train" section of the Bob Cromwell's website cromwell-intl.com, slightly altered for presentation purposes
It always fascinates me to read or watch other people’s tourist impressions of places I live in or frequently visit. The novelty of a place fades quickly, replaced by the routine of daily chores. Tourists rushing past my house or workplace to the next attraction on their bucket list offer a different perspective, a unique viewpoint.
It’s great when the travelogue deviates from that overused template that most modern YouTube “influencers” stick to. Even better, when the website is hand-crafted and belongs to that dying breed of classic personal homepages about everything that interests their webmaster.
For me, the “Athens to Paris by Train” series provides a rare glimpse into the massive number of tiny little changes that have happened in Bulgaria and Romania over the past fifteen years. The locals often tend to focus on the negative aspects, unaware of how much the years of gradual improvements transform the place for the better.
I’ve tagged this link “retro”, but honestly there’s nothing retro about Bob Cromwell’s website except for its unequivocal old-school charm. It is still being updated regularly and adheres to HTML 5 standards.
Retro-review of the Netscape Composer 4.8 WYSIWYG HTML editor
Netscape Communicator 4.8 was the latest (or better to say, the last) version of the Communicator software suit from the August 2002. Besides the web browser, Netscape Navigator, it contained email client, a calendar, and a very capable and well designed WYSIWYG HTML editor, Netscape Composer, that was producing surprisingly sane code comparing to its main competitors at that time: Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver.
Pier-Luc Brault, CS teacher from Québec, Canada, gives a great review to this piece of computer history:
“So, how was it to use a WYSIWYG web page editor from over 20 years ago? Quite pleasant, actually. That application has more than decent UX, and has not made me swear nearly as much as Microsoft Word does in a typical usage session.”
RavensBlight, an odd town in the dark digital woods
There are digital gardens and there are digital towns, this is one of the latter. Welcome to the RavensBlight.
This dark and spooky town is founded and built from the ground up by one man — Ray O’Bannon — and it is not a small one. RavensBlight can boast with a pretty big library full of horror stories, an Arcade with video games, a paper toys shop, its art gallery hosts more than 300 images, there is a music studio, and even a cinema! Are you ready for some horror shorts?
The site was started back in 2004 and it is still being updated from time to time. This is a solid age for a digital town.
Despite being pretty graphics heavy and even using an animated GIF in the header, RavensBlight only loads a tad over half a megabyte of data for its homepage. Its clean HTML makes it work on any modern device with no issues.
