😭Remembering Roosterteeth,Try Dialup, and Sane.fyi
Rip to Red Vs Blue
Hey friends!
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Land of Random.
March is here and St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner.
(So is Easter too!)
It’s warming up here in Tennessee, and lots of little flowers are popping up in our yard.
We have some rogue tulips that appear. I need to plant more so they look . . . less rogue.
I have some unexpected news. I got FREE coffee from the Bored Breakfast Club NFT I bought years ago.
It’s quite delicious! I might buy a bag.
If you’re new to the newsletter, welcome, and thank the Lord you missed the long period in which I was obsessed with NFTs and crypto. I have since regained my sanity.
Oh! The new Halo show is intriguing. I will forever “believe” that the REAL live-action Halo is the Neil Blomkamp footage - but I’ll take what I can get.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
😭Remembering Roosterteeth
Pour one out for Roosterteeth - an OG of early Youtube culture.
RoosterTeeth is shutting down - except for the podcasts. (read the memo here)
Fortunately - datahoarders are already beginning to scrape RoosterTeeth content - probably in the hopes of avoiding the wretched Machinima debacle.
(Lots of Machinima was basically deleted forever - the only hope being random data hoarder torrent collections)
I remember being quite young and watching Red Vs. Blue.
How in the world has it been over 20 years since this came out?
Did you know that Elijah Wood did some voice acting in Red vs. Blue? Here are some clips.
Red Vs. Blue was absurd and hilarious for its time. It’s SO OLD that it was first posted to the Rooster Teeth website (back before YouTube controlled the whole internet).
The other show I enjoyed from RoosterTeeth was RWBY (by the late Monty Oum)
I only watched the first few seasons but it was a lot of fun.
Here’s the first episode if you’ve never seen it.
It was unique as an anime-influenced American animation - it even got official Japanese dubs and manga!
Hopefully, RoosterTeeth’s website will stay up. Go check it out before everything starts winding down . . .
WBD is still looking to sell certain Rooster Teeth series' backlogs and rights, including RWBY, Red vs. Blue, and Gen:Lock, an animated mecha series backed by actor Michael B. Jordan. WBD is also looking to offload the company's Roost podcast network. (source)
I imagine that if any of these sell, Roosterteeth’s website will change quite a bit.
It’d be a shame if Warner Bros just deleted everything (like they’ve been doing with unreleased movies)
Go check out RoosterTeeth!
📞Try Dialup
Here’s something I didn’t know . . .
Dialup is still around!
I had no idea.
(Fun fact - the subreddit is surprisingly active)
I thought dialup was completely gone - and the worst internet people might have is wretched DSL or something.
Yes, dial-up internet, with those screechy, crackly tones, remains a useful tool in areas where modern, high-speed internet services are either unaffordable or unavailable. Subscriber numbers are tiny, but some plough on and access the Internet by the old ways, not the new . . . , there are still many regions in the U.S. where geographical challenges and the high cost of infrastructure development make it difficult for service providers to offer typical broadband or wireless services. In these areas, dial-up internet becomes the only feasible option for connecting to the digital world. For context, in 2019, census figures suggested just 0.2% of households used dial-up internet, a number surely even smaller today. (source)
This great Hackaday article jumps into some of the providers that still offer dialup.
You’ll need to look at a company like NetZero, which offers a dial-up service for $29.95 a month. For that money, you get unlimited internet access with no time limit, which is probably easy to offer when customer numbers are so low . . . Juno is another ISP operating in the dial-up space, similarly offering “accelerated” service with unlimited hours for $29.95 a month. Hilariously, DSLExtreme offers unlimited dial-up too, despite its name. On an annual contract, it’s as cheap as $9.95 a month, or $12.95 a month if you’re paying as you go. (source)
Net Zero is just as prehistoric as you might imagine.
and JUNO.
How in the world is Juno still going.
Obviously I’m gonna ape into the “games unlimited” package.
Juno is so old that when you search “dialup juno reviews” i get links from 2006 and 2003.
Here’s a review of Juno Dialup by a absolute treasure of a man who reviews Dialup software.
Amazingly - it still works - but really only on ancient websites one might find with the Wiby search engine.
Here’s another user that explores dialup on a Windows 95 and Windows 98.
The CRAZIEST news is that AOL . . . . still offers dialup internet.
Explore the Hackaday article for more interesting tidbits!
💻Sane.FYI
or . . . a Kosmik competitor of sorts.
It’s kinda like Sublime too.
Hmmm. It’s basically if Kosmik and Sublime merged but like a version 0.01 Sublime.
Sane is a creative mindmapping tool which should instantly bring to mind tools like Kinopio.club, Kosmik, Deta - or some of the more mainstream tools like Miro.
Here’s a screenshot
you can add website links, doc cards (you can write a whole formatted doc), text cards, images, Youtube, and Spotify embeds.
You can also connect cards to eachother a la mindmap.
It’s all pretty straightforward honestly.
The one element that sets it apart is the social aspect it comes with.
You can see what other collections people are creating, and explore all the public ones available from a convenient dashboard.
It’s a very neat feature - one that’s easier to explore than Kinopio’s feed. (I will say though - Kinopio has RSS which is a huge benefit).
You can also follow other users too!
Here’s a little space I mocked up for demo.
Go check out Sane at the link!
🐙The Land of Random
Down! Down! Down to the depths of the internet.
Ambient Garden
This fascinating website generates a ambient soundscape and endless landscape to explore. It’s really really cool and peaceful. DEFINITELY one of the cooler websites I’ve seen in a long while.
Artwork You Can Skate
Vans made an art installation you can actually skate! I think we need a lot more art like this, don’t you?
Nightt
This delightful neocities website will lead you on a hunt through various anime and aestheticc gifs. How far down the rabbit hole will you get?
The Ipad Mac
or Mac iPad. Whatever it is - it’s lowkey cursed.
Mustard
I love mustard a lot. Stone ground is MY favorite. Dig this mustardy deep dive.
Zulily Returns!?
Sooooo Zulily will be relaunching. and it only cost the buyer 4.5 Million!
Eternally Bored
The clock spins with some cool effects. That’s it really it . . . . other than . . . .some random stuff like a reallllly slloooowww load test. (IT’S SO SLOW).
⌨NOTES
Link to a few notes for various issues of the Land of Random. This week has some additional links! Title is “3/7-10 notes”
🥀Walled Garden Finds
What if the Ring girl had more ways to attack you?
The story of my life
A hamburger made of rice? say no more fren.
Now why can’t I have a fun restaurant like this nearby?
What part of the meme timeline is this.
If i had to lose brain cells you do too
🤖AI AHHHHHHHHH
Ohhhh - a context aware workspace? sounds fun
That’s all for this week! See you next time!