I'm back! This time with some phonebashing(.com)!

It's about time I posted here again. I have quite a few websites I've been meaning to post about, just haven't gotten around to it. Story of my life to be honest, but finally I decided to get back to it! For today's post I conveniently decided to cover a very small website, but a relic nonetheless. Might as well ease myself back into things. The website in question is phonebashing.com. This might actually suprise a reader or two (especially zillenials) because the idea of being anti-mobile phone has been getting fairly popular in certain circles (and amongst people who hav little-to-no self-control). However this idea, according to this website, has existed since at least... Well since at least he time when Siemens made phones and the screens were monochrome. There's no copyright date for this website, but udging by it's design it's clearly been kicking-around for quite a while. So let's go through what it has to offer.

Upon entering the website, you're greated to the above. Already a veeeeeery early 2000s design here, but I appreciate them making the content centered instead of hugging the rightmost-quarter of my screen like many older sites do. The low-quality image of the guy in an anicent mobile phone suit making a very ominous pose, and the mention of some "Solid Gold Chart Busters". I'll get back to them later. For now we just some some blurbs explaining how the people who made the website are anti-mobile phone, and a link to a video. Not just a video however, a video download. VERY clearly an early 2000s website. Upon clicking the link we are sent to a page where the video should be, however it seems like in the 20-or-so years the website has existed, the file for it has either dissapeared or broken and can no longer be downloaded or watched. Imagine that... Being able to watch videos from the internet without downloading them. High-tech.

Now let's continue down the main page, as gleaning any videos from this website in current year seems to be a lost cause (and trust me, I've already tried to). Upon scrolling-down we get to see 6-more whole video clips (or pages which once held video clips), 2 images from what I assume to have been the shooting of the music video, and a couple of paragraphs titled "Theft of the Suits". Upon first-glance it appears to be the start of a text-written manifesto, however it seems like an explanation for their phone genocide is limited to the top paragraph, and even then it seems like any real explenation is boiled-down to a group of friends wanting to do a "fiendish project". A bit of a shame but I guess they assumed their video would be available forever. Anyway, rest of the first paragraph and second paragraph describe a heist of the phone suits that were most likely seen in the first video. Apparently they just pulled-up after the video finished shooting (they had a friend who helped in filming), put the suits in the car, and drove away. Who knew theft could be that simple? On another note, I wonder where those suits are now...

Finally, at the very bottom of the first page, we have a paragraph titled "Official Site". It mentions how with the launch of the Virgin Records site (which most-likley dates this to before the 2000s) the "Solid Gold Chart Busters" are unacknowledged for their work, despite being able to listen to the song. Who the Solid Gold Chart Busters are, whether the website creators or another group, remains unknown to me. Apparently the website creators are also mad that Virgin didn't explain the "true" meaning of the song, so I guess there was some corporate shennanigans going-on at this point but this context has likely long been lost. There was also supposedly a link to the Virgin Records website, but it seems to be so broken that it's no longer visible. Now, finally, onto those 6 other clips.

All of these clips are in the format of the page for the first video we looked at, so you're not missing anything past the border of the screenshots. The description makes this clip sound a whole lot like a mugging, which... doesn't exactly reflect greatly on our webmaster lads. I guess it's all for the meme/vine/tiktok though, since the confronters are wearing the phone suits...

Second clip! Apparently this "grab" was so fast the clip had to be slowed-down. Of course we wouldn't know. Anyway, this happened right after getting off the train from their first "grab", and the lady who phone was bashed was... I guess just kinda standing there minding her own business from what was described. So naturally, our phone-suited lunatics decided she was the perfect target for their warpath. They take her phone and drop it down some stairs whiel fleeing. And I'm not gonna lie, this is starting to sound a little too much like those old YouTube "pranksters" who would harrass randos in public about a decade ago. Granted we don't have these clips anymore (at least not here) to verify if this really is a YouTube-style "prank" or if it's all staged. The description leads me to believe the former.

This third clip, as the description says, shows the phone of a guy "envolved" in his BMW getting grabbed and bashed, however our BMW guy isn't going down without a fight. He starts chasing the phone-dressed maniacs down the street (understandably) and even catches one, though he lets them go for whatever reason. Kinda wish he started throwing hands, but I guess Mr. BMW made his point (though not before getting his swanky phone totaled).

This next clip described an encounter with a "hippy chick" having "a pint", meaning this confirms to me that this comes from good-old Great Britain. I guess we could've surmized this already by the fact that nobody got shot. The only noteable things about this clip is that the "hippy chick" was their most formidable foe encountered yet (or would've been were it not for her platform shoes), and that I can seemingly forever open the webpage within the small box which once housed the video, as demonstrated by the 2 vertical scroll-bars. Godspeed to the "hippy chick" and her platform shoes.

As the description states, this next clip shows Call-Qaeda's next attack at a barber shop of all places! It's one thing to go after podestrians on the street, another on a train, but our cellphone terrorists get very bold with this barber shop stunt! They like to think that all the "punters" of the store where glad that the victim had her phone grabbed-and-bashed, but I'm sure Osama Bin-Laden also thought similarly. Also, as shown by the highlighted text, this seems to confirm that the clips are gone-gone from the website in it's current state. Unfortunate but maybe these videos don't deserve to be immortalized on the internet, at least not without an accompanying arrest record.

Finally, we're at Call-Qaeda's final video. Their (seemingly) last victim was apparently a student, and according to the description, our pholesters "hooked up" afterwards. Whether consentually or not or if it involved their student victim we may never know. Apparently their cell-pholesting ring was almost busted after they almost ran into two "old bill". Whatever that means. You know what, I kinda wish they ran into those two "old bill", but we can't always get waht we want. And with that, our time on phonebashing.com comes to an end. This turned-out to be much longer than I anticipated, but I guess I'm better prepared now for much more volumnous websites that I've been planning to cover! And while having a final look at the homepage, I saw their disclaimer that apparently all of these people were real, unsuspecting podestrians who were victimized. Guess these fellas were truly the glue-eating YouTube pranksters of their day. Very ahead of their time I must say. And if anyone's wondering how this has been hanging around for so long, look no further than what appears to be an affiliate link to the American Casino Guide for new Jersey that i forgot to mention earlier. Maybe they're not British after all, though that doesn't explain British slang. According to a Reddit post I found, I have been able to get a little more context for the time period. For one it confirms that this is a pre-y2k website as we got hinted at earlier, and that apparently there was a period of time where (to quote the Redditor) "twenty-something's made fun of thirty-something's for using them in public." This time-period must've been brief consdidering this is the first time I'm hearing about it, and I like to imagine I know fairly decently what was popular in the 90s, and this is the first time I'm hearing about it. To finally conclude, one must wonder what these guys have been up to in the 25+ years since their terror spree. Did they give-up their anti-phone jihad and give-into the march of progress? Where they ever charged for their crimes against phonanity? Do they still have those phone suits in a box somewhere, waiting to be unpacked and worn again? These questions may never be answered, but considering that as recently as roughly 2 years ago (according to the Reddit thread) the videos were still, y'know there, I think I have a decent chance of being able to find them. So there's that at least.

Angel9oh7's (Online) Legacy

 It's about time I made another post. Anyway, I forget for what reason but I was browsing the internet one day when I came across this website. I read the front page and was saddened; he person who owned this website, Angel9oh7, is dead, and this site is likely being kept-up by a close friend and/or family member. I gotta say, continuing to keep your loved one's personal website up after their death, especially after all these years, is some dedication I think we'd all like. But enough self reflecting, let's get onto the website itself.

Something you'll notice throughout this site is that despite how basic it is, Angel9oh7 knew how to use colors. As in the colors all fit. It's still a classic geocities/tripod/angelfire era site (MIDI's and all), but it's not an eyesore color-wise. Granted if you hate pink you'll probably hate this website, but at that point I don't care.

This website mainly consists of 4 main categories of things: Poems and quotes, graphics (which if probably how I found it in the first place), greetings, and 60s nostalgia.

So first, the poems and quotes. I don't have much to say about them, but from a quick glance they all seem to be sweet and uplifting, so if you're curious I suggest you check them out. There's also some Bible verses, so if you're Christian then again you should check it out.

The Poems page.

The Quotes page.

Now for the 60s page. Again, not much to say about this. It's mainly reminiscing about life in the 1960s. Again a very sweet page all the crustiest (in a good way) 60s-themed clipart you can imagine.

The 1960s Nostalgia page.

Third we have the virtual greeting cards page. These are full of virtual greeting cards you can send to your friends/loved ones. They include general occasions such as Get-well-soons and cards to say "Good morning", but there's also cards for plenty of more specific occasions and holidays such as Christmas and wedding cards. There's really a lot of types of cards on this page, so if you're ever in a jiffy and need a quick card, seems like angel9oh7.com if your place.

The greeting cards page. (Also the website broke while I was typing the post. Trust me, it looms better than this.)

Finally, we're at my favorite page; The Graphic Index. I think how I fond this site is someone on neocities had a collection of web graphics I was looking through and this was one of their sources. There are all sorts of classic images for your website, from classic clipart to site elements such as buttons, and some logos for the website itself. Again, there's quite a lot here, so feel free to check it out yourself.

The Graphic Index, and my personal favorite part.

Again, there's much more to the website than just what I mentioned (including an entire Christmas page), but I suggest if you want to check out more of the site if you want to see  more. As always, here a link to it (but be prepared to download a lot of MIDIs):

angel9oh7.com

A post-mortem look at 3DLinks

5/13/2022 Update: 3DLinks is back up! Though I'm still gonna try and archive as much as I can. It may not be around much longer.

So uh, yeah it's been a while. I've neglected to post on this blog for about uuuuuh 5 months now? Basically it's because I have higher priorities than this blog (such as ANOTHER blog, this one being on Neocities) and mostly just because I procrastinated posting here. I didn't forget about it, but when I would remember this I would tell myself "Oh right, I should probably post again. Eh, I'll do it later."

So, a quick run-down on the website in question: 3DLinks was a website which hosted numerous works of and resources for 3d modelers/artists such as tutorials, info, plugins, free and paid assets, and even a forum. This was accompanied by the aforementioned finished works of said artists. I say was however because between March 26th and March 31st of 2022 (according to the Internet Archive) the website has gone down and been replaced with an error 503 page.

The worst part about the site going down is that there may be lost content, either from long-inactive artists which have forgotten about the site to free assets that couldn't be found anywhere else. I haven't done much digging myself (yet), but when I do I'll edit this post with an update.

Anyways, onto the website design itself (as I've pretty much summed-up the entire site above). When you click a button on the sidebar, you are taken to the page of said category, however by hovering you mouse over a button, a menu expands showing all the sub-categories you can go to. As for the design of the site, I honestly like it. You can definitely tell it's a 2000s site, but I think it could still hold up rather well today if you changed the main color from deep depression grey, made the site fill the  screen to your aspect ratio, and maybe changed the boxes which house text such as  "featured artists" and "cool tools" (I'm sure there's a word for it but I can't think of it right now).

Anyways, why don't you see the site (of what's left of it) for yourself!

3DLinks Archive

The (former) homepage of 3DLinks as of March 26th 2022.

The Original Online Reviewers

Who needs any of those other tech blogs like Gizmodo or TechCrunch when you have ReviewsOnLine.com? Well, maybe everyone, considering this website was last posted to (according to the "News" page) on July 20th 2006, and the most recent review being posted on October 25th 2002.

This website design is actually quite good-looking for web 1.0 (though a little unoptimized, but that's expected), and it has quite an extensive list of reports about tech news along with product reviews (known as "Product Briefs"). It's honestly kinda sad seeing a website with such effort put into it being abandoned like this, but I guess it came down to adapt or die, and they didn't adapt.

Below is a list of all the main pages of the website:

Contents: The "Contents" page is just their name for the homepage, which you view upon going to their domain. It showcases the most recent news stories they covered, the most recent conventions they've attended, and (on the right side bar) the most recent product reviews.

Reviews: Despite referring to reviews as "Product Briefs" while on the page of a review, they I guess just decided to call the page itself "Reviews". For some reason the most recent review on this page was posted on January 8th 2001, over 1 and a half years before their last review , as mentioned earlier, posted on October 25th 2002 (seen at the top of the right side-bar on the "Contents" page).

News: The "News" page is actually home to the most recent reviews, along with a big list of companies (which leads to the most recent reviews or news articles about that company on the website) labeled "Companies in the News" at the top of the page. This list of companies seems to be the most recently updated elements of the website (besides the copyright date in a few select places), being last updated (as mentioned previously) on July 20th 2006.

Archives: A long list of links to various articles about conventions, products, and more general tech news. Not much more than that.

Index: An alphabetical list of products which the site has reviewed organized by company, people which the site has written about (also in alphabetical order), and events which staff of the site have attended.

Search: A way to search specific articles which seems to have since broken (it always sends me to this "Article has been moved" error page).

About: Standard about page containing info about the site and it's purpose/goal, what they do, etcetera.

Gallery:

The front page of the site.

The sites outdated "Review" page.

The slightly more up-to-date News page.

The archives of Reviews OnLine.

The index page of Reviews OnLine (I know I don't need to say their full name but it's just fun to type out in full).

The broken search page of Reviews OnLine.

All about the site.

Starting Off With A Bang On heartfall.com!

 Welcome to the blog everybody!

For the first post, we're starting off with a real gem of a website. What you see below is the wonderful place known as heartfall.com. This website is many things, including a webhosting and site design service, an ActiveWorlds resource (for avatars and world hosting), a graphic design gallery (of which I have used one of their free backgrounds), and a film production studio. It's truly a mecca of early internet content.

As you might be able to see in the screenshots below (just of the pages directly accessible through the homepage, trust me there's many more pages), Heartfall is a combination of every type of web 1.0 website, from the competently laid-out but still tacky sites to the "my first webpage" sites (no offense), and I love it.

Below is a run-down of all the main pages you'll find:

The Design Studio: Where you can pay for their hosting or design skills for your website (though you have to horizontally scroll for part of the page). I wonder it it still works.

3D Designs And Environments: Here they host images created in a 3D modeling program, avatars for ActiveWorlds (which you need to pay for), links to various 3D resources (also ActiveWorlds-related), and even a 3D ocean screensaver (which seems to still work). The link to download the screensaver on the website itself it broken, but here's an archive from another download link used by Heartfall at one point: oceanview.zip

Film Production: Here's where the age of the website truly becomes apparent. Heartfall has apparently produced what seems to be an informational series called "What If...?", a series called "Escape With Ease" (detailing martial arts techniques), and another series of martial arts videos by Jiu Joe Jitsu. I tried to order one of the videos and it sent me to a webpage I was supposed to copy, print out, and then mail to Heartfall. Like I said, it's truly here where the website starts to show how old it is. I wonder if I can still buy it.

ActiveWorlds Hosting Services: Along with website hosting, Heartfall seems to also have hosting for ActiveWorlds... uh- worlds, I guess. Apparently it's also pretty pricey.

Object Yard: This seemed to be a website owned by Heartfall which was their main storefront for ActiveWorlds assets. It's since shuttered (according to the Internet Archive that happened around December 2011 to early 2012). There was some free stuff too, some of which has been archived and you can still download by going to the page on the Internet Archive.

Wildlife Spirits: A website hosting images of animal and/or nature with a website that was designed and being hosted by Heartfall. The website itself isn't that bad, although it's design is outdated and some of it's features are broken, it's still a cool place for pictures of wild animals. Unlike Object Yard, Wildlife Spirits seems to have been created independently of Heartfall, but the original owner paid Heartfall for... basically everything else (at the bottom of the "Credits" page it says the site was "designed & hosted by heartfall.com", so who knows if Heartfall owns it or not). Although, I didn't look into it that much, so maybe some connection I'm missing.

The Site Map: From what I can tell the site map has existed since at least 2001 but was never finished.

The Contact Page: Just contact information about the website. You could try emailing I guess but who knows if anybody still checks the info email. Hell, who knows if they even still exist as a company, let alone still have the address listed. Guess there's one way to find out, though. Maybe it's my ticket to getting some of those videos.

Free Stuff: And finally, we're at the last link listed on the main page. This is a link directory for all the free goodies you can download from their website.

Gallery:

Hearfall's logo.

The Heartfall homepage.

The Heartfall Design Studio (without the missing chunck.

The Heartfall 3D Page (screenshot extra wide so you can appreciate the background).

The Film Production page of Heartfall.

The webpage for Heartfall's ActiveWorlds World hosting services.

The most recent archive or objectyard.com (from December 2011).

The front page of wildlifespirits.com.

The only things on the "Site Map".

Heartfall's contact information.

Heartfall: IT'S FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!