Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Looking for Darkstrider.net?

Here's the link where you can see it in Archive.org's Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20070206000611/http://darkstrider.net/gallery2a.html

It's with mixed regret and relief that I've let the site lapse. I purchased the domain way back before there was a YouTube or a Blogspot, and in order to post videos on the internet then you had to have a host site - one that you paid for on an ongoing basis. Since then of course things have changed immensely - not only can you host videos for free on YouTube, Vimeo or any number of other sites, but blogs allow you to also post written material and images for free as well. Not only that, but bandwidth has increased insanely since then, to the point that it's no problem for most people to stream videos in HD without waiting for buffering at all. Those little MOV files I was posting way back then were tiny because it was recommended clips be under 1 MB in filesize, otherwise too many people would have to wait a long time to let them load.

Well, today most people don't know what an MOV is or have the software to watch it! And they wouldn't understand why the clips are in such low resolution or so short, or why many of them have no sound (all to keep filesize down). As more time goes by the site got to seem more and more like an anachronism from some bygone age - I'm using Blogspot now,and YouTube if I ever want to upload a video file (which hasn't been for a long time).

So I decided to let it lapse. It just didn't seem like there was any reason to keep paying for it anymore - I didn't think anybody was even looking at it anymore.

I'll post that link in the sidebar of this blog in case anyone still remembers it and wants to visit. I just checked to make sure it was working, and was amazed to find the video clips are still functioning!! I didn't think it worked that way - text and images sure, but usually not the video. Maybe it's because they're quicktimes rather than flash? Or maybe it's because the files are still hosted on the server? Yeah, that's probably it. Anyway, at least it's still there in some form - actually virtually the same, as long as the clips still work.