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Posted by: Freejack Apr 25 2009, 01:09 PM

So with Yahoo closing down Geocities later this year, are there any Shadowrun fansites that need to be retrieved before they disappear?

Of course I'm thinking of the ones that might be abandoned.

Carl

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 25 2009, 01:56 PM

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

I never finished my Geocities pages from back in middle school.

I wanna surf the web using Mosaic.

Posted by: ravensmuse Apr 27 2009, 11:14 AM

But where am I going to go when I find out what color Sephiroth's hair is while I listen to a midi version of One Winged Angel??? MY LIFE IS OVER!

Posted by: paws2sky Apr 27 2009, 02:53 PM

'tis a sad day for the internet.

-paws

Posted by: Wesley Street Apr 27 2009, 05:21 PM

We should start a charitable fund for all of those orphaned Geocities sites. Maybe we could put them up with Angelfire...

Posted by: Bull Apr 27 2009, 06:32 PM

Damn. WIsh I could remember what the address of my old Geocities account is... WOuld be amusing to check in on it, for nostalgia's sake. It's only been 10 or 11 years since my last update

Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 27 2009, 08:43 PM

damn it, i might actually have some important and/or shadowrun related stuff in various geocities accounts . .
TO WHICH I NEITHER REMEMBER THE PASSWORD, NOR THE FRIGGING NAMES -.-

Posted by: Wesley Street Apr 27 2009, 10:57 PM

Guess it wasn't that important now was it?

Posted by: ravensmuse Apr 28 2009, 12:46 AM

Aw man, my old Everquest guild site was on Geocities. I just thought about that. Losing it will be kind of sad.

Not enough to get me to play Everquest again, but I mean.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 28 2009, 03:59 AM

Some part of me regrets in a small abstract way not getting into Gemstone back in the day. I used to play DikuMUD a lot in middle school, though.

Posted by: Darth Phylos Apr 28 2009, 10:46 AM

I guess I better update the link in my sig then...

Posted by: hobgoblin Apr 28 2009, 07:26 PM

from what i understand, someone i working on saving the whole of geocities...
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/27/2252227

Posted by: Heath Robinson Apr 28 2009, 07:48 PM

Good riddance. At least modern content publishing systems gently lead you away from terrible design.

Posted by: paws2sky Apr 28 2009, 08:34 PM

Pure, undiluted, uncut... w1n

-paws

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 28 2009, 11:20 PM

If by terrible design, you mean "true way of the jedi way the internet was intended before the corporate bandwith-wasters lead us away from the true path", you would be correct. Otherwise you're evil.

Posted by: Wesley Street Apr 29 2009, 12:37 PM

I would not equate blinking text and animated Hamster Dance .gifs with the true way of the Jedi.

Posted by: Zaranthan Apr 29 2009, 02:08 PM

What do you think was displayed on the inside of those blinder helmets?

Posted by: PhishStyx Apr 30 2009, 12:19 AM

Wayback Machine anyone?

http://www.archive.org/index.php

Posted by: Zombayz Apr 30 2009, 03:33 AM

I have an important SR site all of you should check. Yeah, the last time it was updated was 2004, but the fiction on it is still masterful.

http://www.geocities.com/nightskysr/Fiction.html


No, I did not write this, but it is one of the things that got me to to start playing SR.

Posted by: Wesley Street Apr 30 2009, 02:05 PM

Ah, fan-fic. That's something I could never get into, usually because it's chock full of silly "said bookisms" which I find peevish as a writer.

In dialogue, always use "says" or "said." In this case: "No," Nightsky said, shrugging. "Nothing."

Now that I think about it I see direct-to-paperback writers do it as well and it makes me want to throw the book across the room. Craft is as important as ideas.

Posted by: nezumi Apr 30 2009, 02:13 PM

You have a source for that? Because I've read quite the opposite.

Posted by: Wesley Street May 1 2009, 03:32 PM

Do a Google search for said bookisms and you'll see plenty of railing against the practice. It's common for writers to feel like they're using the word "said" to much and they start substituting. However, readers don't notice the word said or asked. So you end up with writings that look amateurish when you start using chuckled or sighed.

I'm certainly not perfect. I'm the king of the long sentence. I always have to hack up grammatically correct but unpleasant-to-read phrases into smaller ones.

Posted by: nezumi May 1 2009, 04:21 PM

You're confusing rules. Said bookisms means don't use another word in place of said for the sole purpose of not saying 'said'. That isn't the same as using another verb in place of said if that other verb is more appropriate. There is no rule saying you MUST use 'said' for every time we attach a name to a quote (otherwise, why would we have verbs like 'shouted', 'whispered', etc. "Jump" Bob said as he shouted"?)

In the cited example, you need to include the word "shrugged" - it's the action. In this case, you can drop the word 'said' altogether because its purpose is already addressed - we know it's said (quotes) and we know who said it (Nightsky, because it's attached with the 'shrugged'). The 'said' is redundant and therefore is best dropped.

If you have a source saying we should ALWAYS use said, please do quote it.

Posted by: Wesley Street May 2 2009, 08:57 PM

In your example of Bob, one way to go about it would be to write, "Jump," Bob said, shouting.

In the example I pulled, "shrugged" is actually the second action in a compound sentence. Unless Nightsky can manipulate his muscles into creating words by shrugging there's no way the word "No" could come from his body without him saying it. Another very common one I see is "Jump," Bob laughed. It's impossible to laugh and speak at the same time.

The fan-fic writer could have gotten away with writing, "No." Nightsky shrugged. The statement is broken into two sentences but it's clear who the speaker is by the line break.

If you're looking for rules that state said bookisms are grammatically incorrect, they aren't out there because technically they're not. But if you're looking for reasons why they shouldn't be used, here are a few articles:

http://www.writesf.com/08_Lesson_05_Perils.html
http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue%205/tags.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_(fiction)
http://marianperera.blogspot.com/2008/07/five-worst-said-bookisms.html

Posted by: hyzmarca May 2 2009, 09:27 PM

That's probably the single most awkward line I've ever read.

Posted by: Stahlseele May 3 2009, 12:01 AM

Full Ack here O.o

Posted by: Blade May 4 2009, 08:29 AM

From what I gather from the links, it doesn't mean you can't use anything else than say. The way I understand it, all they say is that you shouldn't use :
* Something else than "say" just because you want to avoid the use of "say".
* Something ridiculous/impossible/inadapted.

Posted by: imperialus May 5 2009, 06:28 PM

Someone set us up the bomb?

Posted by: Angelone May 6 2009, 06:08 AM

You have no chance of survive make your time.

Wish I had my actual computer. I had a bunch of old links to geocities sites. Hope it gets here soon.

Posted by: Bert May 14 2009, 02:10 AM

I know it's not on Geocities, but does anybody remember Blackjack's shadowrun page from back in the SR2 days? That site was sweet!
Incidentally, does anyone know if it's archived somewhere?

Posted by: hobgoblin May 14 2009, 05:44 AM

could have been picked up by archive.org, what was the url?

Posted by: Bert May 14 2009, 02:56 PM

Can't remember off the top of my head... but I'll check that site out. Thx!

Posted by: nezumi May 14 2009, 03:51 PM

Indeed:
http://web.archive.org/web/20001204161300/blackjack.dumpshock.com/

Most recent version is:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070206222415/http://blackjack.dumpshock.com/

Posted by: Bert May 15 2009, 02:03 AM

Thanks Nez, I owe you one.

Posted by: nezumi May 15 2009, 02:59 PM

Yessss... indeed.... *steeples fingers*