Geocities: The End of an Era

Yesterday, Yahoo ended an era when it closed the door on Geocities, a free website hosting service that has been around since 1994. Geocities had been an independent company in it's early years before being acquired by Yahoo in 1999.

There have been many news sites waxing nostalgia in the passing of Geocities. One of my favorites is linked here:

Goodbye GeoCities: 7 Retro Things We'll Miss Forever

When Yahoo announced that they were closing Geocities back in April, I had begun work to transition a personal site I had been running to another location. The website, which was basic compared to today's web pages, was something I had whipped up during my college days back in 1995.

Through the years, my website has been located at the following URL's:

http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~leed

http://www.geocities.com/tokyo/bay/6073 (Geocities before Yahoo)

http://www.geocities.com/smcoach41 (Geocities after Yahoo)

With the passing of Geocities, my website will be moving yet again. I easily could have just simply moved my existing webpages over to my new location. However, I decided to try some new things. However, in an effort to preserve some history, I noted on my new homepage that my website has existed since 1995 including my previous locations.

Alas, one regret I have was I did not download my Geocities files before Yahoo closed the service. I didn't think the stuff was all that historic but in retrospect, it would have been good to preserve some history.

In any case, the closing of Geocities does close the door on an era of 1990's computing that took us to where we are today. RIP Geocities. You will be missed.

Switching Gears (In More Ways Than One)

When I got laid off from my job back in April of this year, I did what most people who are unemployed do. I went online and started looking for jobs. I was confident that I could find a job quickly. However, as reality set in due to the tough economic times, I started to look for alternative things to do while I was looking for a full time job.

I was already a basketball official so I knew that could earn myself some money if I were to remain unemployed for a extended length of time. However, there was an opportunity that was available that I previously did not pursue. The opportunity was to be a freelance writer covering San Francisco high school sports for Examiner.com

After some thought, I decided to apply for the opportunity and was accepted. From about late May until mid-August, I wrote nearly twenty articles covering various aspects of high school sports in San Francisco. I didn't make a lot of money but had some fun writing for a public audience.

However, when I was suddenly offered my old job back a month ago, I had no time to write about the high school sports scene in San Francisco. I considered giving up the writing gig but an idea suddenly came to me. As I am heavily involved in the San Francisco high school basketball scene (fan, official), I switched gears and now solely focus on San Francisco high school girls basketball instead. Why so specific? Another writer in the area solely focuses on the high boys basketball scene so it was decided that we shouldn't overlap.

I just wrote an article last night so check it out here:

San Francisco High School Girls Basketball Examiner

Speaking of switching gears, you will notice that this blog has slightly changed. I originally planned to just talk about pop culture and technology bits here. However, I found that I lacked an avenue to talk about personal stuff (nothing too deep), so I decided to use this blog for the occasional personal thoughts.

Jeremy Lin: Best basketball player you've never heard of?

Rich Twu, the founder and commissioner of Dream League (Bay Area adult basketball league) recently posted a two part blog posting on Bay Area native and current Harvard basketball player Jeremy Lin:

The Legend of Jeremy Lin

Twu does a nice job of summarizing the challenges Lin has gone through as a Asian American playing a sport that is primarily thought of as a black or white sport (Yao Ming or other Asian players not withstanding).

I've only been able to watch Jeremy Lin play once when his Palo Alto High School team played Mater Dei in the California State Basketball Championship games. Since Lin has gone to Harvard, I haven't been able to watch his games. Even though I haven't been able to watch his games, I follow everything he does via the Internet.

Twu proclaims that Lin will be the first full blooded American born Asian player in the NBA. I certainly hope this is the case. In all the years since I've been in high school, I've been waiting for Asian players to make it to the NBA. I didn't expect Yao or other Asian born players to make it first. However, the time is now right for a American born Asian player to make it to the NBA.

I'll talk more about Jeremy Lin in future posts as the college basketball season kicks off in a month or so. In the meantime, read Twu's blog posting. It's certainly worth a read!

Destination Truth: Aliens in Chile?

If you're read my previous posts, you know that I am a fan of various paranormal reality shows in recent years. From Most Haunted, Ghost Adventures, Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters, I've watched just about all of them on TV.

Recently, I started watching a show on their Wednesday night block called Destination Truth. Unlike the other shows, Destination Truth is not just about researching paranormal (aka Ghost) activity. The crew of Destination Truth is out to look to verify sightings of weird and unusual creatures and in addition to occasionally doing some paranormal research. In the episodes I've watched, they've traveled all over the world including Egypt.

Tonight's episode had them visiting two locations. The first location was in Chile. They were investigating a mine where an alien mummy was discovered. The highlight of the show occurred early in the investigation. The crew was doing some initial scouting of the mine when someone stepped into a hole. Upon further investigation, the crew pulled out a weird looking and decomposing corpse. It wasn't as big as a human but didn't look like any animal I've ever seen.

Unfortunately, as the crew was in a foreign country, they couldn't carry the corpse out so they dropped it off with the local law enforcement. They did take pictures to show to a pair of experts. Unfortunately, The two experts were unable to determine what exactly the team found. In addition, toward the end of the Chile investigation, the team saw a white light which turned out to be possibly a Unidentified Flying Object (UFO).

All in all, this was the most interesting episode of Destination Truth that I have seen. I'm really curious to find out what exactly the team discovered in the mine. Even if it's not an alien, it certainly added some drama to the show. I also hope the team investigates that white light / UFO they saw as well. It certainly looked like a flying object of some sort.