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October 30, 2006 7:53 AM   Subscribe

[3]_______________________________ \ ___| / __/ \ \__ \ / / \/ \ \ / / ___________ \ \ / / __/___________\__ \ \ ./ /__ ___ /=================\ ___ __\ \. [4]-------> ___||___|====|[[[[[|||||||]]]]]|====|___||___ < ------[4] / / |=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=|
posted by four panels (102 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
(via digg)
posted by four panels at 7:53 AM on October 30, 2006


Is this anything?
posted by ibmcginty at 7:56 AM on October 30, 2006


I'm not sure whether you owe me a new monitor, or a new pair of eyes.
posted by randomination at 7:56 AM on October 30, 2006


WTF? Some form of explanation would be nice.
posted by bap98189 at 7:57 AM on October 30, 2006


Well... I found the pigeons.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:57 AM on October 30, 2006


is this supposed to line up?
posted by delmoi at 7:57 AM on October 30, 2006


Huh; this has been around for a while (1997 or so, I think); I am surprised it has never been on the front page.
posted by TedW at 7:58 AM on October 30, 2006


If you view source it lays out correctly. Sorta reminds me of what Hell used to be except more retro.
posted by sciurus at 8:00 AM on October 30, 2006


I got stuck on the red dancing Nintendo guys.
posted by aliasless at 8:02 AM on October 30, 2006


So this is like a shitty version of SuperBad?
posted by prostyle at 8:03 AM on October 30, 2006


I'm okay with this.
posted by oog at 8:05 AM on October 30, 2006


Wikipedia
posted by lee at 8:05 AM on October 30, 2006


Thanks for the Wiki link Lee, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to tell what this piece of shit was.
posted by marxchivist at 8:07 AM on October 30, 2006


Obviously, this is Canadian.
posted by gcbv at 8:08 AM on October 30, 2006


this is as old as, uh, me. it was old when i linked it on blort.
posted by quonsar at 8:10 AM on October 30, 2006


Hey, quonsar's link is where I first saw this. Small internets.
posted by slimepuppy at 8:12 AM on October 30, 2006


[11:12] quonsar: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/55913#1477897
[11:13] madamjujujive: heh - ages ago! That's one of the first "weird" websites I ever found in my own explorations, probably in 98 or so
[11:13] quonsar: yeah
[11:14] quonsar: damn kids should stay off our lawn
[11:14] madamjujujive: ha
posted by quonsar at 8:15 AM on October 30, 2006


aw, fer... nevermind.
posted by poweredbybeard at 8:20 AM on October 30, 2006


Jeebus. I saw this while at my first "art director" position, which would have been in 1997.
posted by maxwelton at 8:20 AM on October 30, 2006


I've said it before, I'll say it again.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 8:22 AM on October 30, 2006


I saw this about 7 or 8 years ago, and in internet time, that's like being in another millenium or something.
posted by jefbla at 8:22 AM on October 30, 2006


I saw this in Kassel, Germany, when it was part of the Documenta X exhibition. Pbbt.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:23 AM on October 30, 2006


I saw this in a dream. Ages ago. Before time actually.
posted by sharpener at 8:25 AM on October 30, 2006


Beautiful!
posted by jeffburdges at 8:26 AM on October 30, 2006


Obviously, this is Canadian.

Obviously, I hate you.
posted by LunaticFringe at 8:28 AM on October 30, 2006


Obviously, this is Canadian.
posted by gcbv at 11:08 AM EST on October 30


Obviously, I hate you.
posted by LunaticFringe at 8:29 AM on October 30, 2006


"They should have sent a poet."
posted by Optamystic at 8:31 AM on October 30, 2006 [1 favorite]


I'm pretty sure I saw this in '96 or thereabouts. It was during my "annoying digital art for annoyances' sake" period, so I spent lots of time checking out all the dark corners of the site and stealing the more obscure code before it would send my poor browser down in flames. I stumble on it occasionally and instantly feel nostalgia for the heady days when html was a new book to be opened, and having my resume crash people's browsers was considered to be witty instead of stupid.

But the blink tag was too annoying, even back then. I don't miss it at all.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 8:34 AM on October 30, 2006


I just plain don't care enough to figure out what this post is about.

See the numerous previous discussions on cryptic FPPs.
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:34 AM on October 30, 2006


Do you guys know how to use the pre tag?
posted by delmoi at 8:37 AM on October 30, 2006


Hey, cool. I remember hell.com too.
posted by loquacious at 8:40 AM on October 30, 2006


What's cool about this? Seriously?
posted by OmieWise at 8:41 AM on October 30, 2006


Surely THIS will bring down the Bush administration?
posted by slater at 8:45 AM on October 30, 2006


Oooh they have a modified version of Jet Set Willy!
posted by Jimbob at 8:46 AM on October 30, 2006


Snow crash?
posted by WinnipegDragon at 8:47 AM on October 30, 2006


LOL ART.
posted by fidgets at 8:48 AM on October 30, 2006


anyone remember word.com?
posted by joecacti at 8:56 AM on October 30, 2006



For Mac OS 9.

Where's ceiling cat when you need her? Here pussy pussy pussy.
posted by imperium at 8:57 AM on October 30, 2006


Y'know, I found this site nine years ago, but then I forgot where it was, though I had some vague recollection of ending up there from x42.com, yet could never again find the link. So, thanks, four panels.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 8:58 AM on October 30, 2006


Shit Sandwich. Wrapped in Art Paper.

Still a Shit Sandwich.
posted by dbiedny at 8:59 AM on October 30, 2006


What's cool about this? Seriously?

It was cool as all kinds of fuck ten years ago, but I guess it hasn't really aged well. Honestly, it shocked the shit out of me when I first saw it - Heemskerk and Paesmans were among the first (maybe the very first?) to make work for the web about the web and out of the web, so to speak.

It's kind of depressing that they did this so long ago, and no one has really turned the medium in on itself so effectively since - it's as if the very first person to apply paint to a surface had made work like Titian ;-)

I'm still a fan - I have the CD-ROM edition of Untitled Game - modified versions of Quake, eg. one has everything removed but sound and interface components - hung in a frame on my office wall. (Yes, I am a terrible, terrible wanker.)
posted by jack_mo at 9:00 AM on October 30, 2006


It's a schooner.
posted by leapfrog at 9:03 AM on October 30, 2006


jodi is older than MetaFilter. I can't believe it has never been posted here before.


dbiedny, please stop dropping "shit sandwiches" in threads. So you are unimpressed by the link. You must be very cool. Be nice and don't say anything at all, but whatever please stop crapping in the threads.
posted by caddis at 9:17 AM on October 30, 2006


You fail harder than a huge stupid image macro that says FAIL.

Log off and kill yourself.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:17 AM on October 30, 2006 [1 favorite]


It looks like my commodore 64 threw up.
I remember seeing this years ago and thinking I needed to do more drugs to appreciate it.

If this is considered "ground breaking" I've got stacks of doodles and computer generated stuff from high school 20 years back that I'll be selling soon.
posted by Dillenger69 at 9:30 AM on October 30, 2006


Someone set us up the bomb!
posted by spilon at 9:31 AM on October 30, 2006


I remember this was pretty mind blowing back in the day. It helps to remember the context of the web back in '95-- most people working in web design didn't even realize you *could* do most of the things in that site with the tools currently available. I remember thinking of it in similar terms to when I first starting taking note of graffiti-- wow, a lot of that is ugly and I don't understand it but I sure can see the potential.
posted by gwint at 9:49 AM on October 30, 2006


Like The Great Big Mulp, I'd seen this a while back but never understood its full context nor had the time to fully explore it. While I understand in general the pointlessness of posting something that everybody's already aware of, I have to say I appreciated this post as I wasn't fully in the know. Thanks four panels!
posted by war wrath of wraith at 9:50 AM on October 30, 2006


Someone set us up the bomb!
posted by spilon at 12:31 PM EST on October 30


FOR CRYING OUT LOUD IF YOU'RE GONNA TROT THAT OLD CHESTNUT OUT THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS GET IT RIGHT.

Someone set UP US the bomb.

sheesh...
posted by quonsar at 9:52 AM on October 30, 2006


AT LEAT LEAST WE CAN VIEW THIS :D
posted by kayalovesme at 9:59 AM on October 30, 2006


FOR CRYING OUT LOUD IF YOU'RE GONNA TROT THAT OLD CHESTNUT OUT THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS GET IT RIGHT.

Someone set UP US the bomb.


If you're gonna correct someone the least you can do it get it right.

Somebody set up us the bomb.
posted by Jairus at 10:02 AM on October 30, 2006 [1 favorite]


this thread.
this thread.
posted by naxosaxur at 10:17 AM on October 30, 2006


well, this sucks.
on so many levels.
if I've seen it before, I've since blocked it from my mind...
posted by Busithoth at 10:22 AM on October 30, 2006


hitler
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 10:27 AM on October 30, 2006


From the Wikipedia link:

Their work challenged expectations of the behavior of the computer, created humor from the misery of the glitch and the virus

Ahahaha!! Now I create humor for you from the misery of my shotgun! Stand still!

And no, I'm not clicking on that link. I got my "annoying art" fill back in the '70s.
posted by languagehat at 10:40 AM on October 30, 2006


Man, I remember this being the coolest fucking site ever when my highschool got the internet in the mid-'90s.
posted by klangklangston at 10:44 AM on October 30, 2006


I remember seeing this site back in 97 or so. We used to send it to people in the company when they asked what web sites we liked.

Then they left us alone. Still, it's good to see they're still around.
posted by DragonBoy at 11:00 AM on October 30, 2006


W... T... F...
posted by triolus at 11:01 AM on October 30, 2006


For another old-school web demo that's a little more fun and artistic, see the potatoland shredder. It chops up websites into scrambled, shifting collages of their contents.
posted by jam_pony at 11:05 AM on October 30, 2006


So these radio bursts are from the Horsehead nebula deep in the center of the Milky Way?

These bursts, picked up by SETI, are 77 minutes apart and identical frequency patters!

It turns out they are sequences of prime numbers. These numbers translate into Parallel Algorithms for Zero-One. Hence are basically schematics for building a worm hole transporting capsule.

I say we built it!
posted by BillyElmore at 11:31 AM on October 30, 2006


languagehat beat me to it.

Still, I guess it's kinda cool to be reminded of just how far the Web has come, when something that many thought was teh awesome 11 years ago seems so "wtf lame" today.

Is that a suitably insightful comment to allow me to say I wasn't impressed much by this, without actually incurring the wrath of the thread police? :)

Hmm...perhaps not.
posted by darkstar at 11:31 AM on October 30, 2006


super old
posted by jimmy at 12:10 PM on October 30, 2006


noisy
posted by harlanpepper at 12:44 PM on October 30, 2006


Jodi Knights know how to harness the power of the Source.
posted by mkultra at 1:03 PM on October 30, 2006


how does it have a url with that many w's ?
posted by shokod at 1:06 PM on October 30, 2006


diggscalping - METAFILTER: I subscribe to all of the same rss feeds you do.
posted by Jeremy at 1:07 PM on October 30, 2006


My first thought on seeing this post was "Oh no, Mentifex has a MetaFilter account."
posted by spazzm at 2:05 PM on October 30, 2006


For some reason, Opera 9.02 doesn't point the link to the right place. It does http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/http//www.jodi.org/ instead of http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org

(in case anyone else was confused)
posted by aye at 2:08 PM on October 30, 2006


spazzm: haha! if we have enough AI threads, he'll surely show up.
posted by sonofsamiam at 2:13 PM on October 30, 2006


shokod: The "www" doesn't really mean anything, it's just convention. "ask.metafilter.com" is a perfectly fine URL, so why not "wwwwwwwww.jodi.org"?
posted by obvious at 2:29 PM on October 30, 2006


I'd hit it.
posted by piratebowling at 2:45 PM on October 30, 2006


deleted? Jodi is very interesting, more so a decade ago when it was new, but this post brings back memories.
posted by caddis at 2:57 PM on October 30, 2006


caddis,
I am not cool, never claimed to be. The Shit Sandwich reference is from Spinal Tap, and if other folks have decided that this post sucks, what the heck is wrong with adding my 2 turds to the pile? Did I call for deletion? Did I say it kills kittens? If it smells like a Shit Sandwich, then dagnabbit, it's a turd between two slices of moldy bread. Deal with it.
posted by dbiedny at 3:03 PM on October 30, 2006


Crappy FPPs just aren't complete without a sanctimonius rant from dbiedny.

I love adding just a little red to blue.
posted by dbiedny at 3:06 PM on October 30, 2006


I don't care whether jodi is the best site in the world or old as shit. This post's formatting is all fucked up and the link doesn't even work. This is worse than a shit sandwich, it's a shit sandwich coming out of tubgirl's ass.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:10 PM on October 30, 2006


___ _____ ______________ ___ ____ ______
/ | / ___// ____/ _/ _/ / | / __ \/_ __/
/ /| | \__ \/ / / / / / / /| | / /_/ / / /
/ ___ |___/ / /____/ /_/ / / ___ |/ _, _/ / /
/_/ |_/____/\____/___/___/ /_/ |_/_/ |_| /_/


what, oh shit the formating has fucked right off. lol-cunt-ed-cane-o.
posted by econous at 3:38 PM on October 30, 2006


so, like, lines & dots & shit can actually be used to make a pointless kinda picture, like, even in html? whoa. *tokes, eats more cheezels*.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:53 PM on October 30, 2006


Afroblanco - if you view source, the random shit arranges itself into some kinda fucked-up and meaningless doodle, which is apparently based on a h-bomb diagram, or something.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:56 PM on October 30, 2006


Y'all haters best show some proper respeck. Jodi's from the age of 216 web-safe colors, layout by table tags, and gifs optimized for 14.4 lines. Back then you could get a six-figure salary just by knowing how to validate forms in javascript. And it was net.art saved the web from going the way of Gopher.

anyone remember word.com?

I still have a crush on word.com. Some of the best writing on the web, back in the day. Here's Word.com's Marisa Bowe in Vice magazine. The comments there sound a lot like this thread.
posted by eatitlive at 4:04 PM on October 30, 2006


The extra Ws must have confused the shit outta people back in 1995/6.
posted by daninnj at 4:10 PM on October 30, 2006


It has pigeons in it.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:58 PM on October 30, 2006


As long as we're doing retro sites, Travels with Samantha was the first web page I read after getting myself actually on the Net, as opposed to just using a Unix shell account. (This was very hard back then: actual PPP access for a personal computer was very rare. I faked it through the shell account with a special program.)

Once I had Mosaic running, Travels with Samantha was the first site I looked up, based on a recommendation I got somewhere. I pulled very nearly an all-nighter reading it, and got very little sleep. There were pictures! Mixed right in with the text! And you could click on stuff and get bigger versions. It was mesmerizing.

By modern standards, the layout is very primitive, but it's still highly readable.
posted by Malor at 5:49 PM on October 30, 2006


Yawn. After viewing this, I couldn't even be bothered to read the wiki article about it. Sorry.
posted by spacely_sprocket at 5:50 PM on October 30, 2006


if you view source, the random shit arranges itself into some kinda fucked-up and meaningless doodle, which is apparently based on a h-bomb diagram, or something.

You might want to try clicking on stuff too!

I still fail to see what is so special about this site

It was among the first pieces of net art, which is pretty special whether you think it's any good or not.
posted by jack_mo at 5:58 PM on October 30, 2006


makes me wish e13 was still up and running.
posted by carsonb at 6:25 PM on October 30, 2006


Their work challenged expectations of the behavior of the computer, created humor from the misery of the glitch and the virus, reanimated obsolete technologies, and satirized the ocean of opinion and convention that governs the practice of interface design.

What a pile of pretentious horseshit.

Can people write stuff like that with a straight face?
posted by Ynoxas at 6:26 PM on October 30, 2006


You might want to try clicking on stuff too!

whoa! a different "web-page" installs itself in my browser program! these must be the famous "hyper-links" that i've been hearing so much about!

ok, i somehow completely missed that it did anything other than that source code piccy. kinda cute, in a retro way
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:31 PM on October 30, 2006


clearly it's the Iraq Cut & Run Timetable. duh.

you hippies asked for it and now you hate that its here.

some people are never satisfied.
posted by tsarfan at 7:43 PM on October 30, 2006


I did Jodi. She was a suck lay. Her mom though? Damn!
posted by ZachsMind at 7:54 PM on October 30, 2006


You fucking kids think it was always plasma tvs and tubes. What quonsar and the madam said. Get off the lawn, this thing is loaded with rock salt.
posted by caddis at 8:03 PM on October 30, 2006


I know this is supposed to be all cool and nostalgic and whatever, but..yeesh, blinking bright green is not cool in any time-period.
posted by Cyclopsis Raptor at 8:18 PM on October 30, 2006


dbiedny writes "Shit Sandwich. Wrapped in Art Paper."

L: "You look like you've eaten a shit sandwich."
K: "ECH! I thought it was Marmite!"

Nothing to do with the subject at hand, I just think it's a funny joke. Frankly the linked site manages to be even more obnoxious and annoying than the "headline".
posted by clevershark at 8:27 PM on October 30, 2006


sh*t sandwich is the lamest of lame jokes, even more lame than marmite itself (suck it marmite lovers) and those who use the joke....
posted by caddis at 8:35 PM on October 30, 2006


can we post images now please?
posted by casconed at 9:12 PM on October 30, 2006


no
posted by bob sarabia at 10:49 PM on October 30, 2006


caddis,

So why all the marmite hatred? Are you an FDA employee?

Why do you hate Spinal Tap?
posted by dbiedny at 7:07 AM on October 31, 2006


because my amp goes to 12
posted by caddis at 7:22 AM on October 31, 2006



because my amp goes to 12

Pfeh, with my Carvin Quad-X preamp and it's 9 12AX7 tube cascade, my amp goes to 42. On second thought, perhaps I am cool.
posted by dbiedny at 8:18 AM on October 31, 2006


Ahem, if I might:

Metafilter: Log off and kill yourself.
posted by Football Bat at 11:03 AM on October 31, 2006


"So these radio bursts are from the Horsehead nebula deep in the center of the Milky Way?

These bursts, picked up by SETI, are 77 minutes apart and identical frequency patters!

It turns out they are sequences of prime numbers. These numbers translate into Parallel Algorithms for Zero-One. Hence are basically schematics for building a worm hole transporting capsule.

I say we built it!"

HAHAHA! The Explorers, right?
posted by klangklangston at 12:48 PM on October 31, 2006


Ah, the memories. Now we get things all dished out to us, but finding good stuff used to be a real adventure back in the pre-blog days, you had to rely on a few "cool site of the day or week" type things" or venture forth on your own. There used to be a good surfing starting point called Web Soup, but that's long gone. Rcade's Cruel Site of the Day was also a groundbreaker.

I dug up a few other surviving art project sites of the same era as jodi:
Group Z, Belguim
ada'web
topographic

Malor, Travels with Samantha was great - as was his How to Be a Web Whore Just Like Me, which was eye opening. In 1997, Grrenspun was suggested "adding semantic tags to your content."

joecacti and eatitlive, word.com was a great site. God bless th eold school sites like suck.com that still have archives online.
posted by madamjujujive at 5:16 AM on November 1, 2006


Man, I miss word.com.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 3:47 PM on November 2, 2006


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