This post intentionally left blank.

April 1, 2008 12:05 AM

This page intentionally left blank. Black. Blue. White. Orange. Gray. What, you expected something else?
posted by Kickstart70 (45 comments total)

.
posted by Kickstart70 at 12:06 AM on April 1, 2008

?
posted by dawson at 12:10 AM on April 1, 2008

oh, I see. that's cool, really
posted by dawson at 12:13 AM on April 1, 2008

I call shenanigans! The blank page isn't blank.

Also, even though I knew the colored pages were supposed to be blank, there was still this tiny part of me that felt frustrated because I was waiting for the content to load. Why is this taking so LONG?? Oh, yeah...
posted by LeeJay at 12:19 AM on April 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Huh, after writing that comment, the word 'blank' no longer has any meaning. It's fun to say though. Blank, blank, blank, blank.
posted by LeeJay at 12:20 AM on April 1, 2008

mmmmmmm
posted by From Bklyn at 12:20 AM on April 1, 2008

In the old Palm OS development kits, when you were using the emulator set to pretend to be a Palm IIIC colour model, and you clicked your mouse on the power button on the emulator's skin, you would get the message on the display "this screen intentionally left black."
posted by Space Coyote at 12:39 AM on April 1, 2008

The 5th link is not really blank. The page source actually reveals some cryptic text.
Frog reconditioning? The plot thickens...
posted by naju at 12:49 AM on April 1, 2008

This post is brilliant.
Favorited.
posted by dhammond at 1:04 AM on April 1, 2008

The 5th link is not really blank. The page source actually reveals some cryptic text.
Frog reconditioning? The plot thickens...

Railroad speak. A frog is where two rails cross.
posted by LeeJay at 1:07 AM on April 1, 2008

quite a lovely shade of blue, really...
posted by es_de_bah at 1:14 AM on April 1, 2008

Well, I was expecting the best of the web, but this certainly isn't it.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 1:15 AM on April 1, 2008

My website had that exact orange as the background color for almost a year.

It wasn't blank, though, so I guess it wasn't quite as awesome.
posted by po at 1:16 AM on April 1, 2008

Well on the plus side it sent me off to find reasons why a page would intentionally be left blank.
posted by jeblis at 1:21 AM on April 1, 2008

This comment intentionally left blank.
posted by jeblis at 1:22 AM on April 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Occasionally, I'm briefly convinced that I read "this page unintentionally left blank" upon opening up to one of these pages. I maintain that should that reading ever fail to revert to the normal phrase, I'm going to commit myself.
posted by invitapriore at 1:24 AM on April 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Nowadays the “This Page Intentionally Left Blank”-Project (TPILB-Project) tries to introduce these blank pages to the Web again. One reason is to keep alive the remembrance of these famous historical blank pages. But it is the primary reason to offer internet wanderers a place of quietness and simplicity on the overcrowded World Wide Web—a blank page for relaxing the restless mind.

A place of quietness and simplicity would have cleaner HTML coding.
posted by three blind mice at 1:38 AM on April 1, 2008

posted by slimepuppy at 1:47 AM on April 1, 2008 [4 favorites]

Interestingly there's a whole article on Wikipedia about the intentionally blank page. Awhile back, 60 Minutes ran a clip about the Government Printing Office department that created the stock blank page.
posted by crapmatic at 1:49 AM on April 1, 2008

Book pages are left blank to at the beginning to ensure a right-hand page start or at the end to round out signatures in bookbinding. Web pages are left blank in order to make people check today's date.
posted by melissa may at 1:50 AM on April 1, 2008

International Klein Blue
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:58 AM on April 1, 2008 [2 favorites]

This video is intentionally left _________.
posted by Poolio at 2:02 AM on April 1, 2008

I seem to recall the BFG convincing me as a child that the black pages in atlas's where for either new places you discovered, or ones you invented yourself, I can't remember exactly.

Nice post though, It's oddly soothing.
posted by emperor.seamus at 2:20 AM on April 1, 2008

This post is intentionally a double.
posted by MrMustard at 2:23 AM on April 1, 2008

this comment intentionally left content-free
posted by russm at 2:37 AM on April 1, 2008

In fact the internet needs a test card. In the UK ours came with easy listening music.
posted by rongorongo at 4:45 AM on April 1, 2008

One side of this thread is longer than the other. The blank space at the end of side one is intentional; this is to preserve the continuity of the tracks in the whole thread.









[click... click... autoreverse]
posted by not_on_display at 5:01 AM on April 1, 2008

As part of my job I get the awesome privilege of running bid solicitations on a high speed copier for another office. They have always used the intentional blank page, and still do. And I have always maintained that the page is not blank, since it does say something. The really stupid part, is each section ends with a line of text that says "end of section" so it's not like the reader is going to panic and wonder if he is missing a page through some technical error. But it's never going to change. It's a Federal government office.

I have been trying for years to get them to distribute them on CD or, better, via download, which is more efficient, cheaper, and more in line with the "real" work we do in my office. With it being a Federal bureaucracy, you can guess how that's going.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 5:02 AM on April 1, 2008

Don't forget purple.com!
posted by closetphilosopher at 6:22 AM on April 1, 2008

Actually www.purple.com
posted by closetphilosopher at 6:25 AM on April 1, 2008

its been done : http://www.mishaco.com/o8.htm
posted by mishaco at 7:49 AM on April 1, 2008

THIS POST INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
posted by Lord Kinbote at 8:07 AM on April 1, 2008

This page intentionally left Blanka.
posted by brain_drain at 8:23 AM on April 1, 2008

{}
posted by racingjs at 9:25 AM on April 1, 2008

I like to open them up in separate tabs and hold Ctrl-Tab to cycle through them at warp speed. It makes pretty squares.
posted by jinjo at 9:25 AM on April 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

I see dead pixels dammit!
posted by phoffmann at 10:20 AM on April 1, 2008

I find the html source of each of these pages the most interesting part of this post. But after all, I'm a geek. The blue and gray pages are the most elegant. The unseen table on the black page is odd, and the orange page is outright bizarre.
posted by JeffK at 10:26 AM on April 1, 2008

HALP! My interwebs have all gone plaid!
posted by not_on_display at 11:44 AM on April 1, 2008

Surely I'm not the first person to notice the background of this thread gradually changing color. Or -- and I never want to rule this possibility out -- I am going insane.

Worryingly, it seems to be doing it in other metafilter tabs I have open as well.
posted by churl at 12:16 PM on April 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Okay I haven't had my coffee yet. I had assumed this was a clever play on the topic of this thread in particular. Disregard my above comment.
posted by churl at 12:19 PM on April 1, 2008

HALP! My interwebs have all gone plaid!

Why? Why would someone do that? This has been a bad day for my eyeballs.
posted by LeeJay at 12:49 PM on April 1, 2008

This comment is a lie.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:51 PM on April 1, 2008

______________________________________________________________
posted by SteveTheRed at 1:03 PM on April 1, 2008

Seems like a lot of work to write nothing.
posted by salishsea at 1:04 PM on April 1, 2008

This link intentionally Les Blank.
Burden of Dreams is awesome.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 1:30 PM on April 1, 2008