The Aerie
Hooray! One of my favorite things is back, the Yahoo Random Link. An old, old Internet fave, it wasn't working, for me at least, for a long time. I would click on my ancient bookmark, and instead of showing me a random page out of Yahoo's database, it would show me the URL. Instead of taking me to the site, it would just show the address of the site.
Why? Dunno. I thought maybe that Yahoo wanted to step back from any possible responsibility for the content of the destination page: if you have to copy-and-paste the link in order to reach the page, Yahoo can hardly be solely responsible for taking you to "www.reallyoffensivewebsite.com" or whatever.
Regardless of what changed, the Random Link has started working, and is already offering up gems. Today, for example, I was offered an Alan Ruck fan page, the dreadfully-in-need-of-updating Cristine website, and everything you ever wanted to know about Crocodiles.
It was the Yahoo Random Link that took me to the website for Drawing Down the Moon in the middle of my brief association with aikido many years ago. The film is fairly bad - which is to say, pretty good for an independent film - and features the use of that martial art, as well as the guy who played Chekov on Star Trek. How long ago was that? Well the movie was delivered to me on video tape...
I think I was still working at Network Systems Corp the first time I used the YRL, . I had at that time a calendar of "Earth from Space," and the link brought me to a real estate sales site in Hawai'i. Coincidentally, the calendar entry for that month was also Hawai'i, so I could look up from the real-estate site and pretty much see the house being advertised on the high-resolution photograph of Oahu. Weird coincidence!
The other thing that the Yahoo Random Link is good for is telling when I'm wasting time. It used to be the case that when I found myself clicking the Yahoo Random Link, it was because I was supposed to be doing something else.
For example, blogging about the Yahoo Random Link.
Posted by Albatross at February 9, 2007 11:44 PM | TrackBack