Dear ~club:
Did you enjoy creating a custom 404 page? I didn't end up with a lot of time this week, so I threw mine together a bit hastily. Still, I managed to embed a video of someone playing (or perhaps simulating) a perfect game of Snake. I had hoped that maybe I could implement an actual self-playing Snake game in JavaScript, but for now this will do. My hope is that someone who stumbles upon it may at least briefly be amused by the pleasing motion of the pixelated reptile.
Many of you did a much better job than me. Thanks to the work of ~benharri and ~deepend, I was able to pull a list of ~clubbers who created a "404.html" in their "~/public_html" using `find` and check them all out for myself. Some of you are quite talented with CSS (whether by craftsmanship or theft), and I congratulate you on your efforts.
Here's a list of the 404 pages I found, if you'd care to check them out for yourself, in alphabetical order by username. Well done all:
- [benharri](https://tilde.club/~benharri/404.html) - [bradley](https://tilde.club/~bradley/404.html) - [bvh](https://tilde.club/~bvh/404.html) - [deepend](https://tilde.club/~deepend/404.html) - [gikiski](https://tilde.club/~gikiski/404.html) - [inchingfwd](https://tilde.club/~inchingfwd/404.html) - [jcjordyn120[(https://tilde.club/~jcjordyn120/404.html) - [micah](https://tilde.club/~micah/404.html) - [mpnordland](https://tilde.club/~mpnordland/404.html) - [rarguello](https://tilde.club/~rarguello/404.html) - [schussat](https://tilde.club/~schussat/404.html)
If you don't see your 404 page on the list, feel free to leave a reply.
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That's enough about the past. Following the success and surprisingly high turnout of last week's inaugural WWW, I think an increase in challenge complexity is in order. My aim is to mostly present relatively simple workshop objectives, but occasionally I'd like to throw in a thinker. You may find that this week's is one of those.
Wikipedia is perhaps the greatest project of good will on the web. If you want to know about it, chances are that Wikipedia has some information about it. Unfortunately, many of you have likely been interrupted while browsing this digital oracle by an increasingly obtrusive plea for money. (Incidentally, I encourage all of you who are able to donate what you can to this outstanding resource.) It's obvious that Wikipedia lives and dies on donations from its users, but what if we could improve Wikipedia's financial situation from the other end, by reducing operating costs?
Well, we can't. At least, not meaningfully. But we sure can pretend. This holiday season (read: this week), I implore you to...
**Adopt a Wikipedia page**
What does this mean? You see, dear reader:
Every contribution to the English Wikipedia has been licensed for re-use, including commercial, for-profit websites. Republication is not necessarily a breach of copyright, so long as the appropriate licenses are complied with.
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks#Things_you_need_to...)
Therefore, rehosting of Wikipedia content is allowed, provided that it's done correctly. (Read the rest of that linked page for details.) If we each adopt a Wikipedia page (that is, host it in our ~club directories), then we will be helping Wikipedia out by reducing the load on their servers (marginally) and helping them stay afloat. It's a holiday miracle!
Two suggestions on how to do this, if you're not sure where to start:
1. Consider using your favorite modern web browser's "Save Page" feature, which will do some of the parsing and link re-jiggering for you. It will also probably put the image assets in a neat little sidecar folder for you, like a dog bringing in the paper. 2. When doing so, also consider appending "&printable=yes" to your page's URL to get a simpler, less-styled version that might look a little more like what we want on ~club. Up to you.
**Important note:** please don't use this silly email as a way to attempt to justify breaking license terms or the ~club server. Keep your resource footprint low (try to stay under 1 MB of disk, I'd say), don't make anybody mad, do your research, and play nice. I am not a lawyer.
Go to work, ~club. The future of open knowledge depends on you, or whatever. Oh, and choose your page wisely.
Bradley