Guestbook

Back in the good old days when the internet was accessed by computers that made scratchy sounds down telephone lines, personal websites were relatively rare, and most of them featured guestbooks. Way back in 1999 I had a free geocities website which consisted of a single page of colourful, centered text on a black background. On it were rants about how much I disliked the Microsoft Windows operating system, and a few photos of inline speed skating (scanned from film photos, remember them?). Oh, how things have changed.

With modern day database-organized content management systems that generate pages on the fly using PHP, commenting systems and contact forms have made guestbooks obsolete… or have they?

This page is more of a curious social experiment than anything else. This website is visited by over 200 people every day. A very small number of these people ever leave comments on posts, and an even smaller number contact me using the contact form. According to the stats, most people visit for a couple of minutes (enough to read the first few paragraphs of an article) then leave. About a fifth of all visitors click onto another page.

If you wish… leave a comment below in the way that you would normally sign a guestbook. Tell me your name, where you’re from, how you found the site, what you think of it, and any comments or suggestions you like. Obviously you don’t have to tell the truth, but if you do wish to make something up, please try to be creative and a little bit humorous.

cheers

Daniel Yeow

9 Comments on Guestbook

  1. Hi! I’m from Santos (São Paulo State, Brazil). Hmm, I found this website when I was searching about MIT and prof Denis Auroux and I found a article here about MIT Mystery Hunt. I think thik this blog is very cool and have a lot of interesting stuff… Hum… It’s 4:50 AM here, i’m a lit sleepy right now. Maybe later I should explore more your website. I’m going do university in short. I study civil engineering at University of São Paulo, please don’t hate me, mathematician! :}
    cya

    ps: I’m sorry if my english isn’t clear… I should take classes…

  2. Oh no. I didn’t know it was a public guestbook lol.
    I’m shy. 😡

    Bye.

  3. Hi, I found your site searching for pictures of Parliament House for my grandson. Enjoyed very much your no-bullshit comments on our political scene & politicians. Wandered about the website a bit, read some more no-nonsense articles and have decided that I would really like you – even for a young fellow!
    I would vote for you too. Well done, and keep up the good work.

  4. Not going to lie, I was actually looking for Kieran’s website, and google directed me here (because you apparently link his website somewhere)… anyway… yeah 🙂

  5. Hello from Saint Petersburg, Russia, Daniel!

    I found this site searching for speed skating technics tutorials or core muscle strength exercises, don’t remember what exactly. Your site is nice and useful but a little bit odd, just like you 🙂 Seems like you bury your journalist talent in the ground. My English isn’t good enough and usually I don’t enjoy reading long texts coz I don’t feel all the meaning, tints and colours behind the text, buuut your site is one of a few exeptions.

    Maybe some time in a future I’ll come up with few questions about speed skating (I’m getting hard times turning from fitness skater to amateur inline speed skater now). It is possible to buy a speed skates here, but nearest inline speed skater school is 700 km away, so I spam “inline speed skating technics free without sms!11” violently in different search engines and wait till spring.

  6. thanks daniel for the truly interesting website. love your ideas

  7. Hi, I’m Shiv, and I am looking through your honours thesis titled An Introduction to Thompson’s Group F, and I am wondering how you would like it to be cited (using LaTeX, of course).
    Many Thanks

  8. One of the more unusual mixes of topics in a personal blog.

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