5 ms·

Waterfalls of the Great Lakes Region and Beyond

106 points by rubidium 7y ago

pmlnr 7y ago
I love these sites. They contain an extensive amount of information, all in a catalogue that reflects how the creator thinks. My personal all time favourite is http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/ http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/
- _trampeltier 7y ago
  And how fast these pages load :-)
  - pmlnr 7y ago
    There's no black magic in that at all: serve a static HTML page with small images on modern hardware. Suddenly it becomes visible that our connections are not 128Kbps ADSL any more, and that the bottleneck is actually JavaScript processing, not the network.
thomasedwards 7y ago
A favourite of mine is a website about Disused Stations in the United Kingdom http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/ http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/ The body tag is <BODY bgcolor="#CCCC99" text="#FF0000">
raesene9 7y ago
The very first site I ever visited on the web is still live some 25 years later http://www.armory.com/ http://www.armory.com/ Older sites are unfortunately ever rarer, thankfully the archive project does a good job in maintaining a record of all the information they stored.
keiferski 7y ago
The Man in Seat 61 is one of these sites, except it's still continually updated and is probably the single best location for train travel information, anywhere. https://www.seat61.com https://www.seat61.com
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  Well I've always wanted to do the VIA Rail Canadian trip from Toronto to Vancouver via Jasper. Now the page on that one has convinced me I want to do the most expensive option, too. That "Prestige" class... not too shabby. https://www.seat61.com/train-from-toronto-to-vancouver.htm https://www.seat61.com/train-from-toronto-to-vancouver.htm That and/or the Rocky Mountaineer (how have I not heard of this route?) https://www.seat61.com/RockyMountaineer.htm https://www.seat61.com/RockyMountaineer.htm
blackhaz 7y ago
And I admire the one of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. - one of the biggest financial conglomerates in the world: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/
Carpetsmoker 7y ago
https://www.sheldonbrown.com https://www.sheldonbrown.com is another great one. His website got him to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Brown_(bicycle_mechanic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Brown_(bicycle_mechani...
- ehnto 7y ago
  Such an immense wealth of hard earned cycling knowledge.
- tjr225 7y ago
  Virtually anyone who is interested in bicycles has at some point landed on Sheldon Brown's site. Bless whoever maintains it and Rest in Peace, Sheldon.
swarnie_ 7y ago
Last Modified: Saturday, 18-May-2019 18:38:40 MDT. Someone is still maintaining this... How/Why?
- pmlnr 7y ago
  Probably by hand writing HTML. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. It's not even hard. As for the why: the site has a purpose. It's a catalogue of waterfall visits. Of course it's updated if a new waterfall was visited.
- mattlondon 7y ago
  How? By editing the HTML and uploading it again! :) I still do this for lots of older sites I keep going - FTP in (well, SFTP ideally), make a couple of changes in the HTML and you are done. Easy - no compiling or bundling, just edit and save and re-upload (some FTP clients will do the save + re-upload in one-step). Some hosts you just SSH in and edit with vi and save. Aint broke - don't fix it etc. As for the "why", I guess why does anyone update a website?
- codesections 7y ago
  How? By writing new html pages when they take a picture of a new waterfall. Why? Well, as the FAQ on the site says, because they like waterfalls. More generally, I'm not sure why it strikes you as odd that this site is still being updated. The old(er) way of building sites hasn't gone anywhere, and this site seems perfectly functional. Why not contenue to update it?
- pjc50 7y ago
  "By hand", and "because they like it"?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
antupis 7y ago
I hope someday we get truly minimalist movement around the web design. Static site generators are a good start.
mohammedhdotio 7y ago
http://gowaterfalling.com/waterfalls/cascadecanyon.shtml http://gowaterfalling.com/waterfalls/cascadecanyon.shtml If you press Previous or Next you will download un-parsed php file . let me guess it was hosted on PHP-capable host and now moved to PHP non-capable host?
IvanK_net 7y ago
I think I wrote the manual about my software in the same manner :) https://www.photopea.com/learn/ https://www.photopea.com/learn/ It also loads very fast and the HTML code is readable :)
vanderZwan 7y ago
I remember last time there was a discussion about this style of websites, someone posted a link to a static site that showed what kind of amazing things you could do with a <map> tag[0], but I forgot to bookmark it. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/map https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ma...
rubidium 7y ago
The title has now been editorialized (fairly enough), but I posted this as an encouragement for all the great "classic" websites. I love seeing others people are posting here. Working right now with a static site generator for my own website (Pelican) and been loving it.
monkin 7y ago
Hmm, don't want to be rude, but there is nothing classic about that website. Actually it's quite modern, and maybe I'm too old to consider site from 2008 as classic. :) Yet, it's nice source of information.
- dang 7y ago
  The submitted title was 'gowaterfalling.com : example of the "classic" web'. We changed it per the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - pmlnr 7y ago
    Sometimes it would be very good to have an option to tell why the site was posted. In this particular case, adding a completely new the title made a lot of sense. Merely posting a site on waterfalls doesn't really fall into the Hacker News world, but the reason - namely the old web simplicity of it - does.
    - dang 7y ago
      There is such an option. Simply post a comment explaining why you submitted the site.
      - mark-r 7y ago
        Is there anything to guarantee your comment remains the top-most comment? Otherwise it gets lost in the noise.
        dang 7y ago
        That sort of comment doesn't get lost unless the thread becomes huge, in which case it's probably less relevant. Allowing commentary by the submitter to be pinned to the top would break HN's rule that submitting an article confers no special rights to interpret it for the reader. That's a bedrock rule here. It has served super well over the years. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22level%20playing%20field%22%20&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
ehnto 7y ago
I was thinking about this last night, and was going to make an ASK HN about it. How do we build a site to help explore these parts of the web? I know it would get gamed really, but what if there were an injected "related-sites" link list as an extension, that drew from a curated directory? That was how you used to explore, through blog and site "friends of" sections that sent you on an endless rabbit hole. I feel like it can't be feed oriented, because that's a more consumption mindset than exploration mindset, and I feel part of the fun of the old web was that constant active exploration. I don't want to turn this into a conversation about SEO, but suffice to say commerce dominates search results for so many terms that it can be hard to find anything community oriented, or niche information. So search engines and feed sites are not quite right for exploration.
- pmlnr 7y ago
  > How do we build a site to help explore these parts of the web? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring s used to be quite useful, maybe along with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software) Other than that, it's a good question. It's been explored by many that Google tends to forget old content. Alternative search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, in my experience, tend to lean towards indie sites more. EDIT and, of course, there was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > I know it would get gamed really, but what if there were an injected "related-sites" link list as an extension, that drew from a curated directory? A federated curated directory, perhaps with an emergent shared vocabulary for tags/categories/etc. (similar to the Wikipedia-centered naming guidelines for wiki pages) might work. The DMOZ model wouldn't scale in the modern web, with its rampant contentiousness around politics etc., and even the original DMOZ broke down because of corruption, with websites having to pay category "editors" for listings.
- SamuelAdams 7y ago
  Yes, this existed and was popular for some time in the early 2000's. Stumble Upon was a tool you could use to explore random websites. Some were related by topic. It was easy to spend several hours exploring new or hardly viewed websites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon
xorand 7y ago
I don't get it, is "classic" bad? My page is online since 1995 and is still the best way I share my work. There surely are many "classic" style sites, with unique information. I'd encourage everybody who has something rare to share, to do this in a "classic" way. http://imar.ro/~mbuliga/ http://imar.ro/~mbuliga/
maxaigner 7y ago
As everyone seems to be adding 'classic' websites, here's a similar website about lighthouses and lighthouse conservancy: http://www.michiganlights.com http://www.michiganlights.com Bonus: http://www.terrypepper.com/lights/ http://www.terrypepper.com/lights/
drpgq 7y ago
Unfortunately the Hamilton waterfalls have been so overrun by GTAers (probably due to Instagram) that the city has cut back access, including banning people from Albion Falls.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  Whoa I didn't know this! What a shame. Apparently the same thing has been happening to Elora Gorge. And any of us on the GTHA region have heard the sunflower farm story, I'm sure. (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-how-the-quest-for-the-perfect-selfie-forced-an-ontario-sunflower-farm/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-how-the-quest...)
- goda90 7y ago
  Social media has lead to a lot of natural beauty being damaged because word got out to the kind of people who don't respect trails, graffiti, take rocks and plants, and litter. It's a shame. There's a beautiful little gorge near my hometown that was amazing until a few years ago when people trashed it.
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  What are "GTAers"?
  - fzzzy 7y ago
    I think GTA means greater toronto area
theklub 7y ago
Here's a good classic website with endless information on one topic... https://www.collectingsnapon.com/ https://www.collectingsnapon.com/

106 points by rubidium 7y ago

I love these sites. They contain an extensive amount of information, all in a catalogue that reflects how the creator thinks. My personal all time favourite is http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/ http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/

_trampeltier 7y ago
And how fast these pages load :-)
- pmlnr 7y ago
  There's no black magic in that at all: serve a static HTML page with small images on modern hardware. Suddenly it becomes visible that our connections are not 128Kbps ADSL any more, and that the bottleneck is actually JavaScript processing, not the network.

thomasedwards 7y ago

A favourite of mine is a website about Disused Stations in the United Kingdom http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/ http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/ The body tag is <BODY bgcolor="#CCCC99" text="#FF0000">

raesene9 7y ago

The very first site I ever visited on the web is still live some 25 years later http://www.armory.com/ http://www.armory.com/ Older sites are unfortunately ever rarer, thankfully the archive project does a good job in maintaining a record of all the information they stored.

keiferski 7y ago

The Man in Seat 61 is one of these sites, except it's still continually updated and is probably the single best location for train travel information, anywhere. https://www.seat61.com https://www.seat61.com

52-6F-62 7y ago
Well I've always wanted to do the VIA Rail Canadian trip from Toronto to Vancouver via Jasper. Now the page on that one has convinced me I want to do the most expensive option, too. That "Prestige" class... not too shabby. https://www.seat61.com/train-from-toronto-to-vancouver.htm https://www.seat61.com/train-from-toronto-to-vancouver.htm That and/or the Rocky Mountaineer (how have I not heard of this route?) https://www.seat61.com/RockyMountaineer.htm https://www.seat61.com/RockyMountaineer.htm

blackhaz 7y ago

And I admire the one of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. - one of the biggest financial conglomerates in the world: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

Carpetsmoker 7y ago

https://www.sheldonbrown.com https://www.sheldonbrown.com is another great one. His website got him to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Brown_(bicycle_mechanic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Brown_(bicycle_mechani...

ehnto 7y ago
Such an immense wealth of hard earned cycling knowledge.
tjr225 7y ago
Virtually anyone who is interested in bicycles has at some point landed on Sheldon Brown's site. Bless whoever maintains it and Rest in Peace, Sheldon.

swarnie_ 7y ago

Last Modified: Saturday, 18-May-2019 18:38:40 MDT. Someone is still maintaining this... How/Why?

pmlnr 7y ago
Probably by hand writing HTML. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. It's not even hard. As for the why: the site has a purpose. It's a catalogue of waterfall visits. Of course it's updated if a new waterfall was visited.
mattlondon 7y ago
How? By editing the HTML and uploading it again! :) I still do this for lots of older sites I keep going - FTP in (well, SFTP ideally), make a couple of changes in the HTML and you are done. Easy - no compiling or bundling, just edit and save and re-upload (some FTP clients will do the save + re-upload in one-step). Some hosts you just SSH in and edit with vi and save. Aint broke - don't fix it etc. As for the "why", I guess why does anyone update a website?
codesections 7y ago
How? By writing new html pages when they take a picture of a new waterfall. Why? Well, as the FAQ on the site says, because they like waterfalls. More generally, I'm not sure why it strikes you as odd that this site is still being updated. The old(er) way of building sites hasn't gone anywhere, and this site seems perfectly functional. Why not contenue to update it?
pjc50 7y ago
"By hand", and "because they like it"?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

antupis 7y ago

I hope someday we get truly minimalist movement around the web design. Static site generators are a good start.

mohammedhdotio 7y ago

http://gowaterfalling.com/waterfalls/cascadecanyon.shtml http://gowaterfalling.com/waterfalls/cascadecanyon.shtml If you press Previous or Next you will download un-parsed php file . let me guess it was hosted on PHP-capable host and now moved to PHP non-capable host?

IvanK_net 7y ago

I think I wrote the manual about my software in the same manner :) https://www.photopea.com/learn/ https://www.photopea.com/learn/ It also loads very fast and the HTML code is readable :)

vanderZwan 7y ago

I remember last time there was a discussion about this style of websites, someone posted a link to a static site that showed what kind of amazing things you could do with a <map> tag[0], but I forgot to bookmark it. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/map https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ma...

rubidium 7y ago

The title has now been editorialized (fairly enough), but I posted this as an encouragement for all the great "classic" websites. I love seeing others people are posting here. Working right now with a static site generator for my own website (Pelican) and been loving it.

monkin 7y ago

Hmm, don't want to be rude, but there is nothing classic about that website. Actually it's quite modern, and maybe I'm too old to consider site from 2008 as classic. :) Yet, it's nice source of information.

dang 7y ago
The submitted title was 'gowaterfalling.com : example of the "classic" web'. We changed it per the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- pmlnr 7y ago
  Sometimes it would be very good to have an option to tell why the site was posted. In this particular case, adding a completely new the title made a lot of sense. Merely posting a site on waterfalls doesn't really fall into the Hacker News world, but the reason - namely the old web simplicity of it - does.
  - dang 7y ago
    There is such an option. Simply post a comment explaining why you submitted the site.
    - mark-r 7y ago
      Is there anything to guarantee your comment remains the top-most comment? Otherwise it gets lost in the noise.
      - dang 7y ago
        That sort of comment doesn't get lost unless the thread becomes huge, in which case it's probably less relevant. Allowing commentary by the submitter to be pinned to the top would break HN's rule that submitting an article confers no special rights to interpret it for the reader. That's a bedrock rule here. It has served super well over the years. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22level%20playing%20field%22%20&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

ehnto 7y ago

I was thinking about this last night, and was going to make an ASK HN about it. How do we build a site to help explore these parts of the web? I know it would get gamed really, but what if there were an injected "related-sites" link list as an extension, that drew from a curated directory? That was how you used to explore, through blog and site "friends of" sections that sent you on an endless rabbit hole. I feel like it can't be feed oriented, because that's a more consumption mindset than exploration mindset, and I feel part of the fun of the old web was that constant active exploration. I don't want to turn this into a conversation about SEO, but suffice to say commerce dominates search results for so many terms that it can be hard to find anything community oriented, or niche information. So search engines and feed sites are not quite right for exploration.

pmlnr 7y ago
> How do we build a site to help explore these parts of the web? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring s used to be quite useful, maybe along with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software) Other than that, it's a good question. It's been explored by many that Google tends to forget old content. Alternative search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, in my experience, tend to lean towards indie sites more. EDIT and, of course, there was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati
zozbot234 7y ago
> I know it would get gamed really, but what if there were an injected "related-sites" link list as an extension, that drew from a curated directory? A federated curated directory, perhaps with an emergent shared vocabulary for tags/categories/etc. (similar to the Wikipedia-centered naming guidelines for wiki pages) might work. The DMOZ model wouldn't scale in the modern web, with its rampant contentiousness around politics etc., and even the original DMOZ broke down because of corruption, with websites having to pay category "editors" for listings.
SamuelAdams 7y ago
Yes, this existed and was popular for some time in the early 2000's. Stumble Upon was a tool you could use to explore random websites. Some were related by topic. It was easy to spend several hours exploring new or hardly viewed websites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon

xorand 7y ago

I don't get it, is "classic" bad? My page is online since 1995 and is still the best way I share my work. There surely are many "classic" style sites, with unique information. I'd encourage everybody who has something rare to share, to do this in a "classic" way. http://imar.ro/~mbuliga/ http://imar.ro/~mbuliga/

maxaigner 7y ago

As everyone seems to be adding 'classic' websites, here's a similar website about lighthouses and lighthouse conservancy: http://www.michiganlights.com http://www.michiganlights.com Bonus: http://www.terrypepper.com/lights/ http://www.terrypepper.com/lights/

drpgq 7y ago

Unfortunately the Hamilton waterfalls have been so overrun by GTAers (probably due to Instagram) that the city has cut back access, including banning people from Albion Falls.

52-6F-62 7y ago
Whoa I didn't know this! What a shame. Apparently the same thing has been happening to Elora Gorge. And any of us on the GTHA region have heard the sunflower farm story, I'm sure. (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-how-the-quest-for-the-perfect-selfie-forced-an-ontario-sunflower-farm/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-how-the-quest...)
goda90 7y ago
Social media has lead to a lot of natural beauty being damaged because word got out to the kind of people who don't respect trails, graffiti, take rocks and plants, and litter. It's a shame. There's a beautiful little gorge near my hometown that was amazing until a few years ago when people trashed it.
Carpetsmoker 7y ago
What are "GTAers"?
- fzzzy 7y ago
  I think GTA means greater toronto area

theklub 7y ago

Here's a good classic website with endless information on one topic... https://www.collectingsnapon.com/ https://www.collectingsnapon.com/