Love Letters to Small Websites

Basically, this is my alternative to a buttons-page of websites I love. About 50% because I'm more of a words-person than a graphics-person and about 50% because I have a terrible memory, so I need to have some notes to remember what exactly was on that website with the pink blinkee and why I loved it. You could say I'm trying to be less passive about the way I trawl the small web.

These are letters to websites, not necessarily to the people who create them. But if your website ends up here, know that I probably do think you're pretty cool.

Dear Owl's Roost,

Your desaturated corners are cozy in the same way full and dusty bookshelves are. There's so much contained within you, and I'm always impressed by the ways you reinvent the secrets and endlessly adventuring spirit of my childhood Web without limiting who can find them.

You were a major inspiration to me when I was just getting started. You were permission to take myself seriously, to think in public, to let my words be the focus, and to use visuals only where they suited me. I hope that many continue to find secrets and beauty and inspiration in your pages. Maybe they can start by immersing themselves in some of my favorite poems. Or by comparing some AI chatlogs real and fictional.

Yours in multiple shared passions,
kph

Dear Ribo.Zone,

Your splash page of off-kilter JPEGs that wiggle ever so slightly when I enter always takes me back to my warmest memories of the Web. The bitmapped texture over your carefully-extracted photographs of birds, plants, toys, and desk drawers flattens your world into something kitschy and friendly, a theme that's continued in your toy box full of beasts. And it's so nice to see the words behind your friendly facade have just as much draw. I adore any place where the microscopy and small sculptures equal each other in artistic presentation and scientific depiction.

I'd like to take my lunch to the link graveyard, and as much as I hate to see good sites die (and to be clear, the sites you've memorialized were very good ones indeed), I hope it continues to grow. Thank you for inspiring, in a way, this lightly-themed tribute to websites still living. Thank you for your thoughtful, artful curation.

Yours in scientific curiosity,
kph