Figuring out how to make the animation of the eclipse from my last post was an interesting process. It ended up taking 3 different programs (not to mention a bunch of dead ends), but I’m quite happy with how it turned out, and it was completely free.
Continue reading “Making an animation”
Category: Computers
From the world of technology
The Wayback Machine
One of the most useful websites I’ve found over the years is also one of the least known. In the interest of spreading knowledge, I wanted devote this entry to the Wayback Machine, which is run by the nonprofit Internet Archive. Basically, they are trying to keep an archive of the entire internet.
https://web.archive.org/
If a website is taken offline, or if the web owner changes something, there’s a good chance that the old version was saved by the Wayback Machine. This has saved my bacon a few times. It’s also just generally useful. For instance, the old Soundstage Rhythm Orchestra website that I used to run is gone, but you can still access the archived version of it – that’s what is linked from my Ensembles page.
Of course, it’s not a perfect archive. Some sites slip under the radar, and they don’t always catch embedded documents or files. It will load a lot slower than the original site. Also, if something is in a password-protected area, it won’t get caught. But if you’re ever trying to find something that seems to have disappeared from the web, the Wayback Machine is a good place to start.