I’ve been on search of inspiration for Kicya today. While looking around, I remembered about cute Kanon error pages I found a few months ago:
I saved them many months ago, in case I could ever find a use to them. Of course, I can’t really use copyrighted characters on commercial site, but they were really inspiring to me. I got curious about the creator of these, which was named Woody-RINN, aka 森林りんご, on the page I got these images from. The images were also uploaded 16 years ago.
Eventually, I found links to their sites, which were all down, except for one, which simply said that it has been closed down.
The oldest website, was archived on 1996.
I’m amazed by how good the site looks for it’s time… The dark brick wall as background, it’s literally my exact stereotype for 90s… I was just incredibly pleased.
Some of the images on the site have been dated from early 90s.
Their second site iteration has started in around 2000, and have used lighter tones. This is the version that started using Kanon images.
At some point in my searches, I stumbled upon the 404 error page that used the beautiful Kanon error. I’m sure it used all of them back then.
Apparently they also wrote the beautiful "Piano de Kanon", a piano arrengement of Kanon soundtrack, which you can listen to using the player on top of the page.
Third iteration of the site has been using blogging software they created, called rNote.
They have been actively blogging until 2006. After that, posting ceased. Somewhere in 2010, their website has been replaced with current «temporary closure» message, and have been unchanged since.
In around 2012, there was a vulnerability found in rNote, and they were being seeked by JPCERT Coordination Center, but they were unreachable.
And things have been like this since. Nobody knows where they are now.
Given that they were already known for their works and programs in 1990, they were likely already around 25. So if they’re still alive, they’re likely around 60 now.
I have been looking through all of this, through all these years of memories, and I’m just feeling constant, intense chronophobia.
They left a legacy, and 15 years since their last activity, I searched for them. If I will suddenly disappear, will my Legacy cause someone to search for me, 15 years later? Will someone still remember me? Will I be remembered fondly? I remain trapped in place, and yet can never stop moving.
I downloaded Photoshop CS6, and played around in it trying to come up with a logo. I’m impressed by how nice Photoshop is to use… I really regret using Paint.NET for my entire life now. █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
Eventually I came up with something I liked.
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