Originally posted at Lost Tulsa on Friday, July 29, 2005


KOTV Coverage of Lost Tulsa

I was somewhat taken aback when I received a phone call this morning asking for an interview. It appears that KOTV news reporter Steve Berg had stumbled upon this site and wanted to do a feature on it. You can view the video segment online here.

Thanks to everyone who have left comments!! I'm so moved by some of the stories. It really changes my perspective on many of these places when I read memories like this:

"I especially liked the picture of the old Mayo Motor Inn sign. My Dad worked there when I was very young, 3 or 4 yrs. old. He would always let me ride up on the 'lift' and take me across to the Mayo Hotel coffee shop and buy me a cherry limeade. I miss my Dad and I miss those great days!" - Linda Hodges

Wow...I mean, WOW! Before, I loved the clean art-deco styled lines of the Mayo Motor Inn. But now whenever I see that building, I'm going to think of that little girl and her dad back during the structure's grander days. Completely different perspective! This is why I created Lost Tulsa.

Only A Parent

Only a parent would ever utter the words "Hey now, don't put Gumby in the mashed potatoes".

Panoramic Bliss!

I linked to a QuicktimeVR panoramic photo of Boulder, CO's Pearl Street Mall the other day on Lost Tulsa. If you've never viewed a QTVR before, you're really in for a treat. Once you have the browser plugin loaded, you can view 360 degree panoramic images that allow you to spin around, look up and down and even zoom in and out. This gives you a completely new perspective of a place that you never get from simple photographs. It's almost as good as being there (and in a lot of cases such as large events...probably better!).

Check out Panoramas.dk for a collection of over 150 awesome QTVR pics...from the Eiffel Tower to the Petronos towers in Malaysia...from the Christau saffron Gates in Central Park to shots of Live8 in action...they're all here in beautiful high resolution. It's absolutely worth dealing with Apple briefly (to load the QTVR plugin) to view these. Use the pulldown list in the upper right hand corner to choose your selection.

Strawberry Pop-tart Blowtorches

Back in 1993, I was running Windows 3.1 when I got my first WWW access. I had been using the Internet for a couple of years, but only ftp, gopher and telnet sites (I really miss the MOO/MUD that my friends and I used to visit) from the command line. Near the end of '93, when I tried NCSA Mosaic (Internet Explorer's Grandaddy), I was so excited. However, there was a very limited number of WWW sites available...two sites I clearly remember visiting in those first days surfin the World Wide Web were the Trojan Room Coffee Machine, which watched a pot of coffee in a breakroom and this site exploring the phenomenon of flammable breakfast pastries.

A LOT has changed in the 12 years that have passed since then. However, the SPTB site hasn't changed one bit. Check out that awesome HTML 1.0 webpage layout!

Why did I feel the necessity to blog about this?...hmmmm....dunno...I was discussing the early days of the Internet with some co-workers yesterday and it reminded me of these early web sites. It's pretty amazing to see how far we've come in a little over 10 years. Now, I can't imagine a life without instant access to information worldwide right at my fingertips.

Last week, when London experienced terrorist attacks on their transportation system, Wikipedia had a complete entry for the "event" fully established and quite thoroughly detailed within 6 hours of the first blast. This is a perfect example of what is usually referred to as a "living document". The information was being compiled, updated and presented in realtime even as Londoners were still evacuating the tunnels. This is so far away from the World Book Encyclopedias I grew up with, it's not even funny. By the time Griffin hits grade school, I can only imagine how much more it will evolve.

Live 8 Video Clips

The Live 8 concerts last weekend were great. However, I couldn't believe that MTV felt the necessity of having their "commentators" start yapping during such a historic moment as a reunited Pink Floyd's set. It made me really happy to see Roger Waters up there with his old bandmates. His smiles and enthusiasm really showed how he felt about things (or was he just visioning all the $$ he was making from this gig?!).

For those of you who missed the shows, here is a site that someone has put much effort into setting up. It's a list of all cities that had Live 8 performances, with decent quality video clips for most of the songs and MC banter that took place.