Monkeying Around With 404 Pages

I've been meaning to start this new category, but keep forgetting.  It's a collection of "404" pages I've been directed to on websites.  I'm sure you've seen them, but if you're not aware of what they are, they're basically dead links, the "page not found" message. (or, for more information, click on the "404" link above)

There are websites devoted to 404 pages, so it's not as though I'm doing anything new. (here's one and here's another.)

This is one that just an hour or so ago was directed to at userscripts.org, a site I sometimes get scripts to use in my Greasemonkey add-on for my Firefox browser. I thought it was appropriate - a monkey and Greasemonkey.

(click image for larger view)

Bitly 404 Page

I was trying to view a recipe posted on the Foodgawker Facebook wall, but kept getting a 404 page.  They said they had fixed the link, but didn't.  That's the problem with using these link-shortening services - far too often something happens in the conversion of the link and it's invalid or they make a mistake in copying...either way, it's a broken link.   Here's a screenshot of what I got:

Still, the Bitly 404 page is a pretty cool one - funny and animated, with a seagull flapping its wings, clouds floating across the sky and waves bobbing a dead pufferfish? up and down.  See it for yourself. (put your cursor over the water to make waves-I don't think anything else is interactive)

404 Error

Kept getting this error page earlier on a video site - it's one of the more humorous ones I've seen lately.

(click for larger view)

Not sure what a broken TV has to do with a website, but I got the gist of it. Actually, that's how I often feel after watching the Dallas Cowboys play.

How To Fix a 404 Not Found Error

35 Entertaining 404 Error Pages

Pandas Don't Eat Pages

Of course you didn't eat the missing page;  from panda.org:

What do pandas eat?

The simple answers is: bamboo. A Panda's daily menu consists almost entirely of the leaves, stems, and shoots of various bamboo species. Bamboo contains very little nutritional value, so pandas must eat 12-38kg every day to meet their energy needs.

404 page found at: boredpanda.com

I'm seldom bored, even with 404 pages.

Resurrecting Old Wounds

The 404 post (just below this one) I made was about trying to watch the premiere episode of Resurrection. From Wiki:

The series follows the residents of Arcadia, Missouri, whose lives are upended when their loved ones return from the dead, unaged since their deaths. Among the returned is Jacob Langston, an eight-year-old boy who drowned 32 years earlier. Having somehow been found alive in China, he is brought back to America by an immigration agent. His surprise return inspires the local sheriff, whose wife presumably drowned trying to rescue Jacob, to learn more about this mystery.

The premise sounded interesting and I thought it might be something that, if done well, would be worth putting the show on my fairly small list of TV shows to watch.  As I said in the 404 post, I was having problems finding it;  it's an ABC show and hadn't yet been posted on the network's website  (as of last night, but it's there now) but I did manage to find it on Hulu and will watch it later.

My "problems" finding the show isn't the reason for this post, however;  I was scrolling through my Facebook pages feed earlier today and one of them had a post about the show. (I'd link to it, but it must have been taken down because I cannot find it now) The post about the show just mentioned it and asked if anyone had seen it, but it unleashed a firestorm of comments.  Some were saying they were tired of supernatural shows about witches/demons/vampires, etc., the ubiquitous objections on religious grounds, but quite a few comments were about the insensitivity of the network for airing such a show because of people who had lost children.

(Personally, I'm offended by TV news with the slant given to it by the talking heads reading it, people who may have graduated college but are really just educated idiots blinded by ideology. That's why I don't watch TV news and don't see any reason to bitch about it on message boards or on Facebook)

God bless those who have lost a child;  my own mother always said she couldn't imagine it and one of her biggest fears was outliving one of her children.  I understand how someone could be saddened by such a show, but OTOH, I don't see why someone would subject themselves to such added misery by watching it.  It's hard for me to accurately express how I feel about this without coming across as an insensitive bastard, but I don't understand how ranting about it on Facebook is going to do any good for anyone. I'd think doing that would do nothing but to bring on more grief.

Anyway, here's the trailer in case you're interested. (and don't want to watch the entire episode at the links I posted above)  Watch it, and let me know what you think, if you think it's too insensitive of the network to air such a show.

Disqus 404

Got this "page not found" message on a movie site that uses Disqus for comments. It was an animated image behind the message and was cool looking, but i didn't recognize the movie or TV show from which the scene was taken. If I had to guess, what with the primitive/fur clothing and the winter landscape, that it was something from Game of Thrones (which I don't watch).

I was disappointed the link didn't work, but I didn't feel like crying like the guy in the graphic seems about to do.  Then again, if it IS GoT, then the poor slob is probably about to get executed. 

Anybody have a guess?

(click image for larger view) or you can view the page here.

Note:  After publishing this post, I do as I always do and checked the link to make sure it worked. (this blog doesn't have a 404 page, not that I know of)  I got a Batman animation with the same message, so it must rotate among different scenes.

I was trying to look up the profile of a guy who had been whining that his last post had been deleted by the moderator.  That post, as well as his account, seems to have been terminated...just like the guy in the scene, I bet.  Yep, winter is coming.

Speechless Thought Bubble

Or maybe it's a thoughtless speech bubble, I dunno.

I was looking at headlines on my Bing start page and got this page after clicking a link:

It wasn't a 404 error because I looked down at my modem and saw I was temporarily offline.  (AT&T -spit!-)  Close enough to a 404 page for the blog label, though. 

A Double-Double Feature

Of 404 pages.

Some of the best 404 "Paqe Not Found" pages I've seen are on IMDb.com. They're cleverly done, with quotes - sometimes paraphrased -  from different movies, a random one each time you click on a broken link. Here are some of the funniest ones: (I kept refreshing the page to get the different ones I particularly liked)

ALTO!

From landelli.com.mx, a 404 page that literally stops you in your surfing tracks.

Although, I think stop signs in Mexico say "ALTO" and also in Central and S. America.  The website is in Spanish, but I guess only stupid gringos like me click on broken links, hence the English 404 page.

The Worm Didn't Turn

Cute 404 page on The Food Channel:

I was a little disappointed I wasn't able to find the recipe for Chicken Alfredo Soup right away, but I guess it's like real life; it's better to bite into an apple and find a worm than biting into one and finding half a worm.

Delete the Tweet

I have a Twitter account - the second one I've had.  I rarely tweeted and seldom signed in on the first one and it's about the same for the present one.  The one I have now has a fake name, just in case I want to fire back at someone who tweets something offensive. 

It's been a couple of years (so the exact details are a little hazy) but I followed a re-tweet by someone I was following and the woman - some minor celeb. who happened to be black - had posted a lot of (other) nasty racist comments, but the one that bothered me was her saying "White women prefer black men!"  I usually just ignore things like that, but couldn't help myself and replied "That might be true, but if it is, it might also mean black men prefer white women."  I got a BUNCH of replies to that, so many that I just canceled the account.  Many were death threats or at the least, promising violence.  Since I had used my "real name", I thought it for the best, even though I doubted anyone would actually follow through on them.  If someone showed up at my door, angry over something I had posted on Twitter, then they might have had a rude awakening...or a quick death.

Anyway...I was reading a sports article the other day and a link was left to a specific tweet, but it had been deleted by the time I clicked on it.  Here's the Twitter 404 message:

May the Link Be With You

404 page from GitHub.

Google Error

Not a 404 page, but the link was bad. Not sure why that was, the explanation didn't make much sense; it was at the top of the results on their own search engine, so....

The broken robot reminded me of the one in MSN Groups.  I used to have all of those animations such as the conveyor belt while the file was uploading (and there were some clever animations made from that one) and the shuttered groups graphic.  I lost them all in a hard drive failure of one of my first computers.

Good Movie, Bad Move

From Indiewire, a movie website.

These types of 404 pages are the most annoying to me; why would I want to search for something else if what I wanted to read in the first place wasn't there? 

I'm giving the site a bad review for a bad link!

Thirsty for Videos

I wanted to watch a video hosted on Openload, but instead got this 404 message.

"Videos, videos everywhere, nor any link to click"

With all apologies.

Spooky URL

Funny 404 page from JunkyVideo.

Broken Link Buzzing

While not technically a 404 page as per the label, this TVBuzer page was still cute...even if the results are basically the same.

"Busy as a bee" works when it's trying to fix a broken link, too.

(click for larger view)

HTTP Error 500 Internal server error

Misfire on Angelfire

OK, it's not technically a 404 page, but is instead a 410 error...but I'd argue that they're basically the same thing in as what you're looking for isn't there. This was what I got when going through some old bookmarks that I had saved to make a post about, but darned if I can remember what there was about it I thought would be worthwhile to share with my loyal readers. Oh well, whatever it was, I'm sure it wasn't THAT great or I'd have already written about it.

Click image for larger view.

Strange graphic, huh? The kid's balloon has crashed in a lovely little field, just barely missing a sheep. (or maybe the sheep was thrown clear in the crash?) I wonder why the penguin was along for the ride.  I don't know why the balloon fell to earth, but I suspect it had something to do with the little ET inside the balloon and his wrecked spaceship.

I signed up for an Angelfire space around the same time I did for this Blogger blog, but I went ahead with Blogger.  I kept signing into my Angelfire acct. however, just in case, but not long afterwards I got an email saying many of the features would be available only with a paid subscription.  No thanks. I didn't want to use the free version, so....

404 Flood

Not only is it flooding here in Texas, it's flooding on the Internet with broken links.

Found on Brit+Co.

Took a Tumble in Tumblr

Here's the 404 page from Tumblr;  I wasn't looking for it, so the snark was gratuitous.