The Lost Art of Web Surfing
You could stumble into strange directories, find hand-coded tools built by a single person, and lose hours reading hyper-specific local guides. Today, discovery is mostly algorithmic. Feeds push what is popular, not what is peculiar.
Tricks & Trinkets exists to reverse that trend. We treat the web as an archive worth digging through, surfacing resources that still work and oddities that deserve preservation. Finding these hidden corners requires patience, but the payoff is a more interesting digital life.
Explore the Stacks
Categorizing the internet is a fool's errand. Links rot. Domains expire. But structuring the chaos makes it navigable. We divide our findings into six distinct areas of focus.
Newsletter Archive
A structured home for the legacy publication, including issue-based editorial themes and recurring discoveries.
Web Finds & Curiosities
Eclectic discoveries from across the web, featuring unusual sites, clever resources, and internet oddities.
Digital Tools & Productivity
Coverage of useful software, reading aids, keyboard utilities, and practical digital resources.
Multimedia & Web Tech
Guides and retrospectives on web-era media formats, browser experiences, and interactive internet technology.
Places & Local Culture
Web discoveries tied to cities, regions, travel curiosities, and place-based online resources.
Creative & Learning Resources
Writing, art, reference, education, and skill-building resources for curious learners.
Manual Curation in an Automated Era
Search engines prioritize recency and optimization. Manual curation prioritizes utility and character. We choose the latter.
Our small team of researchers spends hours clicking through dead links and Wayback Machine snapshots to verify what remains functional. Cross-checking confirmed that many late-90s HTML tools still outperform modern bloated software. We test these utilities on contemporary operating systems to ensure they still serve a practical purpose today.
Quick caveat
While our methodology favors lightweight, older utilities, modern security standards require careful vetting before downloading executable files from archived domains.
Archival Support
Supported by a multi-year grant from digital preservation advocates active since 2021, ensuring our archive remains accessible without paywalls.
The Artifacts We Keep
Preservation requires more than just saving a file. It requires context.
It is late Tuesday evening. The glow of a CRT monitor illuminates a cluttered desk. A mechanical keyboard clacks as a researcher navigates a text-only bulletin board system from 1996, still maintained by a single sysadmin in Ohio. The screen shows a blinking cursor next to a prompt asking for a command. This is where the real internet still lives—quiet, text-heavy, and waiting for someone curious enough to log in.
Latest Dispatches & Finds
Best Ways to Preserve Numbered Newsletter Issues Online
Why Odd Web Curiosities Still Matter
San Francisco on the Early Web: Local Culture, Guides, and Oddities
How to Choose Learning Resources from a Crowded Web
Classic Web Media Formats Worth Understanding
What Made a Website Worth Sharing in the Early Web Era
Flash Websites: What They Did Well and Why They Disappeared
5+Years Exploring
98%Reader Approval
315+Archived Issues