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Zamboni Rodeo
Jul 19, 2007

NEVER play "Lady of Spain" AGAIN!






Hey, remember WaffleImages? If you weren't on the forums about 5-10 years back, WaffleImages was a goon-run distributed imagehost that eventually met the fate of most goon-run projects and fell apart. As a result, a ton of threads from that era, from here and elsewhere, are now full of blank spaces that reach for dead URLs. All of those pictures are lost forever.

Or maybe not.

Because we are old, my (goon) fiancé and I were waxing nostalgic about the forums and old goldmined threads, and it occurred to me that for all the dead Waffleimages links and everyone complaining about how those images were lost, it seemed weird that archive.org had never saved any of them. He said "I wonder..." and we started digging. It turns out that if you know how to look for them properly, archive.org has upwards of 720,000 files from WaffleImages.

The problem is that even when you know where to look for them, there's no galleries, just lists of filenames. And most of those are just random strings of letters and numbers. There's no way to know whether they actually have everything that was ever posted. And there's a lot of tedious mundane stuff like pictures of a guy standing next to a McCain/Palin election sign, or the cover of L. Ron Hubbard's "Battlefield Earth", or screencaps from old Let's Plays. And some of the image links go to long-dead hosts. And there's some stuff which is not plain worksafe. An important thing to remember is that standards and attitudes have changed over the years, so some stuff that may have been considered Just Fine back then might now be considered objectionable at best, or downright offensive at worst.

But even so, there's a lot of really cool/weird/WTF poo poo.










The purpose of this thread is to hunt through these links in search of the best of long-forgotten SA history.


TRAVIS WANTS YOU! to join the dig and post your best finds here.

I will reiterate: THERE ARE poo poo-TONS OF IMAGES HERE, MANY OF WHICH COULD BE CONSIDERED OBJECTIONABLE OR OFFENSIVE, SO ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Because this OP is already super-long, instructions for how to access and navigate through the archive are in the next post.

Edit: Added header thanks to Cable Guy.

Zamboni Rodeo fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Dec 21, 2018

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Zamboni Rodeo
Jul 19, 2007

NEVER play "Lady of Spain" AGAIN!




The nuts and bolts: here's how to access the stuff.

Start here:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/waffleimages

This gives you a list of archived servers that include the string "waffleimages" in their name or metadata. Warning, page is Not Work Safe, because the one at the bottom has a thumbnail image of Kirk Johnson's Famous Anus. Each server name has a list of four numbers. The one we care about is the second: how many distinct image files were saved for this server. At the top of the list, the numbers are pretty low, but that's okay because the gold is at the bottom.

Select one of the servers - say, "Carnivore".

That takes us to

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://carnivore.mirror.waffleimages.com/

Once you've loaded the page, add an asterisk to the end of the URL in the browser bar (NOT in archive.org's search bar) like so:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://carnivore.mirror.waffleimages.com/*

If you get a "No URLs found" message, check if there's also a blinking "searching for URLs" message; sometimes it takes a while.

Once the list of URLs has loaded (you can trim it down by filtering for file extension - don't worry about MIME type, apparently that's not always accurate), choose one of the filename links. Instead of taking you directly to the file, the link will take you to a little calendar display that tells you how many times that image was saved. Choose the oldest one (sometimes the newer ones are from after a given URL was domain-squatted).

Zamboni Rodeo fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Dec 20, 2018

Jeza
Feb 13, 2011

The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.
famous anus would be a dope username

Mutant Headcrab
May 14, 2007
I'm gonna guess the majority will be ancient LP stuff, but hey why not?

Clyde Radcliffe
Oct 19, 2014

Heh, looks like this still exists: https://randomwaffle.gbs.fm

It's one of the original WaffleImages hosting servers with a simple page that does exactly what it says it does.

edit:

Parahexavoctal
Oct 10, 2004

I AM NOT BEING PAID TO CORRECT OTHER PEOPLE'S POSTS! DONKEY!!



is it okay to link directly to the wayback machine, or should I rehost it on imgur?

bitterandtwisted
Sep 4, 2006




Galaxander
Aug 12, 2009





Goons love to see soccer players destroyed by videogames.


pretty dece smiley


The internet used to be so cool.


a Japanese man with a moustache? now I've seen everything.

These were all from the inorpo server.

Jeza
Feb 13, 2011

The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.
I went through quite a few but didn't find much worth a lol. Plenty of low-res images of WoW though.

EugeneJ
Feb 5, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
I swear that after WafflleImages died Lowtax moved the images over to a new host so they wouldn't just be dead links

Did the second host die too?

Konar
Dec 14, 2006

Zamboni Rodeo posted:

And there's a lot of tedious mundane stuff like pictures of a guy standing next to a McCain/Palin election sign, or the cover of L. Ron Hubbard's "Battlefield Earth", or screencaps from old Let's Plays.

Christ you were not kidding with that one, every other picture is like megaman battle network or Eve online.

This is the best I found (sort of nsfw):



Parahexavoctal
Oct 10, 2004

I AM NOT BEING PAID TO CORRECT OTHER PEOPLE'S POSTS! DONKEY!!



apparently this is from an old D&D LP thread



McDonaldsCorp will be in touch



this one's filename is "Melon Party"

Ziv Zulander
Mar 24, 2017

ZZ for short


Ground floor of a great thread




e: oh my god



e2: I'm finding a LOT of dollfucker stuff all of a sudden

e3: like seriously a lot a lot

Ziv Zulander fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Dec 20, 2018

Hogge Wild
Aug 21, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Pillbug
:five:

Ziv Zulander
Mar 24, 2017

ZZ for short




Zamboni Rodeo
Jul 19, 2007

NEVER play "Lady of Spain" AGAIN!




Parahexavoctal posted:

is it okay to link directly to the wayback machine, or should I rehost it on imgur?

I'd say re-hosting is the way to go, TBH.

Here's one from what I guess is an old Photoshop Birds With Arms thread:

Ziv Zulander
Mar 24, 2017

ZZ for short


This is a drat treasure trove



There's just SO MUCH good stuff here


Ziv Zulander fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Dec 20, 2018

The Glumslinger
Sep 24, 2008

Coach Nagy, you want me to throw to WHAT side of the field?


Hair Elf

Hey, I remember these pictures, it was from a Bruiser thread where he made a giant loving waterslide in his backyard. Someone posted that poo poo on Digg and that's how I found SA for the first time. Memories :allears:

Ziv Zulander
Mar 24, 2017

ZZ for short




There's seriously just loads of dollfucker pictures on there

e: and oh my god, whose old avatar was this? I want to say slowbeef but I can't remember for certain

Cock Sucker
Nov 14, 2018

beer gas canister
Oct 30, 2007

shmups are da best come play some shmups they're cheap and good and you like them
Plaster Town Cop
drat I totally remember that horse book from the OP

SIDS Vicious
Jan 1, 1970


Someone find the pictures of my naked shaved body I posted to get a pedophile permabanned

Ziv Zulander
Mar 24, 2017

ZZ for short


The Glumslinger posted:

Hey, I remember these pictures, it was from a Bruiser thread where he made a giant loving waterslide in his backyard. Someone posted that poo poo on Digg and that's how I found SA for the first time. Memories :allears:

I finally found one of the things that made me register my original account




Zamboni Rodeo
Jul 19, 2007

NEVER play "Lady of Spain" AGAIN!




Stark Fist posted:

drat I totally remember that horse book from the OP

I keep finding more of the original images as I go. I could probably reassemble the whole book if I put my mind to it, but :effort:

Ziv Zulander
Mar 24, 2017

ZZ for short


Hey, a trans goon from the olden days, that's great!




There's a few more with the same file names, I wond-





Oh. :(

Konar
Dec 14, 2006

Ziv Zulander posted:

e: and oh my god, whose old avatar was this? I want to say slowbeef but I can't remember for certain

Oh wow slowbeef that's a name I haven't thought about in a while. Wonder what the big LPers of yesteryear think about that poo poo today and how they missed out on a luxurious and wealthy life that revolves around playing games for children and depressed adults to watch.

Anyways heres this

Ziv Zulander
Mar 24, 2017

ZZ for short


Konar posted:

Oh wow slowbeef that's a name I haven't thought about in a while. Wonder what the big LPers of yesteryear think about that poo poo today and how they missed out on a luxurious and wealthy life that revolves around playing games for children and depressed adults to watch.

Slowbiff is streaming on twitch these days. He's got a steady job, wife, and a kid

Mooey Cow
Jan 27, 2018

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Pillbug
I wanna find the gif that's clips of a few Japanese girls doing a salute, then Darth Vader with spinning googly eyes also doing a salute. It was from a Star Wars thread 10000 years ago, that I believe also contained this

Canned Panda
Jul 10, 2012




I was going through that random waffle thing and found some fun pics.







Ziv Zulander
Mar 24, 2017

ZZ for short



Zamboni Rodeo
Jul 19, 2007

NEVER play "Lady of Spain" AGAIN!




Is this the same goon that posted his daily carry in like TFR or something?

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"
Here is some good cosplay

snackcakes
May 7, 2005

A joint venture of Matsumura Fishworks and Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern


I want to frame this and hang it in my living room.

Ziv Zulander
Mar 24, 2017

ZZ for short


Fuckin heck, the freelance astronauts are another group that got me into the forums. What happened to them all? Last I remember they had their own website going and then they just sorta drifted apart. Their stream of Resident Evil 4 was the first time I ever watched people play videogames LIVE, ON THE INTERNET!!!!




Also, here's an unironic (?) CAD sculpture

Konar
Dec 14, 2006

Ziv Zulander posted:

Also, here's an unironic (?) CAD sculpture



I remember this thing, I think that was an official doll they were going to sell on the CAD store at some point. We all had a good laugh about how lovely it looked.

What blows my mind is the guy is still drawing this poo poo, I just checked and the most recent one is about him being a dad.

5er
Jun 1, 2000

Qapla' to a true warrior! :patriot:

Zamboni Rodeo posted:

Is this the same goon that posted his daily carry in like TFR or something?



This guy seems like the opposite number of another early internet meme, with the dude wearing the jester hat warning others about 'what they should know' before talking to him.

snackcakes
May 7, 2005

A joint venture of Matsumura Fishworks and Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern

This is...interesting


This is...terrifying


I ran into some deviant art furry porn so I'm going to stop looking now

namlosh
Feb 11, 2014

I name this haircut "The Sad Rhino".
Great thread, hats off to those spelunking archive.org cause I can’t right now

Cock Sucker
Nov 14, 2018
I wrote a script to loop over all the waffleimages entries, pull the earliest capture date, and translate that into a direct link. It's not fast but I'll get a quick app hosted to browse through all of it later if anyone's interested.

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Cool Dad
Jun 15, 2007

It is always Friday night, motherfuckers

not pictured: maybe the worst porn image I have ever seen, watermarked as being from the aptly named vomitinbrazil.com


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