The Keys to the Internet Kingdom

While driving around tonight it occurred to me that if, for example (and this is only an example, as I do not use buses), I were to be run over by a bus unexpectedly, no one would know how to access all that Daria stuff in the WayBack Machine. So here's a crash course in how to do it. You're getting the keys to the kingdom. Take them and party hard.

There are basically three major ways to dump it all out, and they are listed below. Each is based on a specific URL that MTV used over the years for the Daria site. Each URL is then formatted in such a way as to make the WayBack Machine empty its pockets of everything it has that MTV ever produced and the WayBack Machine was able to capture. Capture does not appear to have been perfect; I'd guess that about 90% of everything put online was saved somewhere. (Note: This method works with almost any website not blocked by robots or whatever.)

To my surprise, some things were saved you wouldn't have expected, such as audio (WAV) files, which you can right-click on and save to your hard drive right from the webpages where they were featured. Some are corrupted, but some work. I even saved screensavers, wallpaper, and more with varying degrees of success. That "MUD" game came through perfectly. Try to save everything, that's the key. You can sort it all out later.

• http://web.archive.org/web/*sr_1nr_10/http://www.mtv.com/mtv/tubescan/animation/daria/* (this was the original URL for the first Daria sites, but later stuff was put here, too: 4,660 pages worth)
  
• http://web.archive.org/web/*sr_1nr_10/http://daria.mtv.com/* (produces only two links, but each link connects to about 136 capture dates, so try them all)
• http://web.archive.org/web/*sr_1nr_10/http://www.mtv.com/onair/daria/* (produces 2,034 more pages of stuff, so good luck)

MAKE SURE THE ASTERISK IS AT THE END OF EVERY URL, FOLLOWING A SLASH. For some reason, the asterisk gets clipped off at times, I don't know why, but you need the asterisk following a slash. It's like a wild-card search.

Now, here's how to troubleshoot. Some of the pages that come up, particularly from late 2000 and 2001 onward, somehow connect to the actual MTV site operating now (probably through ads), which causes an error and results in the desired webpage appearing for .25 seconds before an MTV "oops" screen appears and replaces it. To defeat this, you have to keep a finger hovering over the ESCAPE key to smack it once the desired screen appears, BEFORE the error screen appears. You can do this over and over again (it gets to be a game of its own), testing your reflexes against the Internetz. Once you get the screen, it might not have loaded everything but you can run your cursor over the links and find out what they are (or were). Copy the link location, then put that into the WayBack Machine to see if the specific image or object was saved. It gets taxing but if you are really into it, you can blow hours and hours digging through stuff. I sure can.

You might be tempted, as was I, to reconstruct some webpages using Paint, Irfanview, etc. Go for it. It can be a pain, particularly if the colors go wrong (not sure why), but the results are often quite interesting. I learned a lot about Jane and her weirdo family by going through her Lane-Bay (e-Bay) website, which ran over many pages. I can't believe Jane ever slept, she did just about everything.

Also, you have to be tricky with the WayBack Machine itself. Don't be afraid to mess with the URL. For instance, I could not get anything out of a URL that read:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010611070810/www.mtv.com/sendme.cgi

However, once I cut off the "sendme.cgi" at the end, the WayBack Machine gave me the MTV front page from 06/11/2001 (you learn to read the capture dates quickly), and I could click through to the Daria site in moments. You might try this and just get the MTV site first, looking for the links to the Daria section along the way. You might even recover more stuff this way.

From about 2001 onward, the MTV Daria site took on the appearance it has now, with assorted changes, so there's not much new but you can see how it evolved over time as stuff was added to it. The Daria sites before 2001 are far more interesting and colorful. My favorite was the 2000 "space" site.

Oh, and don't forget to right-click on a webpage you get and click "View Page Source." You can quickly discover by looking at the actual code for the page what else was supposed to be on there. You can take a completely featureless page and discover all sorts of hidden stuff. I managed to get everything off the missing flipbooks except the pictures, and it turned out I didn't need the pictures at all. The valuable stuff was in the text. I got every single flipbook that way. Do you know that the bulldog Daria almost ran over in "Through a Lens Darkly" actually has a name, and it is NOT J.B.? (I prefer J.B., but it's an AU story anyway so screw it.) I also got a picture of Brittany's car, which I don't recall ever seeing before. It's red, of course. And Quinn's poetry is hysterical; I laughed and laughed. A lot of old rumors about Lawndale High and Mystic Spiral were proven true. And some of the wallpaper is actually pretty cool.

I will start dumping some of this stuff here. You want to get there first, be my guest. This one's for everyone. Dig in.

P.S. Just found out some other URLs that might work. Try these. Some have asterisks, some don't.

• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/www.daria.mtv.com/
• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/daria.mtv.com/
• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/http://daria.mtv.com/*
• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/daria.mtv.com/robots.txt
• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/http://www.mtv.com/
• http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/http://www.mtv.com/*

The last one produced over 64,000 pages of stuff, simply anything that ever appeared on MTV's website. Probably has some Beavis and Butt-head stuff, too.

Enjoy!