Duncan wrote:
I wondered about the "stupid" poster, myself. I don't quite have the
sentimental value some seem to for him, but use in an error page and the
like seems at least logical -- connected to something.
However, I tried the above link and to my great disappointment, saw no
Larry. Just a more or less normal 404 page. I surf with images off by
default, so I thought that was it and turned them on, to no avail.
Ahh... Turned off my filters that enforce light on dark, and tried again.
There he is! Maybe he showed up the first time, but as I had enforced a
dark background (and light text), I couldn't see him.
Well, I doubt we can do anything about that. Turn off your filters :P
Suggestion: Both he and the UFO guy have some value in Gentoo history,
agreed. It's not always obvious to a new user what that might be,
however. Whenever they are used, it might be a good idea to have them
link to a history page explaining a bit about them, what they mean to
Gentoo, how they became a part of Gentoo, etc. That would be a very good
place IMO to put the traditional Larry with text and the like. As it is,
the error page with just the Larry icon again leaves one with the question
of just what it has to do with anything. Also, maybe a caption on the
page. Larry is confused! Or something similar. If there's such a
caption now, I missed it too.
Is there really a story behind it that can be explained? If so, I'd be
curious too, but I doubt there's a "real" story. Larry and the UFO guy
just came up at some time, people got used to them and even liked them.
Trying to explain why we have a cow's face on a 404 page or trying to
explain why we like Larry is like trying to explain a love story: You
just can't without everybody looking strange at you afterwards.
Especially the UFO guy somehow lives from the mythos around it,
explaining it would destroy it, at least that's my feeling.
I'd certainly like the 'Larry is confused!' though, makes error pages a
lot more personal.
--
Kind Regards,
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Developer
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
