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by cfjedimaster 1621 days ago
I built another version of this about 30ish years ago, you can see it now at www.deathclock.com. I sold the site about 15 years ago (helped pay for an adoption). It was my first "successful" website, getting near 5 million views per day. It was also a useful programming exercise (learned the painful way that one ColdFusion function wouldn't support large numbers and others would, so had to do so wrangling to get the final number right).

The best part was the emails I'd get. Wow.

8 comments

This is amazing.

This is going to sound stupid but your website is one of my first memories I have of the internet. I was shown it by a school friend (we were about ~8 years old) and I remember being scared about the result, none of could read English well so pretty sure we filled out nonsense for the weight input :)

I have the almost exact same story as parent. Was around 10 years myself and remember using your website and being really scared of what the outcome would be
> The best part was the emails I'd get. Wow.

I've never been more curious. What sorts?

I remember that site and it was actually what I was expecting to see when I clicked on the OP! I feel like the version I remember stumbling across had smoking but no BMI but I can't corroborate it on archive.org

It hasn't changed much in 20 years, eh. https://web.archive.org/web/20000520091843/http://www.deathc... Really cool to see it's still up.

Smoking and BMI and other stuff came after I sold it. I used to have hardware models too - I forget who I partnered with. It never did earn any real $$.
I'm sure you're aware, but there's an episode of the great show The IT Crowd whose plot revolves around your website
Hey! I used that website when i was very young and surfing away my curiosities on the limited web.Thanks for that, i never thought i'd see the guy who made it.Also i believe it's one of the first sources (if not the first) where i learned what BMI was[if the version back then had it, which i think it did].
I thought I remembered seeing this before. Ah, ColdFusion, those were the days. What version?
> The best part was the emails I'd get. Wow.

What were the emails like?

What was so great about the emails? Fill us in!