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Powerful content. At the risk of being pedantic, I think the site would be a better service to its content by using a standard vertical scroll layout. I viewed many of the photos but found it too easy to stop because of the difficulty in side scrolling
I would have to second this, I actually didn't know it was horizontal scrolling. Great stuff though, like the aesthetics!
whats wrong with horizontal scroll? If a site has both horizontal and vertical scroll, the site looks messy! Horizontal scroll is also good to scroll pictures.
You cannot use a scroll wheel, which is annoying enough.
I know you can use Ctrl+Scroll with a touchpad but does it not work with a normal mousewheel?
I held down shift and used my scroll wheel.
I totally missed it. If it weren't for your I wouldn't even see it. There's only a "scroll right >" in a very light grey and small font.

Including a bigger arrow icon after the right photo would help.

Agreed, great content being hidden by poor usability.
Agreed. Great site, but just noticed that when one of the pics is missing, it tries to fit another pic on the same screen and looks pretty nasty. Reloaded page and can't reproduce unfortunately, but it was part of: http://beforeidieiwantto.org/india_gujarat.html

The inability to scroll left/right kills it. Also, some of the text from the top bleeds between the pictures at 1366x768.

I think the content is better suited to a horizontal layout because of its shape.

You can argue against the usability of it if you wish, but I think Javascript hijacking the scroll wheel and converting scrolling vertically to scrolling horizontally would be really useful in this case.

A nice hover scroll effect (not sure if that is the correct term) like browsing netflix would be great.
I can't even read half of these, peoples handwriting is so terrible. One there says "Before I die I want to raise a child" but it took be a full minute to not read it as "I want to ride a child"
Why the downvotes?
Because reading criticism of a group of non-native-English speakers' handwriting is a waste of life.
The ones not written in English are clearly not what I'm referring to.

The ones written in English have terrible hand writing by people who clearly speak English as a first language. Pretty much all of the non-native English speaking people are easy to read.

Apologies for wording that in a a way that allowed you to avoid the point.

It's because criticising handwriting is a waste of life.

Before he dies he wants to run nginx and varnish caching so that his site will survive the front page of HN.
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The disparity between what I can assume to be the local Delhi populace and the backpackers/travellers is huge.

The Indian kids just want to study, while the adults want to own houses/shops. The travellers on the other hand, have more abstract goals.

Fascinating. And also sad upon further thought

It's a pretty good example of Maslow's hierarchy of needs - the travellers are firmly at the self actualisation stage whereby they do not need to focus on fulfilling lower needs.
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I made a site with a similar concept but instead of "Before I die", Its "Someday I Want". The link is http://www.somedayiwant.com
"Service Temporarily Unavailable"

I hope the website could do what it wanted to before this.

Before I die I want to live until I'm at least 100 years old.
> Before I Die I want To... Service Temporarily Unavailable.

That made me laugh :P

Poignant: "... I want to study."

Amusing: "... I want a government job."

Poetic: "Antes de Morir, Yo quiero Dormir."
Before I die I want to see two legged robot running gracefully a rocky mountain path.
I think you have a good chance of doing that unless you're over 70 :)
I almost cringed when I saw the juxtaposition of India and New York; I thought this project, like others I have seen, was discrediting the life goals of Americans to trivialize so-called First World problems.

But that was far from the truth. It presented the stories of people in New York, India and in hospices with equal care and respect. I love the colors and the look of old film, too.

Before I die I want to go to space.
I think I noticed a lot more kids from Delhi as opposed to barely any kids from NYC. Perhaps that affects the overall picture.