fractaltiger's Journal: Web

Catching up to a webcomic can be an interesting experience. You can read years worth of plotlines in just a few days, and see interesting things like the evolution of the internet from the point of view of older punchlines.

Kevin and Kell, which I briefly picked up years ago and re-encountered in a recent web cross over, is insightful. It's from back in 95 and you can see all kinds of internet things like 28k modems debuting, DSL broadband, the first few popups, references to flamewars gradually replaced by references to spam and indecent email... What was very nostalgic was profuse talk of forums in the comic and my reading about the humble Compuserve origins of Kevin and Kell --also, thanks for commenting on my last comic-related JE! I may not have been on the web back in 95 or more than a couple AOL 'forums,' but as I breezed through the archives and less and less forum jokes were made, I thought about the good things that sort of disappear, if I catch your drift, you elder slashdotters. It's good to feel that services like /. have more or less replaced them, but I don't feel safe lurking through today's newsgroups, which I'm not sure are related to the old style forums mentioned there: The only BBS's I did use were back in 1997 to download 2 or three files like win32's for Windows 3.1 to a 25Mhz laptop. Hmm, I would say I'm paranoid and feel a bit wary of posting this amount of detail here. [Or maybe it's about the upcoming ending of this pre-edited post being here for future coworkers reading slashdot with full knowledge of my online handle ;)]

I wonder what it will become of the web in the future and how many new things we'll see replacing our old conventions.

On another topic, I'm still waiting for the last job interview to florish. There's still a chance that I'll be hired by the end of the week, but it seems increasingly more true that when you push your resume through {a campus department visit|an immediate interview situation} the staff's unpreparedness to hire you or their pressure from HR people "upstairs" gives more false hope than real chances to land a job. Even more strikingly, yesterday's poll about most effective job hunting techniques, grants "networking" and "online job boards" the highest nonjoke ratings here, (as of 12pm 2/10/04... if I check for the current values I may split into yet another JE-lengtening topic --let's spare us of that) but I'm still cautious of employment networking on tech support (only relatives seem to be my real supporters) and have little trust in online boards.

Ha! Wippersnapper!

[MonTemplar]

I got my first modem (1200/75!) back in 1989, to connect to my BBC Micro. Mainly so I could sign up to CIX [cix.co.uk] (Compulink Information eXchange), an online conferencing system based in London, and run off the same code that powered BIX, the late online service of the late BYTE Magazine. CIX was featured at the time in the UK version of Computer Shopper, which was what prompted me to get online.

(Cost a small fortune in phone charges at the time, mind you, and I was lucky not to have the modem taken off me by my

Thanks

[fractaltiger]

Wow, what an interesting description. In spite of my good knowledge of setups, I'm not directly acquainted with most of the things you mention, and at the same time, it sounds melancholic and familiar. I could get really offtopic if I branch off into how I feel about old 80's shows that few if any people have stored for posterity.

My picture of the internet is rather modern but not too much --I consciously counted the american TV ads as they started using URL's --down to the unfriendly "http://www." part th

Re:Thanks

[MonTemplar]

I was using IE 1 (from the Plus Pack for Windows 95) alongside Netscape 1.2, then decided to try out the beta of IE 2. I've been using IE almost exclusively ever since.

-MT.

Nice

[fractaltiger]

My systems tend to have cluttered copies of versions I no longer use. I have NS 2 on the mac thanks to some other people like me *cough* pack rats *cough*

I sure wish I could test IE 1 just for kicks. It will be slightly like like guarding a mint condition comic that has and will never be "opened," in reality. My IE 2 could reload my code as I was editing it, and that was nifty. I still have that on a laptop.

Gotta go to bed! By the way, sometimes I listen in on the British market as Bloomberg radio switche

Re:Nice

[MonTemplar]

IE 1.0? Step this way! [evolt.org] :-)

-MT.