ArticlesIf you are under 30 or are not nerdy enough to know what a BBS was, then… Whadidiz homie! It’s getting wack here. Let’s bail and get bent somewhere bumpin’, where a playa can chillax. See you on myspace. Trill.
Good, now that they have gone, I can talk to the people are old enough and geeky enough to remember the wiggly line of history that connects modems-and-bulletin-boards to email-and-newsgroups to ftp-sites-and-Archie to home-pages-and-Google to blogs-and-podcasts.
Today is the 20th anniversary of my initial registration to the SAC-64 BBS (Telephone number: 382 4631, available 24 hours). It is the 20th anniversary of my first email (or “message” as it was known then.)
Twenty years of being online – I don’t know which feeling is stronger: pride, embarrassment or old age.
Comment by Alastair on April 28, 2006
I have to ask why you remember such intimate details from such a long time ago!?
Peace out.
Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis on April 29, 2006
Dude, you’re a fossil!
Comment by Julian on April 29, 2006
Alastair,
Short answer: I’m a geek.
Longer answer: Google reminded me about the phone number. I had originally recorded the date because I had purchased a year’s membership from some random person I only knew by a phone number, and I wanted to keep some records. Later I realised it was significant event.
Comment by Julian on April 29, 2006
Thinks to self: Drats! How did Aristotle get through my impenetrable youth filter?
Hmmmm… Perhaps by “fossil” he meant that I am a rare and valuable find, that can shed a lot of light on the mysteries of life, and am a thorn in the side of some religious fanatics?
Yeah, that must be what he meant…
Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis on April 30, 2006
Yeah – yeah that’s what I meant.
Joshing aside, based on your dating yourself with this post, I’m estimating that you to be roughly 5–10 years older than me.
Comment by Chris on April 30, 2006
I thought it was a play on this kind of fossil.
Word.
Comment by Julian on May 2, 2006
Aristotle,
That’s consistent with my estimate of your age. I’m 35. I almost admit as much on the About page. The only reason I didn’t was that I didn’t want to have to keep it up to date.
Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis on May 3, 2006
Julian:
You estimated correctly then: I’m 29.
Chris:
Sadly, it was not. I even know that acronym, but only from seeing it a few times. In the glory days of 2400 baud modems and BBSs, telephony was outrageously expensive in Germany and I was a penniless (early-)teenager, so I only got to read about it in the pricey computer mags I bought. Connecting computers to via telephony only became affordable around the time the Internet was starting to take the world by storm. My first modem connection was in the summer of 1997.
Comment by Cassie on May 13, 2006
Wow… I’m only just through. It’s like there was like some kind of like force field that was like stopping me from like like doin stuff n things.
Youse guys are really old.
My earliest computer memory (which could be a bit sketchy) is copying out code for… who knows?… on an Amstrad?? when I was in about kindergarten or preschool, and then modifying various bits to see what would happen. And playing pacman and other games (there might have been some mummy one) from floppy disks (which if I remember correctly were inserted into a drive in the keyboard?). Somehow this memory is also tied in with feeding my sister a bottle of milk.
Comment by Julian on May 13, 2006
2400 baud? Floppy disks? Milk? Luxury!
Oops, I am breaking a promise to myself. Please ignore.
Comment by configurator on January 21, 2009
I know this is quite a late reply but it is important to note:
I am 22, yet I do know (and did use) BBS’s. So that “under 30” is a large misestimate.
Comment by Julian on January 22, 2009
Configurator: Born around 1986, and yet used a BBS? I find that really weird! Directly connected via a modem, or over TCP?
I suspect your situation is a bit of an outlier…