I was clearing out some space downstairs. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a bit of a pack rat. I was in the ‘machine room’ – the space that’s set aside for servers, media, office supplies and so on. Officially I was there to do some work on a server, work that couldn’t be done remotely, involving periods of busy interrupted by periods of not busy. There was nothing better than fill those not busy periods with some cleanup.
I couldn’t believe some of the stuff that I was finding. Some materials were from machines that haven’t been around in any form for decades! That’s about twenty minutes less than forever, in terms of technology. Much went into the shredder, and much more went into the recycling!
But there were some things that might make you smile if you’re a dinosaur like me. Or maybe they’re interesting to a historian. I haven’t got the foggiest, but they seemed too good to throw away. And honestly, these are just the tip of the iceberg; sometimes I feel like I live in a museum.
First up is a third edition copy of Getting the Most Out of the Internet, which was what Earthlink handed out to new subscribers. The think that caught my eye when I saw it was that it was authored by Sky Dayton himself.
Fascinating. But the next one is even better. There was a printed newsletter called Inside the Internet. I’m not sure when they started and stopped publishing the self-proclaimed ‘rocket science for the rest of us’. Nobody does things like this anymore, it’s far easier to simply publish on the Web. But this is January 1995 we’re talking about, and things were way different back then.
Notice the holes for storing issues in your binder – they’re stock, I didn’t put them there! There are articles about Gopher and Veronica. And a bit about TIA – remember that beast? With it you could run SLIP over your shell account, enabling you to run things like a graphical browser. I think I used it back around 1993 or so to run the some of the first non-console Internet apps seen within sacred walls of D&B, where I worked at the time. It goes without saying that this long predated D&B’s online presence, which was initally created by my friend Tom Thornbury. In fact, there wasn’t much commercial presence on the Internet back in those days at all, believe it or not! Finally, did you notice the price? $5.95 for a few pages? Hardly buys much more than a gallon of gas these days.
I hoped you liked that little trip down memory lane. Did you smile?
Shell account? Yeah — try to find an ISP that gives you one of those anymore!
Ah, yes — Capt. Thornbury’s webmaster page: “Ahoy, Matey!” (and they made him do that). E-g-a-d-!
Shell accounts can still be had! There are hoops to jump through, usually, and additional fees, sometimes. They’re really not of much use these days – unless you have some specific needs, of course.
Ha! Yes, I remember Tom’s picture there with the eyepatch, plain as day. Y’know, that patch wasn’t actually in the picture; it was drawn in after the fact specifically for that use.