early internet memories


Dad got the internet in 95 or 96


I was more excited about the prospect of getting a DVD drive; Dad's friend was building the computer and wouldn't put one in because he wasn't convinced the technology would take off. I was baffled by this but maybe he'd been burned by betamax


We had a 28.8 modem, fortunately we had a separate phoneline in dad's study. Mum was always on the phone so that would've been a problem. Transfer speeds of 2k a second didn't bother me. Unless I was surreptitiously loading porn jpegs which as a teenager that was mostly what I did. A line of pixels at a time..so nostalgic!


I also spent a lot of time deleting internet history and temporary files


My little brother and I used to argue a lot. We had to take it in turns. He always wanted to play Yahoo games. I did play hearts a lot. I looked through the Yahoo directory loads and asked jeeves things.


When I went to uni a couple of years later there was a super fast network in halls of residence. Still, I think it took someone a whole day to download the phantom menace. I downloaded Simpsons and south park episodes in real media format. It never occurred to me to download mp3s. I used audiogalaxy and soulseek but not til a couple years later. Chatted a lot on ICQ, even with friends just down the hallway.


I don't remember using email til I got to uni. Maybe I didn't. I had a look and I've lost emails before 2001 (must've been the millennium bug!) I used to get so many more emails from friends!


I just looked and I can't believe realplayer is still going.



/gemlog/