Internet nostalgia

When Napster came out, I had this whole contraption set up where I had a cord coming out of the headphone jack on my work computer's keyboard, going into an adaptor and going into my mic input on my Sony portable jambox. With this, I would tape songs off of the Internet It was the only way I could think of to get stuff like the Foo Fighters' version of "Baker Street" or the 12" version of "The Glamorous Life" back to the house.

Later, I figured out how to save them to my office's network drive. I was lucky because my employer had just got a CD burner for one of the studios. We were only supposed to use it to burn CDs for clients, but I would sneak in there after hours to burn the downloads onto a CD in real time. Most of my tracks from that era has about a 1-2 sec. lead time because I'd hit record and then stretch over to the computer to hit the space bar to play.

My dad downloaded and taped a bunch of Harry Potter audio books for his car in that manner as recently as last year.

so awesome

Original video on this thread isn't loading for me, keeps stalling and buffering, just like 1995.

Not v. nostalgic for that time, tbh. You could see how it would eventually be immense in theory, but the practice was dial-up, empty chatrooms with people going "hi!" and "HI!! :-)" to each other and Netscape mail choking on Sinister.

Course now we're here and it's shonky 3G, stupid hashtags and iPhone Mail choking on Amazon receipts.

http://www.phreedom.org/cyberpunk-style-guide/

http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo.com/

http://web.archive.org/web/19990117032727/http://www.google.com/

http://web.archive.org/web/19961224025757/http://pitchfork.com/

anybody remember the company that would pay you to surf the web, i.e. you would install their program and watch their ads while surfing and they'd send you a check?

also, FTPs

LOLLLLL @ pitchfork.com

i worked dial-up Internet tech support in 99/00 and got to the point I could troubleshoot connection problems by listening to the modem noise:

"Hold the phone up to the modem"
"skrrrrrrrrch-bing-bong-bing-bong-bing-bong-bing-bong-xxxzsxzxszzzzzzsssxxx"
"OK, go into My Computer / Control Panel...."

by the way, I am very pleased to note that not only have animated gifs lived on in web 2.0, they are undergoing a renaissance of sorts in fact

a world without gifs is a deeply impoverished world

massively impressed by herb albert's modem listening diagnostic skills!

yeah, that's hero-level

Haha I used to do modem-noise diagnostics too. *embarassed*. Also had endless strings of DNS addresses memorised. Ah, helpdesk days. I do not miss you and your PEBKACs.

Haha yes, I totally got to bust out PEBKAC at a wedding luncheon, and no one had ever heard it. (My mom-in-law was trying to claim she could not open an MP3 because her husband's computer "doesn't have enough RAM," which...was...not true. It turns out she'd never tried to open it.)

With her it's mostly just PE
in general
in ever part of life
a problem exists.

ANd, that 'quip' was my most successful moment in Sept. 2010. It was a great month!

remember when browsers supported blinking text? now u gotta do that shit in javascript

wizard jon fucking loves the blinky text

xxxpost yeah, I was hardcore. advanced technical knowledge soon rendered totally worthless. had a massive celebration when I quit that job and moved on to Web Dev

Bloody marquee tag...

Personal home pages with ENORMOUS 3" font!

Every webpage with grey background!

playing Everquest and dinner's on the table. "MOM! i can't just pause it! you don't understand. there are people DEPENDING on me!"

i'm sure that happens all the time even now, but EVERQUEST!

Bondage and leather people outnumbering norms 5 to 1.

Old Man Murray.

Before MP3s took off, amassing MIDIs of popular songs.

Once MP3s took off, Audiogalaxy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ate_my_balls

http://flamesgif.com/archive/ate_my_balls/img/ba01.jpg

Ate my balls was an early example of an Internet meme. In the late 1990s, some web pages were created to depict a particular celebrity or fictional character's relish for eating testicles. Often, the site would consist of a humorous story or comic featuring edited photos about the titular individual eating testicles. The photo editing was often crude, a reflection of the state of software at the time.

A compendious repository of old internet memes.

Oh god frog in a blender I remember that one from my days on nightshift on an ISP helpdesk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvz8cTuleG0

Related:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyKmoPhAebw

One of the student workers I know regarding this:

http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm

"Good god. I didn't know websites were this ugly in 1996."

Oh, poor innocent.

That looks significantly nicer than the ANSI art from my BBS.

Yeah I was expecting a disaster and I'm all "Well, it's not very dynamic but my god there was a lot worse then."

Another friend: "at least it doesn't have FRAMES!!!"

did a view source on that site. here's the first couple lines:

<html> 

<!-- Copyright 1996 Warner Bros. Online --> 

<!-- Badda Bing, Badda Boom --> 

later:

<!--**************Ads - Don't Touch!*************************************--> 

yay html comments

there ARE frames on most of the subpages!

also

Cool links and hijinx!

Click above to find out more about our sponsors and the various hip sites that make WB Online the jammin' place that it is.

I am willing to bet whoever wrote that still thinks that's of-the-moment slang.

Clicking on "Warner Bros. Studio Store" reveals, via frames, a little Internet before-and-after.

why tf is that site still online??

No Spacejam news at the moment!

http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/cmp/bball/img/n-games.gif

Hello my future girlfriend; this is what I sound like

Hanson Sucks!
http://lord.xopl.com/ulpage3a/band.gif

http://lord.xopl.com/ulpage3a/no!!!.gif

napster...the very first thing i downloaded over my 56k was fucking Deon Estus - Heaven Help Me. 45 minutes later i was on my way to my first ever mix cd with a friends burner that took approximately 30 minutes to burn a 10-12 song cd.