8" floppy disks on sun (unix) ftw tbh
― I certainly wouldn't have, but hey. (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:31 (twelve years ago) link
ppfft, drives, we wished for a computer with 'drives'
the disappointment of finally getting hands on a C64 disk drive and discovering it was like as slow as tape.
― stet, Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:34 (twelve years ago) link
xp xenix, not unix
― I certainly wouldn't have, but hey. (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:34 (twelve years ago) link
our first computer worked on an eastern european knockoff called DONTS
― (govtname)mac (darraghmac), Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:36 (twelve years ago) link
Bowie had one of the most exhaustive fansites I'd seen c. 1995, can't remember the name though...
― Dancin with Mr. D__ (Ówen P.), Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:38 (twelve years ago) link
SunOS was the first thing i got on to the internet with. I used read usenet with rn and chat with irc. simultaneously awesome and awful. xp
― stet, Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:39 (twelve years ago) link
I remember spending an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with a cool AIM name. for some reason I got 'tigreazul' and stuck with it until about '95. my friend had 'iraq' and sold it for $30.
― rocognise gnome (remy bean), Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:41 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah my initial internettign was on the RMIT local usenet forums, and using PINE for mail and NN for usenet I think.
― thanks to denial, I'm immortal! (Trayce), Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:41 (twelve years ago) link
at some point in my childhood my real father gave me flight simulator for christmas, but we didn't have a monitor capable of running it. so i read the instruction manual religiously for several months until my stepfather relented and bought a color monitor.
i still remember curiously much about the geography of the cities it featured: chicago, seattle, sf/oak, la, ny/bos.
rip meigs field
― mookieproof, Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:42 (twelve years ago) link
so i read the instruction manual religiously for several months
― stet, Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:58 (twelve years ago) link
Nn was like this wonder of software when I finally got it.
― stet, Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:59 (twelve years ago) link
^
― (govtname)mac (darraghmac), Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:59 (twelve years ago) link
aww i love you too, ilx system
― mookieproof, Thursday, 19 January 2012 01:01 (twelve years ago) link
Wait did I use NN or TIN? I cant even remember :(
I do know my .plan file said something like "I wouldnt know a cunning .plan if it jumped up on a table singing "cunning .plans are here again"
― thanks to denial, I'm immortal! (Trayce), Thursday, 19 January 2012 01:01 (twelve years ago) link
BowieNet, wasn't it?
Does bjork.com still have /unity/? Great URL.
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Thursday, 19 January 2012 01:40 (twelve years ago) link
Well jeez! I found it! 1996.
http://phil.cts.com/bowielps.html
Ha, it seems so small now. "Phil" stands up for Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups and I'm glad he did
― Dancin with Mr. D__ (Ówen P.), Thursday, 19 January 2012 02:59 (twelve years ago) link
Designed for viewing with Netscape Navigator 3.0
<3 <3 <3
― roborally.rar (Lamp), Thursday, 19 January 2012 03:02 (twelve years ago) link
I found it by searching "smashing atoms in the basement". Phil's Aladdin Sane write-up begins: One of Bowie's all-time best. Startled me when I first heard it, didn't know what to think. Wow, every track, no fat, except for the sound of that fat guitar smashing atoms in the basement.
― Dancin with Mr. D__ (Ówen P.), Thursday, 19 January 2012 03:05 (twelve years ago) link
My middle school friend's AOL SN was Basketball. That's like having a state-issued license plate that's only 3 characters long
― rubber belly hand necker (CaptainLorax), Thursday, 19 January 2012 05:37 (twelve years ago) link
http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/6073/screamtracker321.png
Yeah! Screamtracker. I made hundreds of tunes on its big brother, Impulse Tracker.
― I want your nose, your shoes and your unicycle (dog latin), Thursday, 19 January 2012 10:18 (twelve years ago) link
LOL I think R0bot still uses impulse tracker on occasion!
― thanks to denial, I'm immortal! (Trayce), Thursday, 19 January 2012 10:48 (twelve years ago) link
Anyone still using IT (or who just misses it a lot) might like to take a look at Schism Tracker:http://schismtracker.orgwhich is a free open source updated remake which is still being supported and has some new features (but still pretty much the same interface and most of the old key combos still work)
it will write your song to disk as a .wav, load .mp3 files as samples, has better midi and filters, and probably other stuff I don't know about
I feel like I can't really get on with modern music software because it's not enough like IT, but then I go back to Schism and realise I can't get on with IT any more because it's not enough like the things I've used in the 10 years since
― Schleimpilz im Labyrinth (a passing spacecadet), Thursday, 19 January 2012 11:22 (twelve years ago) link
Trapped between the future and the past...
― Also unknown as Zora (Surfing At Work), Thursday, 19 January 2012 11:44 (twelve years ago) link
Have you used/tried Buzz, spacecadet? Thats what r0bot (sorry, should explain: my ex bf; doglatin knows him, does excellent electro-prog music) uses and he seems to love it, it has accuracy IT doesnt, the only catch is live guitar parts have to be added in, from what I gather?)
― thanks to denial, I'm immortal! (Trayce), Thursday, 19 January 2012 11:50 (twelve years ago) link
This - absolutely. I was a master at using IT back in the day - could make it do all sorts of things it wasn't really designed to do, but then I got a new PC that wouldn't run it so I eventually migrated to Reason which just isn't the same. Once Schism Tracker came out, I couldn't remember anything about shortkey cuts, FX codes, anything.
― I want your nose, your shoes and your unicycle (dog latin), Thursday, 19 January 2012 11:57 (twelve years ago) link
tried Buzz too, but it seemed like a foreign country
Yeah, Buzz is the main thing I've used since IT. It's a lot of fun to play with but I've made hundreds of 10- to 45-second loops and pretty much no complete songs in a decade of using it. (Well, not really a decade as I more or less gave up a few years ago.)
I always felt this was because it has so many shiny FX sliders to play with while playing your patterns on loop that I get distracted from the actual business of adding new patterns, whereas IT doesn't really afford you that luxury. It's my fault and not the software's that I fall for it, of course...
― Schleimpilz im Labyrinth (a passing spacecadet), Thursday, 19 January 2012 12:12 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah, same with Reason - I get a good thing going and suddenly it all goes wrong, like I add an fx or unplug something or try to get too clever with it, and then I'm just left with a messy 1 minute snippet with no beginning middle and end. The great thing about IT is you could copy and paste sections and parts really really really quickly using simple shortkey cuts. IT was such a simple program.
― I want your nose, your shoes and your unicycle (dog latin), Thursday, 19 January 2012 12:27 (twelve years ago) link
i had a sorta proto-blog in 1999 called Losers Anonymous. i updated it everyday (by adding and subtracting tables and content in index.html) with tales of high school woe. i was the most generic Sad Teenager in the world and i let it show. after a while i started to add people i knew to Losers Anonymous. i would add pages for them, put up a picture of them, give them space to talk about their lives, basically blog stuff. they were also Sad Teenagers. somehow, all of this started to get popular and i noticed that when i walked into the computer room at my high school library there would often be people visiting my website.
then Columbine happened. the next day, i was called into the counselor's office and told that my website was shut down (a friend of mine provided the hosting and they called his mom and she took it down the whole domain). they also called the parents of all of my friends with profiles and told them that they were part of a collective that was potentially dangerous and suicidal. the counselor also mentioned that she thought i was suicidal and possibly homicidal as well.
the 90s!
― Z S, Thursday, 19 January 2012 14:45 (twelve years ago) link
ha ha, that's awesome. "What you say, this teenager is sad? That must mean he's gonna shoot the place up!"
― get ready for the banter (NotEnough), Thursday, 19 January 2012 14:47 (twelve years ago) link
i also played a lot of videogames at the time. and one of those games was...
DOOM!
― Z S, Thursday, 19 January 2012 14:49 (twelve years ago) link
the evidence against me just kept stacking up...
I bet you listened to sad/angry music as well.
― get ready for the banter (NotEnough), Thursday, 19 January 2012 14:50 (twelve years ago) link
nope, i was heavily listening to dave matthews band and ben folds five at the time. i even had t-shirts
― Z S, Thursday, 19 January 2012 14:51 (twelve years ago) link
awww ZS <3 you are my heart (except for that DMB stuff.. heh.)
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Thursday, 19 January 2012 14:56 (twelve years ago) link
I miss tables. Remember when we got CSS and we could manipulate the borders really specifically? GLORY DAYS.
And frames. I used to nest frames like a champ. Then iframes came along and messed it all up.
Oh man, speaking of Doom and Columbine, one of the Doom levels I made was based on our HS. Luckily only my parents knew about it and they're sane people so they didn't give a shit.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 19 January 2012 17:22 (twelve years ago) link
well that's certainly the way to deal with a bunch of kids who you suspect are depressed and suicidal.. shut down their means of expressing themselves! sheesh
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 19 January 2012 17:35 (twelve years ago) link
I'm pretty sure a really rough map of every high school has existed as a homemade first person shooter game level
― mh, Thursday, 19 January 2012 19:54 (twelve years ago) link
My AIM screen name is the race/class combo I played the first time I started playing D&D circa sixth grade.
― tinker tailor soldier sb (silby), Friday, 20 January 2012 01:33 (twelve years ago) link
xps to whoever was talking about that like fifteen posts ago
Screamtracker reminded me of this Assembly demo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9hsIG9ZJdA
― houses of the holey (Ówen P.), Friday, 20 January 2012 03:49 (twelve years ago) link
seriously, check out the Touched By An Angel (www.touched.com) and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (http://www.drquinnmd.com/) websites. it's like 1997 never went away
― Z S, Friday, 20 January 2012 05:11 (twelve years ago) link
such a rush
This is the place
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7PX3JAF_5Q
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 21 January 2012 01:06 (twelve years ago) link
I love those old demos, and most of them are on youtube these days.
Also, that Star Wars fan cut reminds of the ASCII version that came out way back in the day...
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 21 January 2012 01:07 (twelve years ago) link
"tried Buzz too, but it seemed like a foreign country"
have you tried renoise? it is very tracker-y, and the online tutorial is very Irish, I think.
― Philip Nunez, Saturday, 21 January 2012 01:15 (twelve years ago) link
Flashback!
http://laughingsquid.com/the-restoration-of-the-internet-underground-music-archive-iuma/
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 22:09 (twelve years ago) link
holy shit, that means a bunch of my terrible high school lo-fi "songs" just rose from the dead
delete delete delete
― Mad God 40/40 (Z S), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 22:25 (twelve years ago) link