In the snow. Uphill. Both ways.

[mdlbear]

(from johno)

When did you first discover the World Wide Web?

I dimly recall seeing the initial announcement and subsequent discussion on Usenet (would have been in '90 or '91, IIRC). Somewhere in late '91 or early '92 I compiled a copy of the CERN daemon for an internal experiment; this was before the NCSA daemon came out.

What browser did you use?

I used most of the browsers available at the time: the TCL client, Viola; the first public version of Mosaic, ... Even used the email client once or twice.

Were you on the internet before the WWW?

Young whippersnapper, I was on the ARPAnet before it was the Internet. Specifically, I was at Stanford when their IMP was installed; we had some interesting times swapping packets with the folks at MIT. My first home Linux box was connected via UUCP, and only later got moved over to SLIP. My first Usenet post appears to have been in April, 1989 -- the company I was working for at the time was rather slow to get connected.

What was your first username or handle?

SRS at SAIL (Stanford AI Lab). I've always used "steve" on Unix systems. These days I either use "ssavitzky" or "mdlbear"; the latter comes from my persona as the Mandelbear on alt.callahans, which I joined about a week after it started.

Do you remember the first word or phrase you typed into a search engine?

Probably "Savitzky" -- I'm always interested to see how well a search engine does at turning up all of my obscure and not-so-obscure relatives. Google Scholar is particularly interesting in that regard.

Comments

[mithriltabby]

I got onto USENET when in 1985, back when all the groups were net.* instead of the current hierarchy. Back then had a deft hand with a hole punch to create extra sector timing holes on my 5¼” floppies so I could flip them over to get the extra 180K of storage...

[ashi.livejournal.com]

I tended to use scissors. I think my Apple //c would only give me 140K per side.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Didn't Liralen use to talk about "back when the net was flat"? I'm a little bemused that I've been on Usenet (though we weren't configured so I could post, over at Motorola) for a year longer than you. I remember a couple slow days when I *read the entire net,* every posting in every group. Frightening, the difference between then and now.

Yup.

[mdlbear]

I wasn't on the Usenet in those days; the place I was working at was very slow getting a connection, and by the time they did the Great Renaming had already happened.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Google Scholar is interesting. I periodically check under my various aliases to see what turns up (often writing I had forgotten about...), and have recently started turning up what I've jokingly called my "shadow self." Interesting to see what her scientific papers are about.