Wednesday June 23 2010, 2:06 am
The first time I ever used the internet was at a computer class back in the fall of 1996. This was when it was starting to reach the mainstream and it was all very fascinating. Not that I did anything interesting with this new technology though. The teacher for computer class was really a home and consumer science (I think that’s what the subject is called, it’s the class where you mainly cook) teacher who knew nothing about computers. She taught us how to create a Hotmail, search for things on Altavista and how to use chat rooms. That meant that computer class mostly was spent chatting with random guys in the Aftonbladet.se chat. Chat rooms were very different back then. Now I’d never set my virtual foot in the Aftonbladet chat because for the past ten years or so it’s mainly been a place where people hook up for cyber sex. It wasn’t like that in 1996 though. During all those hours I spent there as a kid I never saw anything inappropriate. Weird to think of isn’t it?
For two years I only used the internet in school but then in the fall of 1998 this new technology finally made it to my home. My dad bought a new computer (A modern one with Windows 1998, WHOA!) and connected it to the internet. Oh the arguments we had over this wonderful thing. Because back then we used a 56K dial up phone modem which made surfing a lot rather expensive. I ended up being allowed to use the internet one hour a day but of course I broke that rule frequently. Problem was connecting to the internet without anyone noticing was rather tricky back then. First of all while online the phone didn’t work, a rather obvious giveaway that something wasn’t right. Then there was the noise… You must remember the god awful noise those old modems made while connecting. With that sound ringing through the house the only time breaking the one hour a day rule was possible was when my parents weren’t at home or while they were sleeping. Of course my dad figured out that I did just that so he started removing the wire to the modem and hid it. I remember one time when my family was away for the night and I was looking forward to surfing for hours, only to discover that the wire to the modem was nowhere to be seen! The disappointment! Of course the times I did manage to break the one hour rule it was always discovered in the end anyway, because of a ever higher phone bill.
When we got a faster and cheaper internet (yay broadband) there was another problem. We still had a computer from 1998 with Windows 1998 and a total hard drive space of 24 GB. Originally the computer had only one hard drive of 4 GB but we bought another one after a couple of years. Imagine six people using a computer with a total hard drive space of 24 GB. We weren’t allowed to download anything. Partly because of the lack of space and partly because my parents thought everything contained viruses back then. Of course we (mostly me) did anyway. Not that downloading a few songs mattered really because that computer filled up very quickly just because we were so many people using it. A few weeks after reformatting it, it was back to taking a good five minutes to start. Another problem was that using more than two programs at a time often made it crash from working over it’s capacity. Now imagine that’s the computer I used and shared with five other people (oh my, the fights over computer time we’ve had through the years!) until early 2005 when I bought my first very own computer. My family held on to the one they bought in 1998 until 2008. By then I referred to it as the “stone age machine”.
So guys, when did you first use the internet? Got any interesting anecdotes of the early days of the online world?
Plugs: Angie, Aly, Joebs, Wyther Wyskers, Sean, Melle, Joy, Jess, Allie O'Bannon
Thursday September 3 2009, 5:14 pm
If you want to see a web design masterpiece look no further because here it is !
Me and a friend did some web design like it was 1998. The worst possible kind of 1998. What do you think? We’d gladly help you with a new layout for your site. I’ll find you the perfect graphics and Milla will write excellent code. All this for a “small” fee. E-mail me for details!
Plugs: Gel, Kitty, scott
Saturday May 24 2008, 9:28 pm
Sometimes I wish I was born in another decade. That I hadn’t been a kid but a young adult in the nineties. Generation X seems to have had more fun than us from generation Y. I’m sure the nineties wasn’t as fantastic as I remember it to be. As I said in a previous entry, it seems so wonderful now just because it’s over. And probably because the nineties is my childhood. I started first grade in 1990 and graduated from junior high in 1999. I count those years as my childhood. In 1999 I turned sixteen and from that age I feel that I was more of a young adult than a child. So those ten years from 1990-1999 holds all my childhood memories since I was very little in the eighties and don’t remember much of my earliest years. I don’t think this century is remarkable in any way. I look back at my high school time (1999-2002) and think about people I miss and things we did which I miss but I don’t miss the time in itself. I guess that’s because things haven’t changed enough yet for me to miss what was back then. The nineties on the other hand feels like a very different time. It was a very different time.
I smile when I think about how funny we dressed. The brightly coloured tights and bicycle pants, the scrunchies and poofy bangs, the flannel shirts, vests, polo sweaters and platform shoes. And all that sports wear! Back in 1996 everyone dressed like they were on their way to the gym. Adidas pants, Fruit of the loom t-shirts and Champion sweaters. Looking through old yearbooks from junior high almost everyone is wearing sports clothes on the photos. WHAT were we thinking?! I’d never leave my apartment dressed like that! Unless I was actually engaging in a actual sport activity (NOT likely!). And the hair. I remember that ALL girls had a bob parted in the middle. Exactly like my current hairstyle! I’m ten years late though because back then I had long hair.
The music was better in the nineties. Or rather the popular music was better than now. I never ever listen to the radio or watch MTV because I hate 90% of what’s on there. I hate RnB, hip hop and boring mainstream pop like Britney and Madonna. And I just can’t stand the whole emo trend. There’s a lot of good bands around but they’re not the ones given much attention in mainstream media. Back in the nineties the popular music was good. At least a lot of it. RnB and hip hop hadn’t taken over yet. God how I can’t stand that music! That trend has been going on waaaay too long now! Please go away.
TV was also better in the nineties. I barely ever watch tv nowadays. There’s a couple of shows which I enjoy but they’re not many. My computer on the other hand is full of tv-series from the nineties. I spent a large part of this winter watching all nine seasons of “The X-files”. Today I’ve been watching a couple of episodes of “My So-called life”. I came to think about that show yesterday when I realized my hair looks like Claire Danes did in that show and since I haven’t watched the show in a year or so I decided it was time to see it again. That’s actually what brought back all fond memories of the trends of the nineties.
I can’t say that I liked the fashion of that time better than the current fashion though. We dressed pretty horrible. The only cool fashion of the nineties was grunge. Love it! Some days I look like someone from a Seattle rock concert in 1992 dressed in my trashed jeans, converse and army jacket. I can be quite a slacker. It’s funny to think that looking like that actually was fashionable some fifteen years ago.
God I feel so old when I think about my childhood! So much has changed and kids of today probably think everything that I was used to when I was their age is very old fashioned. The world is changing so fast. Sometimes I just can’t get that I’m actually turning twenty-five in two months. Am I not supposed to be more… grown up? I don’t know. It’s just weird thinking about the fact that I’ll be thirty in five years. I mean, thirty! That’s definitely grown up! I used to think thirty was old but now I don’t know. I’m there in five years and I have a whole bunch of friends who are in their thirties. I even have friends who have kids. When did we become so grown up? I remember when we all lived with our parents. Just a couple of years ago I barely knew anyone who lived on their own but now I barely know anyone who don’t. I’m definitely not a kid anymore. Not even a teenager and pretty soon not even close to being a teenager. And In a couple of years I’m not even amongst the “young” people anymore. Not that I feel old and I probably won’t in ten years either. Growing up and getting older is exciting though. I’d never want to be a teenager again. The older you get the more seriously people take you and the older you get the more you learn. I can handle life and people so much better now than ten years ago and I know so much more about everything. The teenage years are spent trying to figure out who you are and what you want to do with your life. I’m done with that. I know who I am and I know what to do with my life. I’ve changed SO much in the past ten years. I was a completely different person ten years ago. When I think about who I was back in 1998 I can barely understand that was actually me. Of course I’m still the same person but I’ve evolved, so to speak.
Wow this turned into quite a lenghty blog post. When I started writing I thought I’d just write a quick and short post but it’s easy to get stuck, finding more and more things to write about.
I’m going to continue watching “My So-called life” now and I should probably go to bed soon. Tomorrow I’m going to my parents to celebrate mother’s day.
Plugs: Marie Claire, luisa, Holly
Tuesday May 20 2008, 3:34 pm
Sometimes I think it would be fun to go back in time to the nineties. But when I think about living in the nineties again the thought of everything modern I’d miss is agonizing. The nineties had it’s charm but now I only miss it because it’s over. I never thought it was a amazing time to grow up in but now I do just because that time is forever gone. Being used to all the things that didn’t exist when I was a kid has made me quite spoiled and it would be weird to live without them.
When I was a kid almost nobody had a cell phone. Kids definitely did not. I remember my dads first cell. It was a HUGE Nokia which you could do nothing but call with. Text messages were introduced a couple of years later. Some people had beepers though. Do they even exist anymore btw?
When I was very little people still listened to LP records. I got my first CD player when I was ten and I thought it was SO modern!
I had a casette freestyle. There wasn’t any mp3 players back then.
DVD players didn’t exist either. I actually didn’t own one until I was in my twenties.
I still don’t own a flat screen tv but when I was a kid they weren’t even invented yet.
Not to mention the internet! I was thirteen the first time I used the internet but we didn’t have it at home until I was fifteen. And we only had a 56k modem which couldn’t be used when someone was on the phone.
Ten years ago people didn’t have any digital cameras. If 36 of your pictures turned out terrible and blurry there was nothing to do about it. Not only had you wasted a entire roll of film but you also had payed for the develop. When digital cameras were new and hot they were these big things which you put a diskette in.
Oh yeah, CD burners didn’t exist either. Only diskettes which had room for something like fifty pictures.
Speaking of technology and computers. I’ve switched browser from Firefox to Opera. I just downloaded Opera to see if my site worked in it (of course it did. valid code ftw!) and after checking out all the cool feautures I made it my primary browser. It has some neat web developement widgets and I love the way you can search any site in the main search bar just by using a keyword. In Firefox I used to have a search bar for google and one for imbd. Now I only need the main search bar because when I want to search google or Imdb I just type “g” followed by my search or “imdb” followed by my search. So neat! Another computer related improvement I’ve made is adding a dock with shortcuts to a couple of my mostly used programs and folders. It’s a always on top doc so it’s not only visible on my desktop but also when I surf the web or use any of my programs. Neat, neat, neat!
Plugs: Sharv, josh, Holly
Welcome to Whirlwind, the online home of a 28 year old Swedish artist, web designer and blogger who goes by the name Angelica. The site consists of 544 MB words, photos and art. Please do take a look around.
