Hello, World!

I wonder how many blogs there are that are called "Mike's Blog"? I should really have tried to be more creative. Perhaps a little less literal. Anyway, I'm here now.

Strange that I should take so long to get round to blogging. My first experience with the Internet was in 1992 - yes, 1992! There weren't even proper web-sites then; it was email, newsgroups and FTP sites. To sign up and use the Internet wasn't straight forward. Here's what I had to do.

First of all, the computer I had was an Amstrad PC clone, with a black and white screen (I think), limited graphics capability (like high lighting, reverse video, one font plus italics). It had 2 x 5.25in floppies and 512k of memory! I upgraded it with a 10MB (yes, MB) hard disk, which cost almost £100 (which would only work if the expansion bay were left open) and a 1440baud modem, which I think also cost about £100 (but I managed to get the company I was working for at the time to pay for that).

So I called Demon Internet (on the phone) and signed up to pay my £10 per month - I was customer number 64. Then I had to set the modem to dial up their server and down load the software (which I think include an TCP/SLIP stack or something similar, a news group reader, an email client and a few tools like FTP, Telnet, whois, ping etc.). Then I had to figure out how to install it all (not too difficult I recall, but I was a lot more technical back then), and then I was off.

Naturally, in those days the main fascination was in newsgroups (some were very rude indeed), looking through the library catalogues of universities, FTPing interesting stuff and pinging computers in Australia! I quickly realised that I could buy books from O'Reilly in California (so cool - I bought Ed Krol's The Whole Internet Guide, which mentioned in passing this new thing called the "World Wide Web" and predicted that it would be a big thing) and chat to people in Russia about them buying second hand computers from the company I worked for. There were lots of technical forums which were really interesting to me in my then job. I was instantly a fan! This will change everything, I told my wife. Yes, I saw the bandwagon coming, it stopped at my front door, I didn't get on and I watched it roll past and on over the hill!