Windows 95 is fifteen years old today
Fifteen years ago today, Windows 95 was released.
(Who’s feeling old now?)
Many would remember the adverts, which hit TV screens around the world, to the tune of the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up”.
It was arguably the first modern version of Windows (despite it still apparently having DOS under the hood), and arrived just before the Internet went mainstream, so for many people it and the subsequent versions are what most people became familiar with.
It was certainly the first version of Windows with a Start Menu, and other features such as long filenames (not limited to the DOS convention of eight characters plus an extension), and Plug And Play (allowing you to plug in devices and have the system work out which drivers were needed) — which at the time didn’t work nearly as well as was implied in the literature.
Users of Mac and other platforms would argue that Windows was just playing catchup, and that’s probably true, but for those of us in the dominant Windows world, it was a big step forward.
I remember the launch day well because part of the hype involved lots of promotion, and via a radio station truck parked outside work, I won a copy. Which was good, because I’d intended on buying it for myself, to run on my mighty new computer, the one with the Pentium 60 MHz CPU and 8 Megabytes of RAM.
And here for your geeky viewing pleasure is one of the brochures…
Note that it promises “pre-emptive multitasking and multithreading”, another feature that wasn’t nearly as good as promised. They promised it again in Windows NT 4 a year later, but arguably it never really worked up to expectations until multi-core CPUs (eg hardware, not software) came along.
It was twenty years ago today
Exactly twenty years ago today, on the 12th of August 1990, I posted my first online writing — under the distinctly odd title the Toxic Custard Workshop Files. Being well before the Web, it went to a handful of people at uni via email.
As I later wrote (in 1997):
Well, back in them days of ’90, I was in the second year of my course, a Bachelor of Pretending Cobol Is Structured, failing Photocopying 215, and me and me mates had just discovered the Internet. We suddenly realised that there was more to computer networks than just using Phone and Talk to annoy people in the next room, or sending Mail to tell people to meet you for lunch and Tetris at the corner shop.
I was messing around with my mate Bw.. err Brian Smith. Hi Brian, if you’re reading. And another pal of ours, Ray Chan, who was in an Electronics, Robotics And Other High-Tech Stuff course, came up with an idea for an electronic magazine, called “The Serial Saga”. Hi Ray, if you’re reading. We thought this was great, and immediately mugged him in the corridor and stole his idea. Ray never actually wrote anything, but did manage to create a monster robot which went berserk the next semester, and killed 5 lecturers due to a faulty diode in its corduroy detection circuits.
Ray actually vanished completely, at least from where I’m sitting. I’m still in regular contact with Brian, though he went crazy and emigrated to the USA about ten years ago.
The wacky title dated back to my last year of high school in 1988, when Mark Bainbridge and David Holicek and I planned to do an amateur comic sketch video show. It never actually happened.
My early writing drew on inspirations from uni, as well as some recycled material from high school, with a good dose absurdist Pythonesque influence. Some of it was fairly juvenile. As was I.
The Internet as we know it today — an unparalleled worldwide high-technology time-wasting device — was in its infancy. I recall frequently having to explain to people the concept of this new-fangled “email”.
Over the years my writing slowly matured and moved from the surreal into the real world, the humour that was deliberately infused into everything was gradually toned-down, and now the blog has taken over just about completely.
I dabbled in a lot of technologies as they came along — never the first, but often early: the web site came along in April 1995, and shortly after that the first diary/blog entries. Tried what is now known as podcasting in 1997. Blogged the 1996 election. Issued an official screensaver in 1998. Online video? 1999… originally in RealVideo format, which probably nobody can play anymore, so here it is on YouTube:
Most (all in fact, I think) of my old pre-blog absurdist writing is still online.
And even now, I occasionally meet people who tell me they used to read the Toxic Custard list, or Usenet posts, back in the 90s.
Some of my favourite Toxic Custard highlights:
- Shakespeare — kicked off with Romeo and Juliet in October 1990, which made it into rec.humor.funny, the best postings from Usenet group rec.humor
- History of the World — based on a condensed world history I found in a 50s era compendium, from June 1994
- Ron and Jeff — inspired by Bottom, from March 1994. I still chuckle at my Red Shield Appeal gag.
- Doctor Who: Revenge of the Unrealistatrons — my Doctor Who spoof from May 1993, based heavily on the 1984 DW story Warriors of the Deep.
- The Year 2031 — an attempted sci-fi story, from January 1998.
- VCR destruction — in August 2001, Josh, Cathy and I went and systematically destroyed a troublesome old Sharp VCR of mine, by putting food and detergent into it, letting kids use it as a skateboard, smashing it with hammers, dipping it into a lake, attacking it with an axe and a crowbar, running over it with a car, and finally blowing it up. And yes, there is video.
And also:
- Your taxes are paying for this: This blog, archived at the National Library — “World Wide Web diary/weblog of: Daniel Bowen, a computer programmer in Melbourne. His web diary is a straightforward account of his daily life. The website includes numerous photographs, information about the author and links to his home page and to the weblogs of other diarists. It also includes an archive of the diary from its inception in 1994. Recent entries feature the comments of readers.”
- An early Usenet post (TCWF 6, 5th September 1990. The man referred to at the start, Ewen G MacPerson, was based on a lecturer, Ewen D McPherson.)
- Debate over whether Toxic Custard should have its own newsgroup (January 1991)
The twenty-year-old email list still exists, by the way, mostly as a weekly compilation of my blog posts here and at geekrant.org.
So, happy birthday, Toxic Custard.
The toy of the movie of the game
Spotted in K-Mart: Lego Prince of Persia.
So let me get this straight… this is the toy of the movie of the video game.
I wonder if there’ll be (as there was with Star Wars and others) a Lego video game of it. That would be the game of the toy of the movie of the game.
(I remember playing the original Prince of Persia game in my uni days. Despite being a fan of the platform genre, I don’t think I’ve played any of the sequels. The Wikipedia article notes the author got the distinctive animation done by video-taping his younger brother, and links to one of the original videos. Very cool.)
Ancient political history
Trivia for you: Back in prehistoric times, when most of you had never heard of the Internet and barely anybody used the Web, and way before Twitter and Facebook, I blogged the 1996 Federal election campaign.
Several times a week I’d add something new, including a spoof leader debate transcript, a Hippy Party manifesto, Ron And Jeff on voting, and advice on what to tell How To Vote hander-outers when you don’t want one.
It went almost-unnoticed because so few people were online at the time, but it did get a write-up in The West Australian (sorry it’s fuzzy; I’ll try to find a better scan):
When You Walk In The Room
Some songs evoke a particular memory, of either a specific event or a period of my life.
So it is with Paul Carrack’s version of Jackie DeShannon’s “When You Walk In The Room“, from 1987.
I bought the 45 (rpm, single) of it, primarily because the (quite amusing) video clip included all of the cast of Who Dares Wins — a sketch show of the time that I absolutely loved that included Tony Robinson (better known as Baldrick in Blackadder), Rory McGrath (who you still see pop up on QI and other shows) and some others who were very talented but have mostly disappeared into obscurity (at least from an Australian point of view).
I suspect the video clip’s high school crush theme also resonated at the time.
I’m not sure what happened to the record; it probably got chucked out years ago. I didn’t think I’d ever hear it, let alone see the video clip, again. But here it is, thanks to YouTube.
(Unfortunately the first and last few seconds/lyrics of the song are missing. Ah well.)
Hector the Cat
Teaching kids to cross the road safely is a matter of laying out the basic rules, and continual practice. I’d thought over the years it might be easier if the Hector The Cat song was still run on TV, as the lyrics helps make it easy to remember what to do.
Happily, thanks to YouTube, it’s been found again.
(via Mark O’Meara)
Tags: Hector the Cat, roads
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Geek Idol
I’ve had few real idols; people of whom I could genuinely say “I want to be like them.”
In my early-to-mid 20s, Ben Elton was one of them. Amazingly funny, both on stage and in his writing. I wanted to write stuff that was half as good as his books, but never quite managed to write anything that was engaging enough to last over the length of a novel. My best attempt was The Year 2031, and even that wasn’t terribly long.
Ten years earlier, it was Tony Crowther. He was perhaps five years older than me, and a game programmer extraordinaire, writing hit after hit on the Commodore 64. I loved his game Blagger, and the sequel Son of Blagger, then got through Monty Mole (but only with help from a walkthrough). For a while I was hooked on Potty Pigeon, then Loco, which I enjoyed more than its astoundingly similar-looking followups Suicide Express and Black Thunder.
After that I moved off the Commodore 64 onto other things, and lost track of him and his games.
I suppose I dreamt in some ways of writing my own games and making a fortune from it. Back in those days many commercial games were written by solo programmers, or small teams. These days the gaming industry is dominated by borg-like big development studios, and Suits.
The other week I was in MagNation and noticed a copy of Retro Gamer which featured an interview with the man, as well as a big feature on Pacman. Wow. I was in a rush and made a note to go back and buy it the next day.
When I went back in, it was gone. Replaced by the next edition. I asked if maybe it was lurking somewhere in the shop. Nope. Everywhere else I looked was the same. Gone.
I had a look online. There are quite a few articles about Crowther, but most of them are reprinted from the 80s. I was also interested to know what he was up to these days, and what he thinks looking back at those old games — precisely the sort of thing Retro Gamer does well when they find people to interview.
I could order the mag from the publisher, of course. It would cost 5 pounds. Fair enough. But with 6.50 postage (!) it’d be a total of 11.50, or about $25 — double the Australian retail price.
While I was pondering that, Rae (who had been kindly checking newsagents near her work for it) pointed out I could look on Ebay, which was a brilliant idea. I found a copy for UKP 7.70 including postage, about $16. Much more reasonable. I’m eagerly awaiting its arrival from the UK.
In the mean time, I’ve discovered that Crowther has in fact been assimilated into the borg that is Electronic Arts. One of the games he worked on recently-ish was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which was one of the last games I bought for the XBox.
And me? Well, I did start writing a few computer games, but never quite finished any of them. But I did end up making a living out of writing software.
Who were your childhood idols? Where did they end up? Did you get to be like them?
Tags: Ben Elton, Commodore 64, idols, Pacman, retro games, Video games
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How many places have you lived?
Here’s a list of all the places I’ve lived. Some of the info from my early years is a bit vague. I suppose I could ask my mum for more details, but I’m not sure it’s that critical.
- 1970: A flat somewhere in Sydney — for a short time after my birth
- 1971ish: A flat somewhere in St Kilda, around Fitzroy Street
- 1971-3ish: A house (I think) somewhere in South Melbourne
- 1973-4ish: A house in Thornbury, I think in Hutton Street, though I couldn’t swear to it
- 1974-7: 7/62 Hotham Street, East St Kilda [Pictured]
- 1977-81ish: 11/62 Hotham Street, East St Kilda — we upgraded to the first floor
- 1981-82ish: 2/298 Inkerman Road, East St Kilda — apart from the semi-detatched house we rented, we also rented a bungalow at the back, which for a while was home to nothing but my small collection of model trains
- 1982-3ish: 6/23 Pine Avenue, Elwood — this was great, being so close to the beach. I used to regularly get on my bike and ride up and down the beachside bike path.
- 1984-6ish: 1b Staniland Grove, Elsternwick — above a shop. The night was regularly punctuated by passing trams, shop alarms and the lady in the neighbouring flat getting rat-arsed.
- 1987-9ish: 6/27 Beena Avenue, Murrumbeena — right next to the Dandenong line. After about a week we didn’t notice the trains going by, apart from it drowning out the television. In year 11-12 I’d regularly meet up with a bunch of other students on the 7:40am train.
- 1989-1993: My mum’s place in Hampton, though it’s closer to the Hampton East (should be called Moorabbin) shops
- 1993-1995: Power Street, Hawthorn — the first time I moved out of home. From memory the phone number also ended in 1666, which was perhaps just co-incidence, or perhaps by-design, I don’t know. Being right next to the tram stop was handy, and in fact you could hear the city-bound tram coming around the corner, indicating if you wanted to catch it you might need to run up the driveway.
- 1995-2003: Booran Road, Glen Huntly — which was good, apart from being on a main road and having neighbours who occasionally left the TV blaring at night.
- Briefly in 2000: a flat in Waratah Avenue, Glen Huntly
- 2003-2005: Ames Avenue, Carnegie — the old cold house with the huge back yard which took forever to mow
- 2005-: My current place in Bentleigh
Hmm, 16 places (in 38 1/2 years), which is more than I thought it might be.
I know from going past and looking around on Google Streetview that most of them are still there, but many of them have been renovated and look little like they did when I lived there.
How about you?
See also: Commutes of my youth
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