Cleaning up a bunch of old junk recently, I came across a cheque from 1995, from MSN. Dunno if anybody remembers, but MSN was originally not a web site, it was a proprietary online service, with its own set of dialup Points Of Presence (locally called OnAustralia), and its own media standards. They launched it with Windows 95 in August 1995, and they’d obviously planned it in the year or two beforehand, before the web became popular.

(Despite later claims, Windows 95 didn’t come with a web browser as standard. You originally had to buy it as an extra in the Microsoft Plus package.)

Before launch, they approached numerous content providers to get them to put stuff on the MSN network. It was pretty clunky, but they included the option to put content on that one could charge a Per View amount for. I happened to be working in Online Training at the time, heard about this venture, and wondered if I should sign up and put some of my Toxic Custard stuff online. Since they were waiving all publishers’ fees, I thought I’d give it a go, and got my mate Brian (who wrote a set of stories called Rocket Roger in uni) to have a go too.

We put some stuff up for free, some for a small fee for viewing, under the banner name of “In Your Face”. I think it had an icon which looked like a Windows Folder, but with a face that was sticking its tongue out.

In summary, it was a complete waste of time. It was not a case of “Built it, and they will come”. Hardly anybody looked at the free stuff, let alone the paid stuff — we made $6.73 all up. By the time MSN launched, the web was taking off, nobody was interested in paying for content. Not to mention that the standard for presenting anything remotely clever media-wise was horrible — a hideous thing called MediaView, which presentation-wise was similar to the web, but absolute murder to write anything in.

It was just a few short months later in December 1995 when Bill Gates made his famous U-turn — the realisation that the Internet really was the bees knees, it was a bandwagon they should definitely be jumping on.

They dumped all of MSN’s proprietary side. MediaView morphed into something not quite so hideous called Blackbird, which then got renamed as Internet Studio, which then died a very well-deserved death. The OnAustralia dialups were given to Telstra and became the basis of Bigpond, they ramped up developement on Internet Explorer (thus starting the browser wars in which IE eventually triumphed over Netscape), they re-engineered MSN to be a number of web sites, and eventually bought Hotmail to sit in the centre of it.

With the Internet (and particularly the Web) as pervasive as it is now, looking back, it’s hard to believe that Microsoft was genuinely clueless enough to launch a proprietary online service in the face of the Internet (arguably I was just as clueless to bother to put content onto it), or even to launch a major version of Windows as late as 1995 with no built-in Web browser.

In these enlightened times, of course, nobody believes a word of it.

And we never did cash that cheque.

Read on for some more geeky artefacts (more…)

Happy Gravy Day.

At a rather good barbecue today (obviously before the rain came pouring down) I had a couple of blasts from the past, back from almost 20 years ago, those heady days of year 7 and 8 at the now defunct Ardoch High, before I bailed out and shifted schools to Snob Castle. Sam, a fellow student from back then said hello, and I also chatted to Rod and Christine, parents of the hostess Justine, who was also at the same school, and whose brother Josh I sat next to through most of year 8. It’s a small world.

What I found amusing was that Sam and Rod unknowingly followed the pre-1985 name rule. I’ve talked about this many years ago, but it’s worth mentioning again. Between about 1977 and 1984, I was known as Danny, basically because when I started primary school I was asked if I preferred Danny or Daniel, and decided that Danny was easier to spell. When I switched schools in 1985, I reverted to Daniel, because - for whatever reason - I thought it sounded better.

Most people who knew me from the Danny phase still call me Danny. Others call me Daniel. Call me what you will - just keep the personal abuse down to a dull roar.

It was my school reunion last night. 15 years. I’m getting old.

It was good to see people again. I went to the one 5 years ago - less people turned up this time, but still a crowd of about 60. As last time, we were all a little fatter, balder and/or greyer, apart from the bastards who hadn’t changed at all. And it’s interesting to see where people ended up - a bunch of IT people, a few artistic types, a couple of airline pilots, an accountant or two, a car designer, an environmental scientist, a couple of teachers, a couple of cops (one of whom, eerily, is the spitting image of a guy I know in theCFA)… and all the rest. And of course we did the traditional things - drinking, singing the old school song, drinking, telling tales of personalities and pranks from days of yore, and more drinking. Good stuff.

Things wound up in time to catch the penultimate train home, and I found myself with a bunch of the blokes, standing around on the concourse of South Yarra Station causing trouble. Which just shows that nothing’s really changed since our school days.

Something hit the back of my foot. A blind guy almost walked into me, and he asked us where the next city train was from. One of our number, who was possibly more intoxicated than was apparent from his speech, posture and stability, glanced at the big screen, and not only directed him to the wrong platform, but also made the mistake of directing him by pointing and saying "That way!" Fortunately sanity prevailed and one of the others who could read the screen properly, and knew how to guide blind people around stations, took care of things.

My 23:58 train arrived. Walking home the street was dark and quiet… except for the Internet shop. I glanced in the door as I passed - half a dozen hard core netters were wide awake, surfing for all their worth into the night.

Surely I’m not the only one getting old, going to reunions every few years to reminisce? Do some people avoid them, figuring the only people you’d meet are those you specifically didn’t bother to keep in touch with?

Another week gone, and Christmas is creeping ever closer. Tomorrow I’m going to make a concerted effort to get all my Christmas presents bought and ready.

Had a bit of a laugh this morning when I saw an internal memo at <monolithic corporation I work for>. Apparently they’re economising, and their way to save a few shekels this year is to get rid of all the plants that they rent… well, not quite all, they’re going to keep the ones in the lobby, and on the executive levels! I suppose we should be thankful that having withdrawn all forms of photosynthesis for us drones, they aren’t considering cutting back on the air supply to save a bit more.

There’s been a lot of interest this week (at least from us folk in the geek community) in Google’s launch of their 20 year Usenet archive. Quite apart from the earthshatteringly significant events that have been posted about over the years, I’ve found a few of my own memories in the archive.

• This post from some rather over-zealous bloke who somehow figured out that my jokes about the Fascist Fuckwits’ Federation were deadly serious
• The dweeb who decided the best way to get stamps from around the world was to ask "Are YOU in a foreign country??". Well done fella.
• And my mate Brian’s creation "Rocket Roger", which he claimed was better than Toxic Custard - certainly debatable. Didn’t last quite as long though…

It’s a funny feeling to see your own words coming back at you after all these years. Though come to think of it, I get that all the time!

For those who share my age of 28, this year is the tenth anniversary of leaving high school, which means it’s reunion time. Mine was last Wednesday night; a chance to get a look around the school to see how it’s changed, and to catch up with a few people that I haven’t seen since that fateful last day of Year 12.

Some people are fatter, some greyer, some with less hair. Some looked identical to how they looked in 1988. Most certainly seemed to be wiser. A few still at university (some with no prospects of escaping - and loving it). Lots of professional computer geeks like me. A cop, a photographer, a physiotherapist… a bit of everything, really.

Of the 300-ish of us who left in 1988, about 100 turned up, which is not a bad number. And as I gazed around the room during dinner, I came to the conclusion that people at peer group reunions fall into four categories*:

• The people you knew who you’ve kept in touch with
• The people you knew who you haven’t heard of in ten years, and so are subsequently surprised to see how much fatter/balder/thinner/greyer/the same they are
• The people you recognise because they were well known in the group, but whom you didn’t actually know
• The people you recognise - but don’t know why
• The people you don’t recognise at all because it was such a big group

After dinner, a few drinks, a few anecdotes (one day I’ll have to discover the full truth behind The Box Hill Incident), and yes, some fairly rowdy singing of the school song and various other ditties, I was left wondering where my co-conspirators in our last day prank were - and whether or not anybody else remembered it. It involved water pistols, bean bag beans, and an unprovoked and fairly messy attack on some otherwise innocent teachers during a junior assembly. Perhaps it’s a subject to be raised at the next reunion.

*It took almost five years for anybody to notice and point out to me that there are actually five categories listed. D’oh.

There was a time in my life when I used to use the 7-11 regularly. It’s now a distant memory of days when I was so much less organised. Those days when I nearly always forgot to get something from the supermarket while it was open. Of course, now the supermarkets are all open until at least midnight, so it’s almost impossible to do. Which means the 7-11 hardly gets a look in.

But the 7-11 is a special place. No matter where you go, they all look the same. Better lit than a late-night tram, the pie and hot-dog dispensers in the corner, and huge rows of fridges down the back, resembling cryogenic freeze chambers in sci-fi films.

And somehow in less shelf-space than your average shoebox, they manage to fit all the essentials of modern life. Batteries, tampons, condoms, party hats, candles, pet food… and of course more varieties of junk food than you’d find in all the vending machines at Flinders Street Station.

And let’s not forget the Slurpee machines. It’s nice to know that some scientists, somewhere, taking time off from curing diseases and solving world hunger, managed to develop a machine for self-service icy cold flavoured-gunk drinks.

7-11 prices aren’t ideal of course. For a start there’s the "We’re always open" surcharge. Then there’s the "you know we’ll have it even if no-one else does" surcharge. Maybe they ought to give us a discount for having to step carefully over all the scruffy kids with bicycles who always seem to be hanging around outside.

The winter has arrived in Australia. Well, okay, so those of you in the northern states probably haven’t even noticed. But we down here in Melbourne certainly have, I can tell you. I’m glad I’ve already had my winter haircut. If I have a haircut after it starts to get cold, for the first few days afterwards my ears are liable to freeze off.

Not that it gets terribly cold. It’s not the icy bitterly cold thirty-below-zero freeze-your-balls-off Abominable Snowman weather they get in parts of the northern hemisphere. It doesn’t even snow. Well, not in the cities, anyway. It’s the kind of wimpy winter weather that gives Australia its reputation for having a warm climate.

I’m a parent now, so I’m obligated to start making stories up about walking to school in the dark to tell my son. It’s a shame I can’t think of any. I do remember some kind of social group we formed that involved meeting everybody in the same carriage of the same train every morning, but that doesn’t have a suitable amount of suffering. I can’t even make out that I had to walk six miles through the snow dressed in an old potato sack. Maybe I’ll just have to lie.

Last week I was reminded of some of the other aspects of my childhood. We once lived in a block of flats where one of the neighbours would use stale wafer biscuits to bribe all the kids to go play somewhere else.

But what I really remember was the spy clubs. After I’d got hold of every Usborne book that involved detectives, codes, invisible ink and schoolyard espionage, there was a phase of trying to recruit my fellow classmates for spy rings. It never worked of course. The walkie talkies always broke down, there was nothing that important that it had to be sent in code, and every time we tried to give our agents numbers like in Get Smart everyone wanted to be 007.

This went so far that when I got a new desk for my bedroom I carefully placed it so as not to have my back to the window. Imagine, ten years old and I thought I was head of ASIO.

Well, welcome to the last day of 1994. I personally find it rather worrying that we’re going into the second half of this decade already… I mean, where the hell did it vanish to? Oh well…

Not to worry. Plenty has happened over the last year. Keeping in the tradition of world history, most of it has been bad
news, with a bit of good news thrown in just to give us a bit of hope and spirit for living.

• Russia and Chechnya have a little tiff, because… umm.. well, actually it’s because a Chechnyan contractor did a really bad pebble-dash job on Boris Yeltsin’s driveway.
• Yugoslavia continues fighting amongst itself… themselves… itselves… Anyway, they continue to fight, because… umm… they don’t like each other. And someone said something very nasty about Slobodan Malosovic’s haircut.
• The IRA and British Government finally work out that bombing the crap out of Northern Ireland and each other probably isn’t going to get anyone anywhere, except closer to the next life. So they decide to call it a day and be friends at last. Well, perhaps not quite friends, but you know what I mean…
• The Pope (you know, that sad lonely guy in white who drives around in a really tall car, and knows too much about aircraft safety for his own good, hence his kissing the ground whenever he lands) publishes "Crossing The Threshold of Hope", a romantic 400 page adventure novel. Sadly, it fails to make it into the Top Ten, causing disappointment amongst readers who were expecting it to be a realistic moral guide to living in the 1990s, rather than an idealistic work of fantasy.
• Rwanda draws the short straw, and has this year’s African famine. And everyone who gives money to help feels really good about themselves, and swears they didn’t do it just to claim a tax deduction. And everyone who doesn’t give feels very guilty every time an ad comes on the telly about it.
• North Korean leader Kim Il Sung dies after being very Il
• United Nations Population Conference concludes in Cairo with all countries agreeing that they were resolute in not getting around to mutually agreeing to actually do anything
• Telecom hits an Australian record corporate profit of A$1.7 billion. Of course, the cynic in me says no way will they reach that next year, now that I don’t work for them anymore…
• Up and coming airline pilot Frank Corder fails his navigation test, when he flies his light plane into the White House. Oops!
• The Order Of The Solar Temple, certified YABORLs (Yet Another Bunch Of Religious Lunatics) all decide to commit suicide to achieve spiritual well-being. They’d obviously failed to realise that physical very-deep-shit-being would also result.
• What begins as a practical joke of gluing down the accelerator and locking the steering wheel ends in anger, as Ayrton Senna hits the wall.
• Another Asian Pacific Economic Committee (or whatever the hell APEC stands for) meeting takes place in Indonesia. World leaders from the Pacific Rim arrive to see how bad the painted pictures of them placed on public buildings by their Indonesian hosts are.
• The Achille Lauro sinks after catching fire off Somalia. That’s one ship that’s probably better off sunk. Let’s face it, the damned thing was doomed. It sounds like one of those Swamp Castles in Monty Python And The Holy Grail… "was hijacked, burned down, rolled over, and *then* sank into the swamp"…
• South Africans finally catch up with the basic concepts of democracy. Which is that everyone gets to play.
• Kurt Cobain finds a novel way of hiding the oil on the garage floor when he blows his head off. Actually, let me share with you the best Cobain quote I’ve heard so far: "I think it was Kurt… in the garage… with the shotgun." - Cam Winstanley, Amiga Power magazine

And I’ll leave you with this little thing ‘ere, created by me and Brian Smith, which I never got around to finishing off completely. And I have a nasty feeling that someone else came up with the same thing… but oh well, here you go. It’s to the tune of Cocaine, if you can’t work it out:

He’s got shredded jeans
Don’t know what it means
Cobain

Said he don’t have a gun
But he must have got one
Cobain

Was it somethin’ we said
Now he’s blown off his head
Cobain

He’s in bits
He’s in bits
He’s in bits
Cobain