Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

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I wasn't familiar with Freshmeat but you just unlocked a part of my memory mentioning everything2... I spent a lot of time of that site in 2001-2002 (probably earlier as well as a lurker, but that's the years when I wrote things), I really loved it and was also very useful for me to practice English writing at a time when my English skills were still rather limited (I remember writing my texts painfully slowly, and looking words up...).

I've just checked and felt a warm feeling in my heart seeing that the website is still up, and not only that, but I can even login into my account that hadn't been used since 2002 or so (didn't remember my username, but the account is tied to an email account that I've had since around 1997 (!) so it was easy to recover).

I might write again from time to time...

Thanks for mentioning it!

PS: How can one have such fond memories of something locked in the brain stored somewhere, and only remember them when someone mentions it? I wonder how many nice memories from that time are still lost somewhere in my head.

I went to high school with CmdrTaco (Slashdot) and Nate (Everything2). I built sets for plays with Rob and was Nate's lab partner in AP Bio. Both were (are) brilliant guys, and super nice. Rob's sense of humor was one of a kind. (Jeff Bates was also a great guy, but I didn't know him as well.)

It was a unique time back in the late 90s, and those guys had their finger on the pulse of internet nerdom. It was pre-Facebook, pre-"Web 2.0" pre a lot of things. In a lot of ways Slashdot was the spiritual predecessor to Hacker News, so we owe that crew a debt.

I remember working at early-stage Amazon in 1998, and I would check Slashdot something like 4-5x per day. I remember that period before and after Slashdot was acquired by Andover.net fondly, especially CmdrTaco, Hemos, and CowboyNeal.

I would also include, along with Everything2, (I recall a guy named Tim Vroom—I think he attended Hope College with the Slashdot guys as well?) its sister site PerlMonks.org. Man, I spent a lot of time there learning Perl and reading up on CPAN modules. I'd hate to be maintaining any of the code we wrote then now though!

Did you ever listen to "Geeks in Space", the Slashdot podcast from before podcasts were a thing?

IIRC they recorded sporadically around 1999 and 2000, just talking about whatever had been on the front page recently. I've thought about doing a sort of retrospective, listening to each one and writing a blog post about what they found interesting... it's a neat peek back at a different time and a different culture.

No, I didn't. I wonder if any of those episodes are still around?

https://archive.org/details/Geeks_In_Space

Yeah... when I said I would go back 20 years, this is what I was talking about... sort of... Those were the great times! Maybe I am just old and nostalgic and it may be something everyone does, but for real, those times had lots of issues, too, sure, but there were great things. People had interest in philosophy, free Internet, and so forth.

You're just old and nostalgic. (No worries, so am I).

People still have interest in philosophy, free Internet and so forth.

Nothing is gone, it's just been made a bit less obvious.

Agreed it is mostly nostalgia. But it _was_ a unique time: the internet was pretty new for many people, and not ubiquitous like it is today.

I remember working at early-stage Amazon in 1998, and I would check Slashdot something like 4-5x per day. I remember that period before and after Slashdot was acquired by Andover.net fondly, especially CmdrTaco, Hemos, and CowboyNeal.

I would also include, along with Everything2, (I recall a guy named Tim Vroom?) its sister site PerlMonks.org. Man, I spent a lot of time there learning Perl and reading up on CPAN modules.

All of those guys were great, but oddly I interacted the most with Hemos, probably due to mutual interests in things like Frank Herbert and weird ambient music (e.g. Eno, Laswell).

They were never bad people to be around.

Saying my humor was One of a kind doesn’t mean “funny” :)

I (dmd) was in the top 5% of noders back then, went to a bunch of gatherings (like https://everything2.com/title/I%2527M+GUNNA+BE+WICKED+RETAHD... ). It was a wonderful time.

Wow! Lots of memories flooding back. I (Xamot) remember your nickname. E2 was definitely an interesting place, bringing together people from many walks of life. I meet many people, who influenced who I am today. And it is unlikely that I would have met such a range of people otherwise.

Yes, also remember a meetup in London, was ... interesting.

(used 'The Alchemist' as a username - probably because I was into reading about it at the time. Unfortunately most people probably thought I liked that book of the same name).

Hola, from me, dizzy

Hey dizzy!

I remember that name.

I went to a meetup in Melbourne. Met a girl in Chicago. Discovered that someone else lived literally on my street, a third of a mile away. I had several small world experiences on E2.

I was known as dizzy. It's been a long, long time :)

i remember you ;) and it was a wonderful time indeed.

Do I remember you? What do you remember?

you might not. my name is raj, and i used to run a hosting company called voxel.net — i believe you were a customer “back in the day” but i could be getting my wires crossed ;)

Hah, yes! I hosted my personal domain 3e.org - which I've now had for 26 years! - with you from 2000-2003 or so. (After that I was on 'server4you' for a bit, self-hosting everything on a VPS, and then Dreamhost since 2005.

Indeed yes, E2 was so much better in many ways than things like Wikipedia (and worse in other ways, of course).

The ability to create amusing nodeshells, or posts that were just ASCII pictures of a fish swimming from a shark ("The birth of leadership"), or poems, or in-depth analysis of some interesting idea or thing.

Everything2 was where I first made real content on the web, and was proud of what I created. Like a precursor to answers on Stack Overflow (or other SE sites).

I loved e2. It was such a shame to see it fall in to disuse as everyone flocked to wikipedia.

Wikipedia is great for factual stuff, but e2 was much more nurturing of creativity.

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