Neko

hello reader, nice to meet you! my name is sam. well, it isn't really. it's a nickname i go by because my real first name is stupid and my parents wrote it incorrectly at birth. this is very true and thankfully i dodged any high school ridicule. i reside in the gleaming utopia that is scotland. we have lots of fields, mountains, old buildings. it's pretty neat. if you ever get the chance, you should visit. we have many castles.

the above image is of 'hello kitty island adventure' and depicts my character sitting in a meadow alongside hello kitty and my melody. i find it to be incredibly cute, wouldn't you agree?

i'm only thirty-two, however i feel i possess the credentials to write about the way the internet used to be. i have my older brother to thank (blame) for that. he introduced me to many things when i was a kid. i vividly remember his angelfire site detailing his trance vinyl collection, with a horrid black and green colour scheme. it was amazing. anyways, with my own eventual research, the following list became a prominent fixture of my time on a personal computer growing up:

• - chat software :: irc, xfire, icq, msn, aim, aol chat rooms, 24/7 webcam feeds with a chatbox
• - site hosts/builders :: angelfire, tripod/lycos, geocities, xanga
• - dedicated spaces :: bulletin boards, warez communities, usenet
• - entertainment :: joecartoon, inklink, weebl and bob, ebaumsworld, newgrounds, slashdot, anything with macromedia flash
• - software :: winamp, realplayer, dc++, kazaa, morpheus, winrar, nero burning rom, apple quicktime, bearshare
• - games :: unreal tournament 99, theme park world, chips challenge, need for speed, rayman

..and much, much more.

i also remember how websites used to be, with their headache-inducing flashing background patterns. they too, were amazing. the hitcounters, guestbooks, fan-shrines, auto-playing midi tunes - all significant website features of this time. i was in constant awe of how cool these websites were. i've actually had a personal website since i was eleven years old. it has spanned many domain names, templates and software. microsoft frontpage and dreamweaver were magic to kid-me. my first ever website ended in a .tk domain that you got for free. it was basically a fanpage for unreal tournament 99 with my clan info and stats. eleven year-old me thought it was the shit at the time. so young, so naive.

time passed, and as we entered into the mid-late 2000's, social networking became more popular. i think my first ever account on a social network was friendster. shortly after, i moved onto bebo which was popular when i was in high school. i maintained that along with my myspace profile. i miss tom. i hope he's doing well. myspace really helped me learn simple coding back in the day. facebook came along which was fun at first, then devolved into worse iterations of itself. reddit killed digg (digg killed digg), and by the time discord rolled around, it was the beginning of the end.

that's all i can really remember of my internet history for now, but i suppose i'll update this in the future when i remember more!