backtoamac.com

I was at a party last year, and someone happened to mention Geocities.  Everyone seemed to have a personal page parked there.  I didn’t, but it was “the thing.”  By today’s standard, the sites are very simplistic in design, but it was your way to put yourself out there.  Oh, and another thing.  Do you remember sites becoming unavailable if you had too much traffic?

Everyone had a “neighborhood.”  Depending on the theme, you could have your site on “RodeoDrive,” in “Hollywood,” or in the Colosseum.  Honestly, I think it was on the honor system and no one really checked. It was later scrapped, but sometimes you could still stumble across sites with a “city” in their url.

Oddly enough, Geocities is still around.  Well, they were until today.  Geocities is going offline, and joining the big Angelweb in the sky. Registrations ceased in April, and today was the end.  Farewell, Geocities, and Godspeed. May the flash animated websites of sparkly dancing aliens and Gilligan’s Island Fan Sites give thee rest.

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I was reminiscing about the old Apple IIe’s and IIc’s that I used in my much younger years.  In fact, I recall being in second grade and we were the first class to have a computer class.  I liked it so much, that over the summer, I took a course at school to play around even more.   It was hard to attract second through fourth graders to word processing.  What we were more interested in is graphics, playing Oregon Trail and making little video games.

I don’t know if one could have really called them “games” because there was no object to them.  You just pressed any button to move a dot across the screen, which could not deviate from its path.  The “payoff” (I use the term very LOOSELY) was to get to the end of the screen where we X and Y plotted our little brains out to have the word “Crash” show up in all its blocky, large pixel glory when you hit the other side of the screen with the dot that was really a little square.

Here are variations on the theme.   These are Apple IIe’s and c’s being awakened from their slumber after being in someone’s basement or attic all these years.  Justinaurelius on YouTube explains limitations of the hard drive, and is seeking to get an old one.

Kevin Gordon gives an unnarrated approach, firing up the Apple IIe with an up close and personal camera perspective. Darnit that it is hard to read what is on the screen. It appears to be a tutorial. I don’t remember that one, but then again, we were much more enthralled by the “cool stuff.”

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When I was six years old, I didn’t know what a website was.  In fact, as far as most of the citizens of Earth, I was not alone at that time.  If there were such a thing aside from governmental, classified existence, I would have probably wanted mine to be red.  I went through a red phase before I hit my blue phase.  In addition, I probably would have chosen a “sparkly unicorn theme.”  With my Lisa Frank mylar stickers in tow, I probably would be able to beautify it beyond belief.

I hated to break it to my five or six year old self, but you can’t put stickers on a website.  Now, you sort of can.  You can cheesify your website with My Little Pony looking unicorns and Lisa Frank looking sparkly doodads. Yes, the technical term is to cheesify.   Click here to learn more about it.

If you want to see Back to a Mac all glittery and unicorny, just click the widget:

Each time you click, more and more cheese will be added. I think I may permanently add this to my sidebar for your entertainment, and mine. Until I get sick of it of course.  If you are deeply disturbed by this, blame for this should be fully shared by Roller Katy, who introduced me to this tooth rotting mayhem quite awhile ago in the first place.

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