So, I guess I’m starting over today.
Not really with the blog, though. More like with the internet. My little corner of it, anyway.
I’m fed up with social (or should I say so-shul?) media, and all those algorithms sprawling all over it, constantly feeding everyone (myself included) content that someone thinks we’ll find interesting, just to keep us on their platforms so we can make them some money.
Thanks, but no thanks.
The first time I encountered the actual internet was in 1994, as a first-year high school student, at the public library in Dunakeszi, Hungary.
I’d seen something similar before. I’d connected to Budapest BBS from my dad’s workplace (the 2400-baud modem could only connect at 1200 baud because the phone line on Pannónia Street was so noisy), downloaded a file called csoves.exe (which took about 20 minutes, so you can imagine how terrible that phone line must have been if it couldn’t even manage 1200 baud. Homework, if you’re interested: calculate the actual transfer speed, given that the file was 53.98 KB), and left a message on the bulletin board saying that if anyone wanted to trade metal tapes, they should get in touch.
Nobody did.
Anyway, the point isn’t the BBS. It’s the internet at the library.
I’d go there once or twice a week, bring a few floppy disks, and download whatever caught my eye. There was no Google yet. There was Yahoo, and maybe AltaVista a little later, and the internet as I knew it was basically one enormous catalogue where you could rummage around and look for interesting things.
I’d download text files, sheet music, song lyrics, role-playing game stuff, entire websites (and probably GIFs of naked women), copy everything onto floppies, and take it all home.
And even though I didn’t have an internet connection at home, I could still browse through everything locally using Netscape Navigator.
And the whole thing really was so much more rewarding than it is today.
For one thing, there was the thrill of the hunt. The joy of getting lost, following links from one place to another, discovering things you hadn’t even known existed. And somehow, there was always more to find.
It really was better than what I do today: absent-mindedly opening Facebook, having content shoved in my face, and scrolling endlessly like some kind of idiot.
So this website is going to be my own little harbour on the internet. My HOME PAGE, if you will. A place where I can put things I find interesting, or things I’ve made.
I might even start keeping a journal.
You know, like a blog.
I’ve imported the contents of my old tech blog (blog.balazspocze.me), because I didn’t want all that stuff to disappear.
For now, I think this site will mostly be in Hungarian (apart from the old tech blog), but chances are I’ll translate the posts into English too.
Or just hand them over to an AI and have it do the translating.
I mean, come on. I’m not going to become a Luddite.
Anyway, that’s it.
Bye.