Kicking the Habit

I seem to be making a habit of posting very late at night. I think this is because I am fairly nocturnal, or maybe it's that when at work the last thing I want to do when I arrvie home is sit in front of a computer all evening although I do so occasionally, mostly with C&C Generals. It is very fun indeed! I know that there are pre-conceptions surrounding computer game playing nerds and most may be well founded but in my humble experience it is incredibly sociable. Many people may never have heard of a LAN party but I can assure you they are great fun, all you need is a few (legal) copies of a game and a few friends who enjoy playing it. I reminisce about fun times passed. The usual suspects of old friends from Secondary School, Ol, Omar, James.

I remember a time around 2000 maybe. On a quick scour of the "pre-google" internet a friend of mine, exactly who I am no longer sure, came across the cheapest yet least reliable (as it would later become aparent) method of connecting two computers. It was the infamous Null Modem. Where to find one and how to set the thing up, however, were not questions answered without a considerable voyage of discovery. In those days visiting a site like Altavista [History here] was unbelievable and exciting and any answers to any questions were not forthcoming as they are now. In fact we were seemingly doomed to plodding connections as it would later turn out that the Serial-Serial connection was incredibly slow as well as the afore mentioned set backs. A diagram of the pin to pin connection was somehow stumbled upon and in the technology building of school the first and only RS 232 was born, I'd like to think. I may still have it somewhere. If I do I'll post an image of it. From here the world opened up and I would love to go on but you're probably bored already. I'll tell you about it tomorrow...