Been on the internet for years...

jonbeeza

jonbeeza

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In the earlier days of having the internet, I used to mainly look up classic cars, as I always wanted to try and buy one. That was the main thing that I used to spend hours upon hours, of reading up on. The main websites of the day, used to be blogger and such like blogging platforms. I always had a very vague memory of reading a blog, going back many years ago. It featured a young girl with her very first car, and she was leaning next to it. I started to think maybe I had imagined it, as I could never find the blog again, until today that is.

Just been looking at some very old blogs, that have all been abandoned. Most are personal little snippets of nothingness, while some are very informative and really pretty interesting.
But all share the same common thing, they have never been maintained and not been updated.

It is really annoying, because a lot of search engines don't seem to show blogs in results anymore, only money generating content.
 
As we know it doesn't matter what platform we use, adverts are forced on us to the point that we now use add blockers with our browsers.
We live in a profit and greed world it's all about money these days.
Just look how often new subscriber based companies start up because the model has a potential to make loads of cash.
 
I try to use different search engines now, as if I want to search for a write up of a camera such as a users thoughts, or about classic cars etc, all the well known shops pop up, page after page. They never list proper websites, with user generated content, only commercial websites, although TP does flash up now and again, so that is a good thing.
 
Years ago, before the Internet I used to buy a motorcycle magazine that was just stories of the owners experiences etc. Can't remember what it was called.
It was a smaller physical sized magazine compared to the other mags.
I used to love reading the stories.
I suppose they were the pre-internet equivalent of blogs.....
 
Seems to help, if you stick BLOGG and then a topic of interest, it does list personal websites, with only a few commercial sites creeping in.
 
hashcake said:
We live in a profit and greed world it's all about money these days.
Click to expand...
Then again, human life has been largely about greed and selfishness for the entirety of recorded history. There have been attempts to change this but they have seldom worked for more than a decade or two.

The idea that "there's more to life than money" is a fabrication of the middle classes, which started during the Victorian era, in Europe and America. It was never true, except for a very few wealthy individuals who had inherited that wealth and thus never had to earn a living. The rest of us had (and have) to worry about money...

Money worries sign in Worgle R1_02357.JPG
 
Bobsyeruncle said:
Years ago, before the Internet I used to buy a motorcycle magazine that was just stories of the owners experiences etc. Can't remember what it was called.
It was a smaller physical sized magazine compared to the other mags.
I used to love reading the stories.
I suppose they were the pre-internet equivalent of blogs.....
Click to expand...
Used motorcycle guide , I used to get it too
 
Bobsyeruncle said:
Years ago, before the Internet I used to buy a motorcycle magazine that was just stories of the owners experiences etc. Can't remember what it was called.
It was a smaller physical sized magazine compared to the other mags.
I used to love reading the stories.
I suppose they were the pre-internet equivalent of blogs.....
Click to expand...
LCPete said:
Used motorcycle guide , I used to get it too
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Whenever I visit my mate, I read some of his classic bike books. He also collects some interesting bikes. I used to read a bike mag, with some funny cartoons. I think it was called Mitzi and Ordtdz, the main characters in the bikers mag that is.
 
Mitzi (with the titzis...) was Ogri's squeeze. Used to be in Bike magazine and after that, Back Street Heroes. The artist (Paul Sample) also did the illustrations for the Tom Sharpe novels.
 
Nod said:
Mitzi (with the titzis...) was Ogri's squeeze. Used to be in Bike magazine and after that, Back Street Heroes. The artist (Paul Sample) also did the illustrations for the Tom Sharpe novels.
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I think I had copies of all of them, in fact I had a massive stack some years ago, annoyed I got shut of them. Great bog reading material, my mate has a copy or two for such instances, hands properly sanitized afterwards. ;)
 
I dumped google as a search engine years ago, TBH I find it's actually one of the worst for getting results.

Search for a video and the first 20 pages will be google owned YouTube,

Google is not a search company it's a data harvesting / selling and advertising company
 
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whiteflyer said:
I dumped google as a search engine years ago, TBH I find it's actually one of the worst for getting results.

Search for a video and the first 20 pages will be google owned YouTube,

Google is not a search company it's a data harvesting / selling and advertising company
Click to expand...

I tend to use duck duck and Brave.
 
Nod said:
Mitzi (with the titzis...) was Ogri's squeeze. Used to be in Bike magazine and after that, Back Street Heroes. The artist (Paul Sample) also did the illustrations for the Tom Sharpe novels.
Click to expand...

I still have 3 of the cartoon compilations.

Curious fact - for severl years in the early days of the internet, when I entered my name in google images one of the first pictures to appear was Ogri, and for a long time Ogri was my avatar on Bikemagic and Harmony Central.

Bike magazine was a long-time favourite, and I only really stopped reading it when I had to hang up my leather and the price of the magazine was dinner for a couple of days.
 
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whiteflyer said:
I dumped google as a search engine years ago, TBH I find it's actually one of the worst for getting results.

Search for a video and the first 20 pages will be google owned YouTube,

Google is not a search company it's a data harvesting / selling and advertising company
Click to expand...


A lot depends on what you're looking for. Last week I spent a couple of working days researching scientific papers on a particular topic, and google (mostly scholar, but not entirely) was extremely useful. However I agree that the nature of google is malign, and for private use it's DDG for me.
 
Before the net got so big that it pretty much put nail in coffin of newspapers and magazines, I used to grab photography magazines every week. I ended up with a stack of them in a press, meaning to get them to recycle at some point. A friend's daughter started a college course in videography/photography and I passed all the old mag's on to her, she was delighted and began doing the suggested projects/assignments from those mags, said she learned tonnes from them [as did I, as I read them along the way]

Now it's, youtube when you want to learn something, but it's not quite the same. Sitting down reading a physical paper article I think sees you concentrate that bit more, also it was just cool to take a magazine with you when travelling. Sure, you can use your phone, but you have so much available to you at any time you end up constant searching, scrolling, skim reading and at some point end up watching crazy videos from Russia!

I remember some good blogs from back then too, and I did feel a little sad/nostalgic when they'd dissapear [owners just stopped paying for that url in many cases] - Vlogs replaced Blogs pretty quickly once everyone had access to faster broadband and better tech [decent vid cams for vlogging became very cheap fast too] Podcasts also became more popular, but I'm not a fan overall, I preferred when I could skim over the stuff I had no interest in, with podcasts you never know where you're at when trying to skim through
 
I frequently revisit my livejournal Blog. I started it when I was in school in 1999 ish and it followed me through college and into working life.
Its full of [PLEASE DON'T TRY TO BYPASS THE SWEAR FILTER], but reading really takes me back to those times, good and bad. It even documents my meeting and subsequent break up with my first girlfriend and later on my meeting and subsequent relationship to my now wife!

And no, I won’t be posting the link here.
 
Cagey75 said:
I remember some good blogs from back then too, and I did feel a little sad/nostalgic when they'd dissapear
Click to expand...

I still have a blog (began in 2003) and although it peaked at around 1000 hits/day and too many comments to reply to, now it gets almost zero traffic and very occasional comments by distant friends. The blogosphere, if not dead, is certainly deeply asleep.

Mr Bastable said:
I remember when this were all fields ;)
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1621804293932.png
 
Cagey75 said:
Yes, nostalgia is old ... but isn't it kinda strange/interesting that we're now getting nostalgic about modern tech?
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The upside of blogging is that we're STILL friends with the guys I got to know, and we still occasionally stay with them when in Canada or vice versa when they come to the UK.
 
ancient_mariner said:
The upside of blogging is that we're STILL friends with the guys I got to know, and we still occasionally stay with them when in Canada or vice versa when they come to the UK.
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That is cool. I met my partner online, 15yrs ago, long before the usual 'dating' sites we have today. It was MSN we used, even that seems really old skool now
 
Cagey75 said:
Yes, nostalgia is old ... but isn't it kinda strange/interesting that we're now getting nostalgic about modern tech?
Click to expand...
Not in the slightest, I've no doubt some people were nostalgic for the war or some people will be nostalgic about lockdowns. All part of the human condition.
 
It just seems so recent, broadband for example is only really readily available 15yr or so Then I guess I get nostalgic for the time my kids were little and not angsty teens :LOL:
 
A lot of people did do blogs back in the day, they were pretty interesting to read. But as others have already mentioned, YouTube came along, and all the bloggers did become vloggers. I do watch a lot of Vloggers, unfortunately it is on YouTube, pity there was not an independent platform, that does not track everything you do.

Yes I do use duck and brave, but still a bit of tracking going on.
 
Cagey75 said:
That is cool. I met my partner online, 15yrs ago, long before the usual 'dating' sites we have today. It was MSN we used, even that seems really old skool now
Click to expand...

Im still friends with a girl I met on ICQ, must have been 1997 or so.
I also met my wife on a long gone social media platform in 2000.
 
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