This week I renewed for another couple of years my first internet domain: studioidea.it. I haven’t been using it for years, but it’s a piece of my past I just cannot let go. Who knows, maybe I will use it again some day.
I registered the domain in November of 1995. Official records say that it was registered in January 96, but I’m pretty sure it was 95. Probably they had not established modern protocols for domain registrations, or perhaps they had not invented calendars yet, I don’t remember.
Anyway, a little calculation revealed that sometime in the last year I passed the threshold of having spent more than half of my life connected to the Internet. Which sounds like a lot, but it also means that I have very clear memories of life before being online. Many people I work with just don’t have that notion, if not from the adventurous stories of us old farts. Many people I work with are younger of my domain name. Can you imagine?
Speaking of memories, I read that Fry’s Electronics shut down their stores this week. I remember going to Fry’s with my dad for the first time in the early 90s. At the time we would visit San Francisco every January for the yearly pilgrimage to Mac World. Discovering a shop which sold under the same roof computers, consumer electronics, junk food, books, electronic components and every other product a nerd my fancy buying made me think for the first time that there were other people like me on this planet (but maybe not in my neighborhood).
I visited Fry’s shops countless other times. I have fond memories of taking there several friends over the years (mostly to the Western themed one in Palo Alto). Last time I went after a long hiatus was in 2018, and it already felt like something from the past. In the post Amazon world a place like that didn’t made much sense anymore.
In other news, it’s the warmest end of February on record in Italy, and I have booked my flight back to London for the 6th of April. I booked before realising that Easter is on the 4th, so now I will have to figure out how to get a Covid test (with an English certificate) on Easter weekend. It’s going to be an interesting challenge.
That’s all folks, enjoy the early spring if you can, stay safe, be kind.
Being almost completely non-technical, I never ventured inside one of those shops like Fry’s. Every town had one. In Cardiff, where I was brought up, it was in the Wyndham Arcade that ran between The Hayes and High Street. That said, just gazing at the complete jumble in the window was a pleasure in itself. What the hell did anyone do with stuff like that?
And you’re right, Paolo, that world has gone. When you registered your first domain name, I was still dictating letters to a shorthand typist. Same routine every day after a lunch. Does anyone remember lunch?
Thanks for your comment John.
Shops with great abundance of products have always been fascinating. I’ve spent hours at the windows of a hardware store in the village nearby.
Hopefully lunches will come back. Shorthand typists… not so sure. We can dictate to Siri, but I appreciate that it’s not the same thing ;)