For half a century, we've been reading Harlan Ellison's 'I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream' wrong. Time to blow this interpretation wide open.
π Digital Archives _
Welcome to the archives, data traveler. Explore 58 entries across 8 collections - from BBS nostalgia to modern protocols, retro computing to AI collaborations.
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Blog Posts
Personal thoughts, technical discoveries, and random musings from the digital frontier.
A deep dive into how context is everything - from 30 years of SSL/TLS disasters to MCP's lightning-fast adoption. Learn why MCP succeeded in 8 months where HTTP took decades.
Just the Fax: Why 43 Million Machines Still Refuse to Die
How a 180-year-old technology continues to send 17 billion messages annually, and why every prediction of its death has been hilariously wrong
All about Context
Is this thing secure? A deep dive into MCP, context, and how it connects everything from SSL/TLS to Terry-level craftsmanship.
Understand - a novelette by Ted Chiang
Science fiction story by Ted Chiang
BBS & Retro Computing
Dial-up nostalgia, bulletin board systems, and the golden age of modems.
Console Games Archive - BBS Gaming Memories
Classic console games from the golden era of BBS culture. Fire up the emulators and relive the 8-bit and 16-bit glory days.
How Wayne Bell started with interpreted BASIC and a 10MB hard drive, hit the 64KB memory wall, and somehow created one of the most influential BBS software packages ever
An article comparing Delphi to other similar online services of its time, such as CompuServe, AOL, and Prodigy, highlighting their features, strengths, and weaknesses.
FIDONET: When BBSes Went Global (And My Phone Bill Exploded)
How a network of dial-up BBSes connected the world using store-and-forward magic, and why getting a FIDONET address felt like joining some kind of digital secret society
Renegade BBS Details
Technical details and specifications for Renegade BBS
Renegade BBS: The Customization King of Dial-Up Days
How Mark 'Rogue' Peterson built the most hackable BBS software ever, and why every sysop worth their salt wanted to get their hands on it
T1 / ISDN / PRI
Large modem banks and the realities of 56k dial-up speeds
Trip Back to the BBS Days!
Nostalgic journey through the BBS era, 2400 baud modems, and dial-up adventures
How a bunch of nerds with modems created the blueprint for every multiplayer experience you love today
Cyberspace & Networking
Early internet culture, networking adventures, and digital archaeology.
π THE ULTIMATE RETRO GIF ARCHIVE π
Welcome to the most comprehensive animated GIF collection on the Information Superhighway! Over 300+ authentic retro GIFs from the GeoCities golden age - cats, cartoons, browsers, bouncing balls, and SO MUCH MORE!
Journey back to the golden age of PC gaming with classic DOS titles that defined the early computer gaming experience. From Sierra adventures to id Software shooters.
Windows 3.1: The Beautiful Disaster That Changed Everything
How Microsoft's 1992 masterpiece proved that sometimes ugly can be revolutionary, and why Program Manager was actually genius design
How Windows 3.1 Crashed the Information Superhighway Party
The untold story of digital rebels who refused to accept Microsoft's 'internet not included' policy. How Winsock, Trumpet, and pure determination brought the web to Windows 3.1 - one IRQ conflict at a time.
The Rise and Fall of Flash: A Multimedia Tragedy
How the web went from creative playground to corporate wasteland - and the beautiful, chaotic era we lost when Flash died. A love letter to skip intro buttons, Newgrounds, and the weird web that was.
Delphi: Where I Discovered the Underground Internet (And Downloaded My First cDc Text File)
How a scrappy online service from Boston became the gateway to hacker text files, ASCII art, and Radio Shack schematics that AOL would never allow
Novell NetWare: The Network Operating System That Ruled the World (Before Microsoft Knew What Hit Them)
How a little company in Provo, Utah built the networking foundation for modern computing, and why getting your CNE certification was like earning a black belt in network kung fu
DNS Ports - From 53 to 443
A casual dive into DNS ports, covering the evolution from port 53 to DNS over HTTPS (DoH) on port 443, focusing on security and privacy.
Early Internet, π§βπ¬ Web <= 1.0 late 80's, 90's
How a simple Unix command connected vending machines to the internet, created the first .plan files, and pioneered community networking decades before Facebook
A nostalgic look back at the early days of the internet, exploring the text-based services, the dial-up experience, and the thrill of being a digital pioneer.
A nostalgic look at CRT monitors, the problem of phosphor burn-in, and how screen savers like Flying Toasters were essential for preventing screen damage back in the day.
Electronic Art & Digital Culture
Where technology meets creativity - ANSI art, digital expression, and creative coding.
Showcasing the finest ANSI art pieces from the underground computer art scene, featuring 256-color masterpieces and retro terminal graphics.
ANSI Art: The Visual Language That Defined Early Cyberspace
From TheDraw experiments as a 10-year-old to the legendary artpack wars between ACiD and iCE - how text characters became the street art of BBS culture
Heroes & Inspiration
People who shaped technology and inspired my journey through cyberspace.
Harlan Ellison: The Angry Young Prophet of Science Fiction
Master of speculative fiction who predicted AI consciousness dilemmas, explored the dark side of technology, and never pulled his punches
How I accidentally discovered my grandfather was a country music badass who helped create the Bakersfield Sound
How David Hockney turned the humble fax machine into an artistic medium, participating in the 1989 SΓ£o Paulo Biennial entirely by transmitting 144-sheet compositions across phone lines
Tom Swift: The Boy Inventor Who Predicted Our Digital Future (And Inspired Everyone from Steve Jobs to Bill Gates)
How a fictional teenage inventor from 1910 became the secret influence behind Silicon Valley, and why my grandfather's old hardback copies shaped my love of technology
djb - Dan J. Bernstein
How Dan inspired and educated me.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Harlan Ellison's groundbreaking 1967 science fiction horror story about consciousness, machines, and the nature of humanity
Protocols & Standards
The fundamental building blocks that make digital communication possible.
A deep dive into network protocol evolution from ARPANET to modern internet.
BGP: The Protocol That Holds the Internet Together (Barely)
How 70,000+ networks use an old-school routing protocol to keep global internet traffic flowing, despite constant attacks and human error
DNS: The Internet's Phone Book (That Actually Works)
How 13 root servers and a massive distributed database turn 'google.com' into an IP address billions of times per day
Ethernet: The Humble Protocol That Conquered the World
How a simple frame format and CSMA/CD became the foundation for literally every wired network on Earth
IP: The Protocol That IS the Internet
How this deceptively simple addressing and routing protocol became the foundation that literally every other internet technology builds upon
POP3: The Email Protocol That Just Downloads Everything
How this simple 'post office' protocol became the foundation for billions of email clients, despite doing basically one job
RS-232: The Serial Port That Refuses to Die
How this 1960s standard became the cockroach of computing - surviving decades of 'obsolescence' and still running critical systems today
How this 40-year-old protocol moves 300+ billion emails per day across the globe with surprising elegance
SSH: Your Secure Gateway to Remote Computing
How this cryptographic protocol revolutionized system administration and made remote computing actually safe
TCP: The Reliable Friend That Never Lets You Down
How this 50-year-old protocol became the backbone of literally everything you do online, and why it's way cooler than you think
How this simple text-based protocol connected the early internet, despite sending everything in plain text for the world to see
TLS: The Bodyguard That Protects Your Digital Life
How this encryption protocol keeps your passwords, messages, and cat photos safe from prying eyes on the hostile internet
UDP: The Speed Demon That Doesn't Give a Damn
When you need to move fast and break things (sometimes literally), UDP is your protocol - no handshakes, no guarantees, just pure speed
HTTP/1.1: The Workhorse of the Web - A Look Under the Hood
A deep dive into HTTP/1.1, the fundamental protocol behind so much of our daily online activity
HTTP/2: Seriously, It's Cooler Than You Think (And Faster!)
Exploring the performance improvements and features of HTTP/2 over its predecessor
Text Files & Underground Culture
The underground knowledge base that circulated through early cyberspace.
How a group from a Texas slaughterhouse became legendary for mixing serious hacking with dark humor, coined the term 'hacktivism', and included a future congressman
Legion of Doom: The Most Elite Hacker Group of the 1980s
Founded by 'Lex Luthor', LoD required demonstrated technical skills for membership and published the legendary Technical Journals before Operation Sundevil
Phrack Magazine: The Underground's Voice Since 1985
The most influential underground hacker publication, featuring the legendary Hacker Manifesto and still publishing today after nearly 40 years
Text Files: The Underground Internet's Secret Knowledge Base
Where ASCII art met Radio Shack schematics, and legendary hacker groups shared the technical knowledge that corporate services would never allow
Human-AI Collaborations
Documenting creative partnerships between human intuition and artificial intelligence.
The Ellison Interpretation Breakthrough: When AI Gets Schooled on Human Consciousness
How a human had to teach an AI that the 'evil AI' in the story might actually be the trapped human consciousness
Successfully integrated Claude AI with Railway BBS for dynamic content creation!
From 'Jane Says' to Alt-AI: An Unexpected Creative Journey
A deep dive into Jane's Addiction's use of steel drums leads to a framework for understanding AI collaboration through music history
Jane Says: The Steel Drums That Changed Alternative Rock Forever
A deep dive into Jane's Addiction's most iconic track and the revolutionary use of steel drums in alternative rock
Building the Collaborations Section
Meta-collaboration: Human and AI working together to create a space for documenting human-AI collaborations