My Technophilic Musings

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I’m going to be bespectacled and have been advised to reduce and limit my computer usage considerably. A bit of nostalgia set in on hearing this and I thought about my short journey so far in this wonderland of solid-state and otherwise.

First time I touched a computer.
> 1989, at school in 2nd standard

First command I typed on a computer.
> “dir”, 1990, 3rd standard

First game I played on a computer.
> “bricks”, 1991, 4th standard

First Colored game I played on a computer.
> “Dangerous Dave”, 1991, 4th standard

First program I wrote on a computer.
> “Hello, Ankit!” in basic, 1992, 5th standard(The pre-teenage rebel in me substituted the “world” by “Ankit”. Why “Ankit”? That’s a mystery )

First time I held a mouse.
>1992, 5th standard, Windows 3.0

First Windows Program I used
>PaintBrush (MSPaint today), 1992, 5th standard

First “3d” game I played
> Wolfenstein 3D (or Wolf), 1993, 6th standard

First hack
> “Remote controlling” friend’s school PC by swapping the mouse cords, 1993, 6th standard

First movie I watched on a computer
> “The wonderful world of Plants” or something similar, 1993, 6th standard

First introduction to the internet
> 1994, 7th standard, A demo by an ISP to the whole school.

First site I opened on the internet
> disneyland.com, 1994, 7th standard

First commercial movie I watched on a computer
> “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, 1995, 8th standard

First introduction to Linux
> Suse 4.x, 1996, 9th standard

First self-taught language learnt
> HTML, 1997, 10th standard

First Computer at home
> Celeron 466 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 8GB HDD, for around 60k, 1998, 11th standard

First C program
> “Hello, Shantanu!”, 1998, 11th standard (Now, do you get it?)

First net connection at home
> 1998, 11th standard, ISP:Glide dial up. around 250 bucks for 5 hours at 56 kbps + telephone usage charges.

First Quake III Arena game
> 2000, almost at the end of 12th standard

First major gaming session
> 2000, QIII Arena, 11 hours straight, Tier1-Tier5, 2 days before my CET exam (Entrance test for my engineering college). For the record, I was so obsessed with QIII back then that I even had a quicky 5-minute game (DM17 map) in the 45 minute break I got during the exam as my home was quite near the exam center.

First “real” hack
> 2001, B.E., First year. Wrote and installed a TSR onto a friend’s system to print out “U R Doomed” whenever he typed something.

First Linux self-install
> Red Hat 7.0, 2001, B.E., First year

Longest Gaming Session till date
> December 2001, B.E., 2nd year. Deus Ex, 26 hours with 4-5 breaks spanning from 2-15 minutes max. Finished with all the alternate endings.

First major Q3 Arena lan-tournament
> Early 2002, B.E. 2nd year. At NSIT Innovision tech fest.

First Blog
>http://iamhuman.blogspot.com, 2004, B.E., Final year

First program in the corporate world
> Optimization and multi-channelization of H.264 stitching, 2004

First real project in the corporate world
> Epsilon, the new low cost BTS (Base Transceiver Station) by Nokia, 2004

First Laptop
> 2005, Compaq Presario R4025, AMD64 2.0 GHz, 1GB RAM, 128 MB gfx Card. US$1300

First Windows Mobile Program
> ShantzTodayChanger, 2007

Finally bought first domain name
>http://shantanugoel.com, 2008

These “firsts” aren’t anything big in themeselves but have been an important part of my life in one or the other way making my love for computers growing at an even faster pace. So what are your nostalgic moments with your beloved machine?

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Quote of the day: “There’s a time and a place for everything, and it’s called college.” — Chef

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written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: commands, Computers, corporate, games, history, linux, nostalgia, Programming