Hello, blog. Goodbye, friend.
A nostalgia trip to computers in the early 2000s.
Hi, subiabre here, the guy behind this blog. This post is a farewell letter, but it's also a nostalgia trip for many, like me, raised in the rising era of laptops as serious machines and the transition between the old internet 2.0 and the internet of today.
Hello, world.
This story begins sometime mid 2010~ (I'm not good with timelines).
I was a fairly tech aware kid. I had been in touch with a family owned desktop of which I can't remember any spec, but it was the classic CRT display + white case; then the family owned HP laptop of which I neither can't remember a single detail, I don't even know what color it was; and then I shared a PackardBell EasyNote MH36-V-500SP, Intel Celeron @ 2.2 GHz, 4GB DDR3 RAM and 250GB HDD, with my dad.
But one day out of the blue for everyone and with sketchy details involved, details I won't dive deep in, the government decided to hand out tiny netbooks for free to every student in elementary school. In hopes that would accelerate some sort of digital transition that actually never happened as most devices ended up being sold, destroyed or just accumulating dust.
For me, though, it was the beginning of an amazing journey into software development and computers that leads to me writing this post. Up until that moment I had only used machines that I had to share and as a kid I only ever used them for games and not much else. This machine changed the way I saw computers. And I was lucky enough to be on my last year of elementary school when this happened.
First, this was fully mine. I could use it as much as I wanted and as long as I wanted. Second, the specs of this Toshiba NB500, Intel Atom @ 1.66 GHz, 1GB DDR3 RAM and 250GB HDD, didn't really leave much space for games.
At least not games like CoD: MW3 (I swear I successfully installed and played the campaign in my dad's PB), and even less demanding games were still not an option because this machine came shipped with Linux, which at the time was a no-no option when considering gaming, on top of this double wall over gaming, the distro this machine fancied, Guadalinex, was a very limited and capped version of Ubuntu with the Xcfe environment. sudo access was nowhere to be seen, you couldn't install additional software because the current Ubuntu Software shop-thing wasn't really a thing yet, neither could you browse certain websites and many more things you can imagine were not an option.
You were really left with the bloatware it came shipped with and limited internet access. The only option to enjoy additional software was to run .exe Windows binaries through WINE.
But that limitation was what paved the way for me to jump head first into software. Since the machine itself was very limited I was forced to play with the bloatware it came shipped with... Bluefish, KompoZer, genie... and also to focus most of my leisure on browsing the internet instead of playing games. The mix was all shaken.
Sooner than later I was wondering how were webpages done. I remember downloading the source code for one and stripping it down so much that I basically made my own page out of that. It was some article about the game Crysis, and I'm sure my page looked awfully horrendous, but I thought it looked stunning. I had created it, I made it look and read that way. Since then I've only ever just been improving my technique at building websites of my own.
I don't remember what came first but I do remember making navbars with KompoZer (and getting frustrated with CSS), and somehow installing my own WordPress in some free server with DNS from some free registrar. The ship had sailed with no intent to ever go back. I started dreaming of pursuing a career in software development, learning HTML, CSS, PHP and some JavaScript by myself doing reverse engineering and mastering my googling capabilities. My learning was slow as I'm not a very constant person, nor the smartest, but it sure was fun and rewarding to get the machine to display and do whatever I could imagine. It was LEGO to the tenth power.
After that I stumbled across a keyboard and a mouse in a box in the street, waiting for them to be dispatched by the garbage truck. A 4:3 flat screen bulky monitor that I don't know where it came from and where it went completed my setup... only a little more step on the way: an O.S where I could actually do things. I didn't mention it but before actually tweaking code for webpages I had already learned about distros and had installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my Toshiba to finally be free.
It was all thanks to this little machine, both in size and specs, that my life took a path I now feel is the right one to follow. It was in this machine that I learned about Linux, my fingers can still type sudo apt-get install banshee almost as fast as a copy-paste (back when banshee was the hottest music player for Ubuntu instead of abandonware), about Free Open Source Software, that I learned what are programs and how they are done, and basically my entire basis knowledge about software comes from this underperformant, locked netbook.
I even started playing with some python on this thing, but I got bored of it before actually building anything cool.
SystemError: unknown error.
But not many things last long. This Toshiba died after about 4 years of good, loyal service. I grieve it like a friend because for me it was a friend. It brought me joy, memories, knowledge, and with its departure, sadness. Cause of death still unknown, but this machine was well known for its heating problems. My guess is that the fan stopped working silently and the CPU burned under its own heat. Whatever it was the machine wouldn't even boot anymore.
My dad moved some wires and my brother helped me recover the hard drive from the Toshiba to put it on the already deteriorated body of the family owned HP I talked about at the start of this post. But due to an accident I wiped Ubuntu and my friend from the hard drive trying to install Windows 7 on a partition, sadly Windows 7 was built to get rid of rivals and wiped the entire hard drive with no chance to partition it. I cried knowing that I'd never see my friend ever again.
If you know something about old HP laptops is that they weren't really build to last long. Though after almost 10 years, the mysterious HP laptop also went dead with another unknown failure. I don't even remember what my guess was.
About two years went by where I didn't have a machine for myself and had to rely on the ol' reliable dad's Packard Bell and other borrowed machines. This really slowed down my self-study of software, so by the time I was ready to end high school and join college I thought I'd better pursue my other interest at the time.
My sister then chose an ASUS F540SA, Intel Celeron @ 1.6 GHz, 4GB DD3 RAM and 500GB HDD, as a gift to help me endure my college years ahead.
v2.0
I told my sister I'd do great things on that machine. And so I did. I used that ASUS to the extreme.
Despite not studying Computer Science as I should, I got serious about my software development with that machine. I learned actual programming there, not just HTML, CSS and WordPress themes tweaking. In that ASUS I learned about modern PHP, composer, OOP, JavaScript, git, npm, Symfony... In that machine I did my first professional works as a freelancer. I wrote my first actual applications in that laptop. Endless night hours spent writing, mining, line of code after line of code. Error and fix. Solve and learn.
I know what you're thinking. And you are wrong. I didn't kill this machine by yet again unknown causes. This machine is still well and alive, working and serving. In fact is in that machine that I wrote the original code for bloggit. It's also the machine where I wrote the code for the forests war and the original deforestation bot and where I wrote other cool things.
And look, I'm actually not the most careful laptop owner there is, I've treated this thing roughly. My current machine actually has undergone 2 hard drives, 1 battery and 1 ribbon cable replacements. The charging socket now won't fit all the way and it needs to remain in a certain position to charge. The right hinge lost a screw out of the blue, and the screen is lightly curved on the center. Some of the paint has wore off and the fan sometimes will lose balance and touch the chasis, making a very worrying sound. There are also about five small dots on the screen where the pixels are brighter and looks like there was damage to the LCD.
But despite that long paragraph about how damaged mine has gotten in 4 years, remember that this model is a lowend laptop meant for basic work. And in 4 years of rough handling it has always performed what I asked it to do, sometimes things over it's threshold, things like recording and mixing high definition sound, not so old games, high-demanding tasks for SETI@home and FAH, hosting 24/7 bots and etc. And it always delivered non disappointing results all while being kept carried in backpacks here and there, withstading numerous accidents and some spills, and never heating, complaining or showing actual signs of stress except for the very earned crash once in a month.
If you ever stumble one of these, you should know it's a machine worth it's value. Don't be silly, it won't ever perform as a high-end computer, you won't play Fortnite at 60fps. But, it's a machine that will be loyal to you, a machine you can rely on to work with and do serious stuff when you need to.
Update required. Please upgrade.
But it is still a lowend and despite myself still feeling that machine alive and asking me to keep her working, I need to upgrade. If I plan to be serious on my software journey I need a machine that I can carry more sites, a machine that I won't need to spend as much in maintenance and a machine that will deliver even better results. It is necessary for me that I invest in a good tool.
Now I'm writing these lines from another ASUS machine (this post isn't paid by ASUS, they're just affordable, reliable and good for me), the D509DA-EJ098, AMD Ryzen 7 @ 2.3 Ghz, 8GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB SSD. It's the machine where I hope to actually become a professional and the machine I hope to spend with this next decade ahead of me. I wonder what new things will the 2020s deliver me. I have already enjoyed the 2010s.
It is with great joy that I start this blog, to keep record of all the things I achieve next, but it is also with lots of nostalgia that I nerdishly honour the great service of the machines that have initiated and accompanied me in my journey.
In loving memory of the Toshiba that started everything and with friendly fondness to the little ASUS that could. :heart: