Embarrasment time! Post your earliest known technical online appearance. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 03:56:23 am
content: I'll start.Fairlight Instruments Factory Tour 1986 part 2Starting at 2:18, the young fellow with the dumb haircut and too shy to say anything to the camera, is me.Ha ha... and I can date that event as very shortly after I got married, since for the wedding was the only time in my entire life I ever shaved my beard off. I hate how I look without it. Since I married in June 1987, I think the year listed on the video is wrong.Oh, and then the camera pans to a proto-board circuit I was working on. It's a bit of a tangle. I think that was part of a video timebase corrector system I was working on. My proto board, I still have it.

author: lowimpedance
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 04:16:18 am
content: That was one serious forrest on the bread board, just the way i like it

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 11:35:24 am
content: The problem with "back then" that might seem to puzzle the youngsters these days, photos of workplaces were rare, and videos even rarer.I know people who went their entire career without a scrap of photographic evidence. I'm not that far behind. Didn't get my first camera until maybe the mid 90's, and first digital camera in 2001 or so. And even then you never thought to take it into work, or even photograph your stuff at home, because who would see it before the web came along?Now it's a zillion mobile phone photos and videos plastered all over the interwebs.I present a lame effort of Doug Ford & I in the Thales lab.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 11:48:56 am
content: I don't think cameras were allowed anywhere I ever worked. You're just going to have to take my word for it that I was always extremely handsome and stylish.

author: McBryce
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 11:50:22 am
content: @Terrahertz: Congratulations for at least having the most acceptable haircut by todays standards O0 and resisting the temptation to grow a "Tom Selleck".Cameras of any sort are still prohibited in the buildings I work in, so it looks like other than the group photo in the carpark, my carreer is going to remain photographically unrecordedMcBryce.

author: robrenz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 12:31:19 pm
content: Not very early but definitely the first. No haircut comments pleaseYou have to run the video for a few secondshttps://youtu.be/wwgO6Lg4RZM?t=2s

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 12:38:11 pm
content: Quote from: John Coloccia on August 05, 2015, 11:48:56 amThey also weren't in certain parts of companies I've worked out, and not at all for guests.Took them a long time to figure out that mobile phones could actually have cameras in them, but once they did, wow, the hoopla was incredible!Not sure what they'd do these days's that practically everyone has a 20MP full HD camera phone they cannot live without.

author: KJDS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 12:44:55 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 05, 2015, 12:38:11 pmI've worked in a few places with lines of lockers in the entrance area to stash your phone before going into the sensitive places. In one such facility, after carefully locking away my phone and passing the big sign that you'd get ten years jail for being in possession of a camera, we'd go into the office and carry on designing a camera phone.Going back in history, I sent my first email in 1984 and first plugged a phone handset into a modem in 1979.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 12:49:53 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 05, 2015, 12:38:11 pmSpeaking of which, that reminds me one day I got hauled into MD's office and threatened with being fired because I released company secrets on the (new fangled) internetA contractor went through all the usual NDA hoopla about our product, and then decided to search the interwebs (Google wasn't around then I don't think) and they found my web page that had a link to a picture of the product on it. And given the photo you could work out confidential performance aspects of the product etc. So they went WTF, and told the MD that an employee (me) was releasing all these company secrets!Turns out of course I was simply linking to a design award we had won for the productThey asked me how I got the photo, WTF I was doing publishing it etc, and then were quite perplexed when I told themtheysubmitted the photo to the design award and it was on the award websiteThey ordered me to remove it immediately. Took an hour to explain to them how the internet worked and why I couldn't remove itThey still wanted the link removed in the belief that would somehow make the material on the award website vanish

author: McBryce
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 12:50:32 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 05, 2015, 12:38:11 pmGotta hand in your phone at reception here. For a while the standard company phone was the last Nokia without a camera until that stopped being made.McBryce.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 01:55:56 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 05, 2015, 12:49:53 pmAnd people wonder what happened to tech industry in Australia. Those ignoramuses should have been cleaning the lavatory, not running the company.I never worked in any high security companies, but in every case except two, the companies were run by people who I could have sworn were certifiable morons. Fairlight was one exception, but although Vogel & Ryrie were pretty smart, nice guys and technically creative, they were still spoiled rich kids who didn't really have much of an understanding of technology development. (Hence the company went broke due to management mistakes, despite the illustrious start.)The sole instance of a place I worked at being run by sane, sensible, smart and nice guys, they both decided to retire and sell the company, after I was there a bit over a year. (Not related to my joining!) The people they sold it to were even worse than usual, in that not only were they morons and arseholes, but actual criminals as well. The worst nightmare... And I couldn't quit due to being in the process of paying off a mortgage rapidly via the quite high pay. There are no online images from that soul-sucking pit, thank goodness.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 02:25:54 pm
content: For someone in my age group I am both very unusual and very lucky. There are 0 photographs* or videos of me online. And for that I'm extremely happy.*And the only ones IRL are on IDs.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 04:04:12 pm
content: https://web.archive.org/web/19970605094939/http://www.ping.be/~ping0751/1995 .. I've been on the interwebs for 20 friggin years ...

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 07:46:43 pm
content: Not electronics related, but me all the same;http://www.mwdropbox.com/RCM-gallery/files/Williams,Tim/Me_and_a_Casting.jpgI still have much of that home foundry gear, but don't have any space to practice it (or much need to).Tim

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 08:02:11 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on August 05, 2015, 04:04:12 pmHa! Me too. I was active on several usenet groups starting in 1993! Seems like yesterday..

author: ElectroIrradiator
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 09:40:45 pm
content: Hmm, despite having been on the 'net since 1990 I have precious little to show for it. Most of the really interesting stuff happened when good digicams were few and far in between. Might otherwise have had a few fun photos, like a 1m door. 1m thickness, that is.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2015, 10:29:04 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 05, 2015, 12:38:11 pmIt was quite a problem, actually, when I was working out at Edwards Air Force Base. There was only one crappy cellular carrier that worked, and it was quite a PITA to get a phone that worked well and DIDN'T have a camera. The final solution is we all had two phones...the base phone and our company phone. I'm not even sure what they do now. At the time, there was talk of possibly breaking the camera, covering it with black epoxy, etc etc.Honestly, I think part of what they must be concerned about these days is the potential for phones to get hacked and start snapping all sorts of pictures and things without the owner even knowing. I don't know that was really a concern back in the early 2000s when we still all had dumb phones, but good luck locking down these new pocket computers.

author: mauroh
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 12:04:56 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 05, 2015, 11:35:24 amI think I always went at work/university/... with a camera in my bag since 1995a film camera of course...The one attached was taken during few weeks I spent in 1998 at STMicroelectronics.Going back to the topic, I think in 2002 I loaded my first picture onwww.mauroh.comnever changedMauro

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 12:30:37 am
content: Cameras aren't allowed anywhere on the campus where I work. Unless you have an official camera pass (essentially a badge for the camera).The company even selected notebook computers without cameras for the division where I work (R&D). Now that you can't hardly find any portable computers without cameras, they developed a software way to turn them off, and a process that phones home if the camera, drivers, or disable software is tampered with.

author: sleemanj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 01:01:27 am
content: The first sign of my existence I could find are Usenet posts from January 1996 and a wayback capture of a site probably made around the same time (but wasn't captured until a few years later). No I'm not linking them, way too much personally identifiable information in them for the modern web, holy crap, I put my freaking home phone number on the web in those days (and it's still the same... :-/).I think I first got "onto the internet" in 1995, before that I was a local (Christchurch NZ) BBS junkie, particularly lurking around Equinox, Abacab, Amiga Info II, Xenolink (I think was it's name), ran my own for a short time latterly it used the Amiga 3000 hardware from Abacab, and the DLGPro software from Equinox, both of which were closed down by then.That may sound like a bit of a diversion, but Equinox actually had somewhat of a pivotal role in the early days of making email and usenet available to the public in NZ, all be it in a limited way -The Chronicles of the Equinox StabilityVoyager Internet came along in 1995 (I think) with from memory $5 an hour charges for dialup which was an unbelievably cheap price at the time and that basically was the end of the BBS in NZ.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 01:21:51 am
content: No camera signs have been posted at every place I have worked. I would guess my earliest posts have been deleted from the BBS days.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 09:27:43 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on August 05, 2015, 04:04:12 pmI can remember when, in Australia at least, in 1995 it was really quite hard to get onto the web. You had to find one of those new fangled ISP's, get them to snail mail you an install disk for their proprietary dialer software, and dial into a local number and hope they had enough modem connections (modem to user ratio!).Windows 95 made it infinitely easier with the Microsoft Network (MSN) which was Microsoft's own attempt at the Internet with their own services and pages etc. But you could email across into the "real" internet!I told this story to David2 the other day and I don't think he believed me!

author: McBryce
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 11:00:03 am
content: First internet access was through the universities here. Unfortunately I had already left by then, but security was lax. Walked through the door, applied for "Login Access" with a made up student number and I was onEventually got banned after I had given myself Admin rights on their serverA few years later you couldn't walk into an electronics shop without someone handing you a disk to access AOLs walled garden.McBryce.

author: mauroh
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 12:32:58 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 06, 2015, 09:27:43 amYou will have a hard time explaining the speed we was use to manage....BTW searching on my old files I found this:http://alternatezone.com/electronics/hsfg.htmI think this is my first "contact" with Mr. David L. Jones.Well a bit late but thank you!!With small modifications i built it and used for a long time.I attached a selfie with the first working prototype in 2002No one was making selfie in 2002 neither with electronics backgroundMauro

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 01:18:33 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 06, 2015, 09:27:43 amI can't imagine trying to get him to believe that the acoustic coupler from Wargames was not only a real way but for many the only (legal) way to get on the internet. If you were lucky enough to know a BBS with access to the internet. If nobody else was on it at the time...Or that once upon a time hypercards were going to be the next big thing BEFORE anyone even considered been able to link outside of one file let alone across a network.And I must have being one boring kid seeing as I can remember both well.

author: mauroh
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 06, 2015, 01:43:21 pm
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on August 06, 2015, 01:18:33 pmMost probably boring but never boredMauro