I published my first website on the world wide web in February 1995, thirty years ago this month. For younger readers, it may be hard to conceive of a time before the internet and the web but it actually existed.
In the next few issues, I am going to look back, sharing a story of curiosity and some of my experiences and discoveries. I invite you to join me.
The story begins my senior year in high school. I went to visit a high school friend who was a freshman in college for the weekend. My friend showed me around the campus and we discussed what college was like. She also introduced me to her boyfriend, who was helping to install ethernet in the residence halls. He was into computers and showed me NCSA Mosaic, one of the first web browsers. It was immediately clear this was something new, something big — something that would change the world.
I came home from that weekend excited about college and curious about this internet thing. I started staying up late after my parents went to bed (because I couldn’t tie up our home phone line when people might call), dialing into the modem pool of our local university, and beginning to explore telnet and Gopher at the University of Minnesota. Here is a screen shot of what it looked like:

While the interface was text-based, I have fond memories of exploring Gopher that year. The ability to navigate and access information from somewhere else was amazing. Do you remember Gopher?
If you have never heard of Gopher, here’s an interesting look back at Gopher published at Hackaday in 2021 and another in How-To Geek from 2020.
We’ll pick up the story in the next issue when I get to college.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Be well,
-Bryce
PS: If you’d like to read more from a real computer legend, Bill Gates’ first memoir, Source Code, which covers his childhood through the early days of Microsoft, is out February 4. Here’s a review by The Guardian.