bg/ag publishing

bg/ish: Saying Goodbye To An Old Friend

Technologies come and go. Remember your first pager? I do. Of course that eventually gave way to your first cell phone, and with it, text messaging and the fall of western civilization. I also remember my first 56k modem, and with it, an abundance of pornography. Of course that eventually gave way to my first DSL modem, and with it, a fucking unfathomable amount of pornography.

My point is, these technologies come along, we grow to love them, and they pave the way for newer and often, but not always, better things. This blog being a perfect example...

I was disheartened today, albeit not at all surprised, to read that GeoCities, once proud home to millions of the most worthless websites you'll ever see, is dead. By the time you read this, it will only be a distant, cruel memory.

Oh GeoCities, we loved you so.

CNN, in a rare show of competency, hit the nail on the head with it's article:

It's a move that will scrub from the Web a significant, albeit dated, piece of Internet history and the pages where millions first tried their hands at coding and designing.

Um. Fuckin' right.

The first bg/ag publishing website was launched on GeoCities. Your boys us learned how to code in html just so we could get our site online with GeoCities. I essentially learned by using ag's early coding as a template. Of course, things are much easier now. Sign up for blogger, pick a template, type, "publish post".

It's strange, but part of me really misses the feeling of coding an entire bg/ish from scratch. Especially when putting together a longer, more involved piece for the old site, there was a more palpatable sense of accomplishment.

Eventually, GeoCities dickpunched us with annoying banner ads. So we spent $9.95 and upgraded. However, in the ultimate shit move, Yahoo/SBC Global wiped our site off the face of the earth when I canceled my DSL service when leaving one apartment for another. The "upgrade" had rolled the GeoCities account in with my SBC Global account and when I canceled my service they destroyed us without warning. And that's the biggest shame now, Yahoo won't be archiving any of the millions of GeoCities pages that still exist.

Another big "suck my balls" from Yahoo to it's customers. They've also killed the Yahoo Briefcase, and now you have to "upgrade" your Yahoo Mail to access POP3! Too geeky? I digress...

Alas, GeoCities, we will miss you so, even though we haven't thought of you as a viable option for web site building in what, like 10 years now? Pfft!

A n y w a y s...

If you'd told me then that bg/ag publishing would outlive GeoCities, I would have shook my head and laughed.

That's word.

Now ag! Sing a song for GeoCities!