First Post

In 1994, a college student named Justin Hall set up a website called Justin’s Links and began posting about his life, making his website (links.net! Still online!) the first of humanity’s many blogs.¹

What did Justin write about back in ’94? Since he’s kept the original site online, I was able to find out. It includes:

• Some details of his computer setup (“a Hypertext server using MacHTTP v1.2.3 running on a Powerbook 180 w/ 8 RAM and a 120 HD”). That’s 8 megabytes of RAM and a 120 megabyte hard drive, I hasten to point out.
• Lots of stuff about HTML. The word “HyperText” appears 8 times.
• A picture of himself next to Oliver North. All photos on this page are less than 2 inches wide on my screen, but they were probably pretty big at 1994-era resolutions!
• A link to the Barney Blaster screensaver, in which Barney the dinosaur repeatedly appears and then dies horribly (shot, blown up, set on fire). I remember having this on my computer! Why did we hate Barney so much? He only wanted to bring us love…
• A picture of Cary Grant taking a hit of acid. (I thought this was a joke, but apparently Grant was an “enthusiastic supporter” of LSD and took it 100 times).

What will my blog be about? Pretty much the same, I hope. Probably less LSD. The 1990s internet was a special place, hopeful and weird. It’s a world I’d love to visit again!

P.S.

A few other things that came up as I was writing this:

Here’s what the Powerbook 180 looked like:

Also in 1994, Justin registered the domain bud.com. That is a pretty amazing domain name! In the late 90s, Anheuser-Busch offered him $50,000 for it, but he turned them down. Then, in 2018, he used that domain to start a business selling marijuana online, because of course he did.

In 2015, Justin made a 40 minute documentary called Overshare: The Links.net Story, which I look forward to watching.

Notes