Heavens above!
With all the social media attention going to Geocities at the moment (it closes today after nearly 15 years – strange to think it was a pioneer back in 1995), I thought I’d have a root around and try and see if I could find my old account. I honestly wasn’t expecting to be able to.
Surprises of surprises though, I did, and I was fairly ‘shocked’! I was a completely different person back then – looking back at it now, I am cringing something rotten!
The picture seems to have gone (thankfully!), but the basic text content remains the same (along with the horrible advert bar at the side). My site was last edited in 2003 (six years ago), and would have been created around that same time, so I would have been 16/17. I don’t think this was my first attempt, but it is definitely the attempt I seem to have decided to settle with. It makes you wonder how bad the other attempts were! 😉
As with most people, Geocities was my first attempt at building a website, and to be honest, I thoroughly sucked!
That said, I am VERY pleased that I had a flash of inspiration to look and see if my old account was still on there, as it was a completely unexpected reminder of how I used to be, and just how much I have grown up since then! It’s like one of those letters written to your future self, in a weird way.
Oh, and straightacting.com is now an application on Facebook apparently… my, how times have changed! If I bothered using apps on Facebook, I am dead cert I wouldn’t get a ten these days (and certainly wouldn’t wave it around like a badge of honour heh!!). Europride at Manchester? Gosh!
What, you want to see it? Have I not stalled you long enough? Oh goodness, go on then…
Oh, and xkcd.com have a marvellous Geocities themed webpage in honour of the closing of the Geocities site… it looks fabulous! (have a look today – 26 Oct 2009 – though… I don’t want to take images of sites I don’t own!)
BYE BYE GEOCITIES, U WOZ LOTZ OF FUN! *WAVES*
[I wish there was a midi of the funeral march that I could upload here!]
Gari Wellingham 
I made my first Geocities page in 1998. It was my first ever web-presence and I thought it was amazing! I am pretty sure it’s long-since gone now though. It was always quite complicated I thought – well I was fairly new to internet things then. It’s a bit like memories of primary school, thinking about how you were as a kid. And – like you – feeling mildly embarrassed (particularly about how I talked about myself!).
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1998?! Blimey, I would have been 13 and registering on the Really Useful Group’s rather old lime coloured website about then…. wow, that really takes me back!
I always found it really complicated too (especially at that age) – visiting the site took you to my contents page rather than the actual home page I wanted as I didn’t index it properly it seems… silly young me heh!
I always thought I was cool as a kid… now I see that I so so wasn’t! *cringe* heh.
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