Author

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Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9348

Posted on: 2012-02-29 14:55:12.000

Hello, OSYers!

After playing around on the WayBack Machine for a while, I found that it had actually archived some of OSY 1.0, and I got all Nostalgic for the old days. Sadly, it only grabbed the main forum index and a handful of threads-- most of them were lost forever.

Or were they?

I had made a backup of all the data files from OSY 1.0, which used IkonBoard, an early Perl-based web BBS that stored all its messages in text-file format (not the most efficient, but certainly handy in this case!)

I tried to revive the IkonBoard scripts, but they kept failing in mysterious ways, and I thought: wait a minute, why am I tearing my hear out trying to restore an ancient forum software when I could just retrieve said messages by writing some new code?

So I did. In the process I learned a bit about regular expression syntax and CSS tables, and learning stuff is always good.

Sadly, about one-third of OSY 1.0 is gone ACTUALLY forever... My backups clearly weren't kept up to date. Then there was the great Pruning Disaster of 2001, which erased a bunch of older messages as well. :( But the earliest messages are there, and from 2001-2002 it's pretty much all there.

I present to you, in chronological order, OSY 1.0!
http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1

AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Posts: 10469

Posted on: 2012-03-01 08:01:21.000

AYB sounded stupid back then......

Wheeeeeee!

smam :)

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9348

Posted on: 2012-03-05 14:13:26.000

Trust me, we all sounded stupider back then.

I think that’s a good thing... it means we’ve grown not only older but wiser in the intervening years.

Here’s a short list of memorable threads I found in the OSY 1.0 archives:
http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1036 - Where is JR? He got married! http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1038 - Madan and PeterB discuss IT staff and their relationship to business http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1175 - So my dad’s in the hospital http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1367 - My dad just died... http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1502 - installing openstep and posting to the web http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1562 - my 30th birthday http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1628 - writing the first book in the Pegasus trilogy http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1664 - the OSY version of Lord of the Rings (Fellowship of the Smam) http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1750 - leads to a discussion of Tolkien http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1677 - a story about my former crazy company http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1680 - I want to write the history of the Amiga http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1730 - Harb gives me Deathbed Vigil video and tells stories http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1730 - First chapter of Amiga book http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1704 - I want to write an OSY web game http://jeremyreimer.com/monarch/m-osy1?m=1729 - This is how OSY 1.0 responded to trolling. Epic!

Magus

Posts: 9592

Posted on: 2012-04-10 10:19:04.000

Ah yes, the sheer lunacy that was Madan...

Predictions that .NET wouldn't go mainstream...

Laughing at the rampant trolling on Ars...

Good times.

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9348

Posted on: 2012-04-10 11:42:05.000

Sometimes I wonder what happened to Madan.

He's basically impossible to find on the Interwebs these days. All his old email addresses are defunct, and he has such a generic real life name that it is impossible to search for him.

Ah, memories...