one of the main reasons that i decided to recreate my digital5k.com website was the constant memories of the AOL progz days. i won’t lie, there are redundant reminders of my AOL/visual basic (vb)/C++ childhood. it was a great time in life and the internet, if you ask me. let’s start off by how it all caught my attention and obsession… ascii art – which doomed my future and solidified my career in computers, programming, development and marketing.
.___.__ .__ __ .__ .__________
__| _/|__| ____ |__|/ |______ | | | ____/ | __
/ __ | | |/ ___\| \ __\__ \ | | |____ \| |/ /
/ /_/ | | / /_/ > || | / __ \| |__/ \ <
\____ | |__\___ /|__||__| (____ /____/______ /__|_ \
\/ /_____/ \/ \/ \/
yep, ascii art was the one little element that attack my attention span and made me say ‘whoa, that’s pretty cool’. better known in those days as scrollers or macros. a macro is simple font characters put together to form a type of pre-digital art. i’ll never forget the first time i signed into AOL and say that beautiful scroll ascii art by ao-hell.
i was in 6th grade. who knows how old i was, i don’t feel like doing the math. i had just moved to the hell hole known as _____ from Houston, Texas. i had no friends. i knew nobody. i just wanted to go home. since Texas schools let out a few weeks earlier, i had some time to kill. a very dangerous thing for a teenager. what is a borderline anti social teen to do in a city with no friends? go on the internet with the elite speed of 56 bits per second.
Continue reading “aol progz… a digital throw back to AOL, 1995.”
