A whiff of nostalgia....

[lnr]

juggzy posted (friends-locked) a meme about the earliest mentions of yourself you could find on Google. As a result of poking round Google Groups though I've found how to link to the entire posting history of an email address. And it looks like there are four main ones I've used, which have overlapped in time.

• hert0145@sable.ox.ac.uk
• eleanor.blair@hertford.oxford.ac.uk
• lnr@lspace.org
• eleanorb@chiark.greenend.org.uk.

The earliest reference I can find to me using usenet is in my own diary, on April 20 1995, the earliest post I can prove I made is on May 27 1995, and the earliest actually recorded on Google Groups is on Jan 27 1996 .

Comments

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

I briefly found the post where I had an argument with pTerry about the provenance of funny shaped vegetables. Or rather, he had an argument with me because I pointed out that the joke arose in both Blackadder, and, I think, one of the Guards Guards sequence. But then I lost it again.

[dragonwoodshed.livejournal.com]

I don't exist. This makes me happy...

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

The problem is determining the age of particular things - even if a web page mentions a date, it's difficult to know for certain that the page actually existed then for definite (I've got several for 1995 and possibly 1994, but I suspect that the 1994 stuff was put up in retrospect). I guess usenet records are about the only thing you can be all that sure about.

[lnr]

Yeah, I mentioned as much in a comment to juggzy.

I know if *I* had any webpages that early though they went when I left sable, so my chiark pages are my oldest and the older content there has gradually been swept under the carpet too. I don't know of any other webpages mentioning me that early, and it's hard to google for really. Finding the May 1995 post on the web was the closest I could get.

[gmh.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, that's the same week as I posted first, IIRC - although (mercifully) my first year on AFP is absent from Google's archives.

I'd been lurking off-and-on for a few months at the time, but finally broke cover while trying to avoid revising for exams.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The oldest reference I can find is Nov 28th 1994 but there was an earlier Compuserve account that I have no records for.

[nja.livejournal.com]

The internet archive finds a web page for me from June 97, and one for the department's server from late 96, which is showing the "removed for maintenance" page (what that actually meant was "someone broke into the building and stole all the computers"). The server had been running for a couple of years before that, in fact I think we had a website before the University did, thanks to an enterprising technician and a senior lecturer (now a vice-chancellor) who saw the potential.

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

The earliest post of mine I can find is amusingly enough also in alt.fan.pratchett, on 11th June 1993.

Googling for me is fraught with jazz double-bass players.

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

I definitely had some web pages in 1994 and as I got e-mail in late 1993 there wouldn't be anything before that but they went when I left the university of course. It's stuff on society pages that has hung around much more as that was about the time they were appearing and they haven't been deleted in the same way that users account are.

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

The invariants got its first computer officer in 1995 so that was when their pages first dated from but they pretty definitely won't be the version that's up there now.

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

Earliest usenet post appears to be 25 April 1990 (although I can remember first reading it in 1988).

[khrister.livejournal.com]

The earliest post i can find is a usenet post in rec.games.mud, Jan 9th 1991, but I'm sure I posted in the fall of 1990.

You made me remember the soc.culture.nordic "discussions" with Jarmo Ryyti...and Serdar Argic and Hasan B. Mutlu...

[bonyandidle.livejournal.com]

earliest i can find is from alt.games.mornington.crescent, i think, around jun 97. sure I was posting somewhere else before that but mercifully I can't find it. funnily enough the first two that came up when i simply searched for my name were two threads by hotch in uk.misc, one entitled "matt craddock: ru there?" and "mATT cRADDOCK'S lOVE lIFE....!!!!"