While we did have some encounter with the internet already, it was from Dos in Szoftex, and it was Joška alone who knew the stuff and how it worked. I did have a lot of experience with online communications, but that was on sezam and a few other BBSes, including visits to something in Zagreb at the time when the war was already on - now whether it was just the first skirmishes or it began for real, don't remember. There's a lot of difference - with a beebyess it's one program that connects, holds the connection, sends commands and text, receives response, downloads files, disconnects. With internet it's different, several apps operate in parallel, using the same connection established by one of them. Didn't quite fit in my head - how does that work under Dos, how does it look onscreen, how does one use it.
I didn't quite understand what Joška was doing. He'd have some program which would establish connection and stay in memory, keeping the connection on, and would then start something else that would communicate through it. Still too little to understand the whole topology of the space, and what it really was. All of it in character mode, of course, the pixels did exist but for games only or special graphic packages... well, I did write one version of solitaire in some graphic version of GWBasic (and, of course, on atarist) - but there were no browsers yet which would render the html with fonts, lines and pictures.
This time I got a secret phone number, with a modem waiting on the other side, on a machine in petefi. Don't remember where I got it from, probably someone who attended the course in Dom that I held at least ten years ago, or was it via that guy who helped me with that third app for stambena in Bačka... Whatever the channel, I got it and had a modem. I was told not to abuse it, to connect only in the evening and on weekends. I knew, anything modem related that was free and secret wouldn't last more than a few weeks, because the news would spread, usage would grow, and so would eventually the cost for the host, and such a resource would inevitably be shut down.
I downloaded Netscape* from sezam, perhaps some more stuff, and tried it out. Perhaps I was so naive then that I even used m$'s IE, if it already existed then - perhaps it was bundled with W95, perhaps not. I remember nothing of those 3-4 sessions. I knew of Altavista, and tried a web search. What do I search for? Well, Jethro Tull, see what they have. The first hit was „ostensibly motionless, the hare was trembling with excitement“. Straight from the „Passion play“! That was a bit of excitement, and a promise of the new world on the horizon.
The channel, of course, lasted two weeks. But then soon (september?) someone out there found that FRY was cut out from the internet for no good reason - that was not part of the sanctions package, just ill will of some guys in Vienna - and then it was not just the academic network that was open again, it was all of it. I could use sezam for the web - get online through it (how, I don't remember, I guess telnet) and then use the browser. At intercity phone rates, plus subscription, but still it was worth it.
I see there's an app for some immobilia agency (aka real estate), without customer's name in defg.prg, in a directory called Seka, probably done by Brlja, he was finishing the construction of his house and soon moved in, and I think he built it through an agency like that. The app did the analytics (i.e. detailed ledger) of buyers and suppliers, tracking the building sites, contracts and other spicks and specks, even had an automatic closing of line items. He did a bit of it around 17-IV-1996., and crammed the rest between 14th and 17th of this month. I, ahem, don't even remember we had such an app in Avai, it must have been his tezga. Just like the TaxiSys was, which I wrote and he sold.
Dad's boat's bottom got busted, not quite but just rusted at corners, started leaking. So he and the gang pulled it out on the meadow. One of the neighbors was a locksmith at the brewery, and knew welding enough, so they took a new slate of sheet metal, replaced it, painted over and the boat was like new. And then the bottom of the fireplace in the still fell through. It's ordinary iron, not made to last a hundred years, there's chemistry in action, fire, ashes, water... and it rusts over time. We decided to make a new bottom out of the boat's old bottom, which was wider by at least ten centimeters, cool. The trouble is that this is thick sheet metal, at least 2mm, there's no such saw. Someone brought an angle grinder, so then slowly, and that fell to me. I didn't even know cutting disks ever existed, those thin ones which would have cut through this in ten minutes, so I cut it some two-three hours, using three disks. But I made it, without a slightest hitch, I held the contraption like a real majstor. Later they welded it in place, and this still was in operation for another fifteen years, or maybe longer.
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* later, pet-named Nescafe
4-IV-2023 - 10-III-2026