Pine... the interweb... 1995

The terms vi, pico, pine were floating about the VIPER lab yesterday. Keely, who is roughly 17, had never heard of pine before, but neither had Eliza, which was surprising, cause she is closer to me in age. So, some history for the youngins.

I first experienced the interweb in 1995. For those of us at universities, the internet was primarily unix based, email was solely unix based, and the email program that was used, using the pico text editer, was pine. I used it till 2003 or so, and only stopped cause it stopped being supported. I loved pine. 

The internet has had a huge effect on the world obviously, and has evolved tremedously, but the fundamental principles have stayed the same. Back then I used it for email, commerce (BikePro.com), pop-culture news (rec.music.phish), and checking the tides, buoys, and swell models. My usage is still pretty much the same.

The surf report aspect has probably had the biggest effect on my life. There have been wave measuring buoys off of the Oregon and Cali coast for awhile, at least since the late 80s. Those in the know had weather band radios to check the buoys. Also, I lived in the dorms my whole undergraduate career at UCSB '92-'96 (Santa Cruz dorm, 2300s wing) as I could check the surf FROM MY BED. It was epic. So I had buoy data, and visual confirmation working for me. I surfed alot. Now a days (insert grumpy old man tone), we have Wetsand predicting every swell a week in advance, and people giving surf reports from the beach on their cellphones. It's a lot harder to sneak in an uncrowded surf. But surf forecasting is highly nonlinear, so magic still happens.