The other day I was doing a bit of digital house cleaning and I found a screenshot that, for some reason, survived several years in a random folder. I took the screenshot on June 23, 2005. Here it is:
A few observations:
- Should I take more (random) screenshots? I would like to see similar screenshots throughout the years. What was I doing 25 years ago? 15 years ago? 10 years ago? Hell, even one year ago? I spend a significant amount of time on my laptop every day, but I rarely – if ever – take and save a screenshot. When I take screenshots, it is only to capture part of the screen to share with others, and then I delete it straight away. It also makes me wonder about the things I should do more often for the benefit of future me. Maybe take more photos in general? The problem is that I am too minimalistic and I really do not want to save photos (this is also the primary reason my camera roll is empty on my iPhone). And, at the end of the day, if I really wanted to take more screenshots, nothing is stopping me.
- I took a screenshot of an intelligence test. I have not taken such a test before or after, and I have no interest in doing so (or, I guess I took an actual test as part of the test for military service). There is often something very weird about people who care a lot about these tests (see, e.g., this recent article in The Atlantic). I have no clue how valid the test in question was (and most online tests overestimate positive attributes to increase shareability), and I can imagine I took a screenshot of the result to share with a friend on MSN. That being said, I have little to no recollection of what was on my mind ~20 years ago.
- I am nostalgic about MSN and IRC. I used to chat with friends on MSN, IRC, and even Ventrilo, which was a lot of fun. (I never got into ICQ, web chats, or the like.) I would not say that I miss it today, but I do feel a bit nostalgic about those days. I do not care about WhatsApp, Messenger, Slack, Discord communities, etc., but maybe those are the exact things I will feel nostalgic about in twenty years? Let’s see.
- I used Opera. I have not used Opera for many years, and for good reasons. It’s a ridiculously bad browser in 2024. If you for some weird reason still use Opera, stop using it. Notably, I also had Internet Explorer and Firefox installed at the time (cf., the shortcuts in the bottom-left corner). This is of course before the release of Google Chrome, a browser I used for many years (before I switched back to Firefox as my primary browser several years ago). Considering recent developments with Mozilla and Firefox, I would be surprised if I’m still using Firefox twenty years from now. (Also – please do not use Chrome.) Again, we’ll check in in 20 years.
- I used Winamp to play mp3 files. I am not sure about when I stopped using Winamp, but I think I made the switch to foobar2000 a few years after I took this screenshot. I loved the minimalism and simplicity of foobar2000. My best guess is that at the time of this screenshot I was using Winamp 5 with the Modern skin. Today I do not have a single mp3 file as I rely 100% on Spotify for my music consumption.
- I used P2P file sharing. I am not nostalgic about these days in terms of file sharing, and the only thing it really taught me was not to have any trust in any files. Ironically, but for obvious reasons, the easiest way to get a virus was to download anti-virus software. It is fun to consider how much things have changed for the better. It used to take ~15 minutes to download a single mp3 file. Now I am annoyed if I notice that any song does not play instantly on Spotify.
- I used to have a lot of tabs open. Just look at the number of open tabs! I know a lot of people are still like that today, including a lot of my colleagues, but I find it way too stressful. I guess it is the icon to title ratio for each of the tabs I have an issue with. When the only thing you can see is the icon and not even the first full word of the title of the tab, things are problematic. More generally, I like to not save a lot of details in my browser (from bookmarks to passwords), and if my browser crashes, I do not have to restore a lot of tabs (even though having a lot of open tabs is not an issue in Firefox).
- vzz-mirc used to be a thing. Many years ago I created my own script to the IRC client mIRC, called vzz-mirc. It got quite popular and it taught me a bit about programming. That being said, I am happy I do not have any of the code today, as I am sure it was not good (to the point of actually being bad). I also played around with PHP and ASP (in addition to HTML, JavaScript and CSS), and I believe the main thing I learned in this period was to move beyond WYSIWYG (e.g., this screenshot is taken well after my Microsoft FrontPage days).
- I do not remember a lot of things. Why did I have a file called Atake.txt? What did I have in the folders incoming and Incoming? Who was/is Joseph? What was on my mind on June 23, 2005? I guess we will never find out.