A Moment In Time, Courtesy Of...

http://music-elsewhere.hypermart.net

Some fifteen years ago, long before I was even the vaguest bit computer savvy, M&E had its very first website. Its creator, Maaike De Laat (that's her on the right, she's a bit shy, bless her) had thought it lost to the annals of time, whilst retaining a sneaking suspicion she had a back-up copy tucked away somewhere. Meanwhile, I found a few captures of her earliest efforts on the Internet Archive "Wayback Machine". The first one dates back to 11th October 1999, the capture above being from February 2000. I took a look back to the greetings page of the Fall '99 edition of The M&E Newsletter to capture the spirit of the age...

*** M&E ENTERS 20th CENTURY - JUST IN TIME FOR 21st! ***

I confess that this does feel rather silly. I mean, I'm sitting here using a typewriter, pens, a rule, pencils, Letraset, double sided sticky tape... and there's a state of the art computer system set up in the corner behind me. Yes, I've finally been cured of my rampant technophobia and taken the plunge. We have a PC thing. Got a laptop too, mainly for practise, but also coz you can use them in public places and people will think you're really rich and successful and doff their caps to you. Pete Program sorted it all ou... hang on, gone wrong there. Pete Program sorted it all out for us (better), got us a system that he says is known technically as "The Dog's Bollocks". I'll take his word for it, I'm not familiar with computer terminology yet. Oh, that's a big 10:4, smokey on my tail, breaker one niner. I have been reading up though, as you can see! Last computer (and I use that term loosely) that I had was a Sinclair ZX81. I get the feeling technology has moved on a bit since then? Pete says this thing