Fig. 1
This a Pokémon. He is really cool and niceys.
If I had to use a single word to describe what AiO is to me, and is meant to be to others, it would be "stronghold".
It is undeniable that the web has been heading south quicker and quicker lately. Paywalls, Web 3.0, AI crawling all over your pages like some kind of nature's mockery.
A while ago I saw this video called "The internet used to be a place"[1] and it hit me like a brick.
It made me decide that it was time to put all of my knowledge, artistic ability and computing resources together to finally found a proper homepage, in protest.
I'm a very nostalgic person. Nostalgic for times I have not even experienced sometimes. Something drives me to concepts like these. Wishing I could get a glance at how things were.
It's naïve to suggest that "everything was better back in the day". It is equally naïve to suggest that everything is better now. Especially on the internet, things aren't how they used to be in a very negative way.
In a time where demand of your attention is split between thousands of apps and sites at once, convincing you that you actually need to be spending money for that distraction too, all the while whatever is feeding you is slowly turning into hallucinated slop, it might not be bad to look back at how things used to be before everything turned to shit.
As a young teen, I already felt the frustration with this digital status quo rising. Combined with my proclivity for nostalgia, I found an old computer in my grandparents' storage room. An old Compaq Deskpro.
It used to be a server for my grandpa's business. Now it stood idle and empty.
I remember bringing it back to the living room, connecting everything and throwing a Windows 98 install disc inside. I had rarely felt such excitement and wonder. I started tinkering with it, digging through grandpa's old CD's and floppies to see whatever I could get installed on it.
After hours, days, multiple visits, I got it hooked up to the internet.
A barren wasteland for something that didn't speak SSL3 or TLS2.0, but if I tried hard enough, I could see some glimpes of the modern world through the window.
After some digital graverobbing I found some sound drivers, a better browser, and some sites that were properly accessible. I could now truly customize this computer and decorate it with what makes me me. I loaded up WAMP and started playing Fast City by FearOfDark.
For a minute, I experienced a feeling I knew would be etched into my memory. It's as if I could hear the disk spinning up to prepare it for burning another track.
This website is made, kept and maintained in honour of this feeling.
To preserve those little things we may have left.
