a selective restore

Back in the distant past, there was a time when Windows Vista roamed the land. It was also a time when my internet connection was 2 Mbps ADSL, and I was far enough away from the exchange that it mattered1. Things have changed. For a start, the most visible indication is that this website is no longer running a self-hosted WordPress installation on a beige box in my garage connected to the internet over a somewhat pathetic xDSL circuit. Today, we’re in a DC running some very bespoke content management and hosting code.

Between then and now it has been through a few changes. Many original posts are buried in that beige box in the back of my garage, and they are not going to be restored, for a few reasons. Firstly, because they are no longer relevant and have little historical importance. Secondly, archive.org and other hold snapshots if you are desperate for some nostalgia. What I am doing is curating a few of those posts that are relevant to me and restoring them to life. They are not a facsimile, but instead retain the original intent; because of the massive bit-rot that has happened, most external links are to archive.org’s snapshots.

$DateTime: 2026/07/28 11:19:00 $

  1. Don’t worry, I eventually got “upgraded” to copper/glass cable, which made no difference as I was still in the copper-era, but with slightly less attenuation. After many long years of waiting they finally lit the glass around 2012, so a big huzzah for Point-to-Point (P2P) Fiber. In 2026 everybody is now on glass as the copper exchange was finally turned off and ripped out. They call it progress. Of course, it is only progress if nobody asks any awkward questions about comparing the resilience of the glass network to the old copper network (sure, the exchange might have backup power, but unless the ONT has a local UPS it is all for nought when the lights go out, as they occasionally do). ↩︎