The excitement of something new

This is a first post, a test really but it might as well be fun, right? So why not extol the virtues of broadband? (You could, just as easily, ask why extol the virtues of broadband but let's not go there for now).

I had it installed two weeks ago and, wow, the world in my home has changed. I've been transported back to 1994 when I discovered Mosaic, the first ever web browser, in the library at college. Thinking back, it was rubbish but I remember finding it remarkable that I could just type in a few words into a box on a screen and I'd get a whole world of links, pictures and articles. I used to spend hours reading uninteresting web sites (the first site was just a dry set of links on the Cern web server) and being amazed that someone in another part of the world had written this on their computer and here was I, reading it in London. And I did it, well, just because I could, really.

As the web got inevitably more complicated, I didn't keep up at home. Accessing the latest flash-enhanced, multimedia enriched, tech-enabled pages was hampered by my 56k dial-up at home until recently, so a rapidly-increasing amount of the web was becoming a no-go area. That or wait for a veeeeery looooong download times. That and missing out on this blogging lark and things like Skype.

But no longer. Here I am, broadband always on and ready to go. It's brilliant. As Obi-Wan might have said, I've taken my first steps into a larger world. So far, I've spent several hours downloading stupid amounts of music and large files that I have no use for...just because I can. Maybe the novelty will wear off soon, but I also thought that about checking my email every 30 seconds at work.

I'm a sucker for getting emails or letters. Harks back to the childhood days of getting excited by letters. But that's another story...