As a relative newbie to this group, I was wondering, how did it all start?

Who got it off the ground in the first place?

I understand it pre dates e- groups like Yahoo?

Just interested.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
m...
As a relative newbie to this group, I was wondering, how did it all start?

Who got it off the ground in the first place?

I understand it pre dates e- groups like Yahoo?

Just interested.



I'm assuming it's Usenet that you mean and not the single group uk.d-i-y.
The individual groups are all part of Usenet - some general background info
here http://tldp.org/LDP/nag/node256.html
The FAQ for uk.d-i-y can be found here http://www.diyfaq.org.uk/

Neil

The Medway Handyman wrote:

As a relative newbie to this group, I was wondering, how did it all start?

Don't know, but I presume it predates the "correct" mechanism for
creating uk groups:

http://www.usenet.org.uk/guidelines.html#guidelines

since we don't have a charter.

Who got it off the ground in the first place?

Don't know... John S was about then, he might...

I understand it pre dates e- groups like Yahoo?

Usenet itself does - by a long margin (predates HTTP). This group looks
like it was created at the end of '94 if google's archive is to be believed:

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-i-y/about?hl=en


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
Who got it off the ground in the first place?

Don't know... John S was about then, he might...

I always assumed it was Matthew Marks.

--
*The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

The message
from John Rumm contains these words:

The Medway Handyman wrote:

As a relative newbie to this group, I was wondering, how did it all start?

Don't know, but I presume it predates the "correct" mechanism for
creating uk groups:

http://www.usenet.org.uk/guidelines.html#guidelines

since we don't have a charter.

Who got it off the ground in the first place?

Don't know... John S was about then, he might...

I understand it pre dates e- groups like Yahoo?

Usenet itself does - by a long margin (predates HTTP). This group looks
like it was created at the end of '94 if google's archive is to be believed:

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-i-y/about?hl=en

The first recorded posting is dated 5/12/94 but I suspect that google
doesn't have anything like a complete archive. IIRC the archive in those
days was deja but deja went to the wall and some time later google got
its hands on dejas archive but as published it is certainly not
complete. Some of my early contributions are missing.

I would have posted first to rec.walking but there is nothing there from
me prior to December 1996 while my first recorded post in this ng is 20
April 1996 and I don't think that was my first. My first payment to
Zetnet appears to have been in March 1996.

Incidentally Ed Sirett was a very early contributor. Perhaps his memory
for long past events is better than mine.

Posted in rec.walking 11/10/95

"Its taken since April to get this group up and working and it is the
first group to to be created on uk.* to the new rules. Can I thank
all those who took part, all those who voted, but especially Mark
Alexander who organised the voting."

Which dates the 'new rules' fairly closely.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
Who got it off the ground in the first place?

Don't know... John S was about then, he might...

I always assumed it was Matthew Marks.


Actually... 'twas I.

Must have been early-mid 90s - it predates the google archive a bit. It
was certainly before the WWW and commercial internet took off, and I
remember accessing it via a university mainframe.

I was spending a lot of time doing up my then home, and looking for
online advice: at the time there was a reasonable amount of diy-type
traffic buried amongst the rubbish in uk.misc (there were no other
related newsgroups at all). I floated the idea of forming a separate
diy newsgroup which curried some support, so I looked into how to do it.

I can't remember exactly the then "procedure" was back then - certainly
it was pretty minimal - but I remember having to identify some official
Important Bloke in the uk usenet heirachy and emailing him; consequently
I think an RFD was posted somewhere to which a small handful of people
responded with 'yeah good idea', and a couple of weeks later the
Important Bloke set up uk.d-i-y.

ISTR back then there was only a very small handful of uk newsgroups, and
certainly no heirarchical structure, which is how uk.d-i-y came to exist
as a top-level group. As for the hyphenated group name which quite a
lot of people have slagged off over the years; mea culpa I think - it
was for no particular reason other than to delineate the letters as an
abbreviation without introducing full stops.

Little did I imagine that 15 years later.... etc etc etc

David

Roger wrote:

Usenet itself does - by a long margin (predates HTTP). This group looks
like it was created at the end of '94 if google's archive is to be believed:

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-i-y/about?hl=en

The first recorded posting is dated 5/12/94 but I suspect that google
doesn't have anything like a complete archive. IIRC the archive in those
days was deja but deja went to the wall and some time later google got
its hands on dejas archive but as published it is certainly not
complete. Some of my early contributions are missing.

I think when Google bought the archive from Deja they only got about six
years worth. I remember many of my first usenet posts in '95 ish were
not included to start with. Over the following couple of years though
they sought to repopulate the archive using whatever sources they could
find, including CD ROM compendia etc and much of the oldest material did
reappear - but not for all groups - and certainly not for all the groups
outside the traditional usenet hierarchies (comp, rec, sci etc).


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Mar 5, 9:19*am, John Rumm wrote:
The Medway Handyman wrote:
As a relative newbie to this group, I was wondering, how did it all start?

Don't know, but I presume it predates the "correct" mechanism for
creating uk groups:

http://www.usenet.org.uk/guidelines.html#guidelines

since we don't have a charter.

Who got it off the ground in the first place?

Don't know... John S was about then, he might...

I understand it pre dates e- groups like Yahoo?

Usenet itself does - by a long margin (predates HTTP). This group looks
like it was created at the end of '94 if google's archive is to be believed:

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-i-y/about?hl=en

LOL. Looking at the first archived post for '95, nothing has changed.

MBQ

The message

from "Man at B&Q" contains these words:

LOL. Looking at the first archived post for '95, nothing has changed.

Oh yes it has. Dribble (or Adam as he was then) didn't arrive on the
scene until much later. 2000 at a guess but it might have been even
later.

--
Roger Chapman

The Medway Handyman wrote:
As a relative newbie to this group, I was wondering, how did it all
start?
Who got it off the ground in the first place?

I understand it pre dates e- groups like Yahoo?

Just interested.

The start was ARPA Net (Advanced research Projects Agency Network) around
1969 that consisted of four universities that were 'linked' to form a
network (University of California - Santa Barbara, Stanford Research
Institute, University of Utah and the University of California - Los
Angeles) and started the basic fledgling FORUM group.

And yes, it pre-dates Yahoo by a long way *and* several operating systems -
even before Mark Andreessen's Mosaic OS (co-author) and the Netscape
Navigator that AOL have finally killed off.

This little nugget was taken from a college assignment that I did during a
two year full time BTEC college course that I undertook after taking early
retirement around that time - ah, the memories of a lecturer informing the
class that they could only use books and not the net to gather the
information (b*****d it was too at the time).

BRG

BRG wrote:


And yes, it pre-dates Yahoo by a long way *and* several operating systems -
even before Mark Andreessen's Mosaic OS (co-author) and the Netscape
Navigator that AOL have finally killed off.

When did Netscape navigator get killed off? I only down loaded version 9
a few months ago.

Dave

On 05/03/2008 19:15, Dave wrote:

When did Netscape navigator get killed off?

The actual deed was done 1st march, but announced months back

I only down loaded version 9 a few months ago.

Hopefully it's dead for good this time, switch to seamonkey if you want
integrated web/mail/news or firefox for a separate browser with
thunderbird if you want separate mail/news.

On Mar 5, 1:08*pm, John Rumm wrote:
Roger wrote:
Usenet itself does - by a long margin (predates HTTP). This group looks
like it was created at the end of '94 if google's archive is to be believed:

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-i-y/about?hl=en

The first recorded posting is dated 5/12/94 but I suspect that google
doesn't have anything like a complete archive. IIRC the archive in those
days was deja but deja went to the wall and some time later google got
its hands on dejas archive but as published it is certainly not
complete. Some of my early contributions are missing.

I think when Google bought the archive from Deja they only got about six
years worth. I remember many of my first usenet posts in '95 ish were
not included to start with. Over the following couple of years though
they sought to repopulate the archive using whatever sources they could
find, including CD ROM compendia etc and much of the oldest material did
reappear - but not for all groups - and certainly not for all the groups
outside the traditional usenet hierarchies (comp, rec, sci etc).

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| * * * * *Internode Ltd - *http://www.internode.co.uk* * * * * *|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| * * * *John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk * * * * * * *|
\================================================= ================/

Out of interest when did Deja sell out to Google?
Thanks
Al

"al" wrote in message
...

Out of interest when did Deja sell out to Google?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deja_News

(I obviously imagined it being sold to IBM at some point)

cheers,
clive

Andy Burns wrote:

On 05/03/2008 19:15, Dave wrote:

When did Netscape navigator get killed off?


The actual deed was done 1st march, but announced months back

I only down loaded version 9 a few months ago.


Hopefully it's dead for good this time, switch to seamonkey if you want
integrated web/mail/news or firefox for a separate browser with
thunderbird if you want separate mail/news.

Noted, printed and stored.

Thanks

Dave

Dave wrote:
BRG wrote:


And yes, it pre-dates Yahoo by a long way *and* several operating
systems - even before Mark Andreessen's Mosaic OS (co-author) and
the Netscape Navigator that AOL have finally killed off.

When did Netscape navigator get killed off? I only down loaded
version 9 a few months ago.

Dave

The owners of it, AO-Hell, killed it off last month - no further updates are
being considered.

BRG

On Mar 5, 7:57*pm, "Clive George" wrote:
"al" wrote in message

...

Out of interest when did Deja sell out to Google?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deja_News

(I obviously imagined it being sold to IBM at some point)

cheers,
clive

Thanks for taking time to reply.
Al

"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
m...
As a relative newbie to this group, I was wondering, how did it all start?

Who got it off the ground in the first place?

I understand it pre dates e- groups like Yahoo?

Just interested.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257


Well I believe I was one of the very first posters on uk.d-i-y

The oldest post of mine I can find is inferred he
http://tinyurl.com/2jmme8 in Jan 1996 in the name david hearn, about mice.
We got cats and they (the cats) are still alive.

......but the original post is missing from Google, curiously.

I clearly recall making a post entitled "how about this for openers" the day
that uk.d-i-y appeared on demon's news server which must have been some time
in 1994. I wanted to source courtrai green roof tiles.

I suspect the post still probably exists on an ancient Macintosh that is
still in my loft. If and when I find it I will know.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

I clearly remember the first time I experienced "the web" which must have
been in spring 1994, using the client program "MacWeb" in the back room of
our old house. Amazing.

David

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
Who got it off the ground in the first place?

Don't know... John S was about then, he might...

I always assumed it was Matthew Marks.

Matthew Marks was definitely in charge when I first spammed the group

He crossed swords with some troll who threatened to cause all sorts of
problems for him because he was posting from a BBC address

Following that he left because he needed more time for his DIY


--
geoff

On Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:55:37 GMT, Lobster
wrote:

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
Who got it off the ground in the first place?

Don't know... John S was about then, he might...

I always assumed it was Matthew Marks.


Actually... 'twas I.

Must have been early-mid 90s - it predates the google archive a bit. It
was certainly before the WWW and commercial internet took off, and I
remember accessing it via a university mainframe.

In 1990 I was posting diy messages on uk.misc via a university
mainframe. I remember being really chuffed to get a response from
someone in the next door department

In 1991 I went to another job and didnt get regular internet access
again until 1993/4 and discovered that uk.d-i-y had appeared in the
meantime

Anna
--

~ ~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England
|""""| ~ Lime plaster repair and conservation
/ ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc
|____| www.kettlenet.co.uk

In article ,
BRG wrote:

The start was ARPA Net (Advanced research Projects Agency Network) around
1969 that consisted of four universities that were 'linked' to form a
network (University of California - Santa Barbara, Stanford Research
Institute, University of Utah and the University of California - Los
Angeles) and started the basic fledgling FORUM group.

For anyone interested in the origins of the internet as we know (and love)
then I recommend a read of

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Where-Wizard.../dp/0743468376

Great book....and explains why I have to be at work early on tuesdays

Darren

In message , Roger
writes
Incidentally Ed Sirett was a very early contributor. Perhaps his memory
for long past events is better than mine.

Posted in rec.walking 11/10/95

So can anyone find my first post?

it would have been as and it was spam


--
geoff

geoff wrote:
In message , Roger
writes
Incidentally Ed Sirett was a very early contributor. Perhaps his memory
for long past events is better than mine.

Posted in rec.walking 11/10/95

So can anyone find my first post?

it would have been as and it was spam

How about:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.c...9da8dc4af72a71



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

The message
from geoff contains these words:


So can anyone find my first post?

it would have been as and it was spam

16/2/98

"We recondition PCBs fans, time clocks and actuators (and descale heat
exchangers) for central heating boilers. Compare the prices with new
items. We also give a 12 month guarantee. We have been trading for five
years and have built up a good reputation and provide a professional
service"

Apologies for reposting spam. :-)

--
Roger Chapman

On 2008-03-05 22:24:43 +0000, geoff said:

In message , Roger
writes
Incidentally Ed Sirett was a very early contributor. Perhaps his memory
for long past events is better than mine.

Posted in rec.walking 11/10/95

So can anyone find my first post?

it would have been as and it was spam

Did you get into trouble?

In message , John Rumm
writes
geoff wrote:
In message , Roger
writes
Incidentally Ed Sirett was a very early contributor. Perhaps his memory
for long past events is better than mine.

Posted in rec.walking 11/10/95

So can anyone find my first post?
it would have been as and it was spam

How about:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.c...e_frm/thread/f
cb4ccceea186d09/0c9da8dc4af72a71?hl=en&lnk=st&q=#0c9da8dc4af72a71

cor - don't remember that

I really meant in uk.d-i-y

I know I spammed the group and got well flamed for it


--
geoff

In message , Roger
writes
The message
from geoff contains these words:


So can anyone find my first post?

it would have been as and it was spam

16/2/98

"We recondition PCBs fans, time clocks and actuators (and descale heat
exchangers) for central heating boilers. Compare the prices with new
items. We also give a 12 month guarantee. We have been trading for five
years and have built up a good reputation and provide a professional
service"

Apologies for reposting spam. :-)

Ah - that's the one

so that's my 10th anniversary in 10 days time then ...

scary !


--
geoff

geoff wrote:

So can anyone find my first post?
it would have been as and it was spam

How about:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.c...e_frm/thread/f
cb4ccceea186d09/0c9da8dc4af72a71?hl=en&lnk=st&q=#0c9da8dc4af72a71

cor - don't remember that

I really meant in uk.d-i-y

I know I spammed the group and got well flamed for it

Closest I could see is:

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-...cedc971f5687d7

This is probably the most useful entry page:

http://groups.google.com/groups/prof...iTxsohY2WCyEBQ


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In message 47cf3656@qaanaaq, Andy Hall writes
On 2008-03-05 22:24:43 +0000, geoff said:

In message , Roger
writes
Incidentally Ed Sirett was a very early contributor. Perhaps his memory
for long past events is better than mine.
Posted in rec.walking 11/10/95

So can anyone find my first post?
it would have been as and it was spam

Did you get into trouble?

I got flamed and threatened (by Matthew) IIRC

--
geoff

In message , John Rumm
writes
geoff wrote:

So can anyone find my first post?
it would have been as and it was spam

How about:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.c...e_frm/thread/f
cb4ccceea186d09/0c9da8dc4af72a71?hl=en&lnk=st&q=#0c9da8dc4af72a71

cor - don't remember that
I really meant in uk.d-i-y
I know I spammed the group and got well flamed for it

Closest I could see is:

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-...d8d08edb4d7e6b
f4/7ccedc971f5687d7?hl=en&lnk=st&q=#7ccedc971f5687d7

This is probably the most useful entry page:

http://groups.google.com/groups/prof...qZxgAAAD7BciWR
7SVDryPznJCW8TdTE1ck5LHiTxsohY2WCyEBQ

Looks useful there -

Still Roger found the original post - 10 years, eh ?

--
geoff

On Thu, 6 Mar 2008 00:44:10 UTC, geoff wrote:

http://groups.google.com/groups/prof...qZxgAAAD7BciWR
7SVDryPznJCW8TdTE1ck5LHiTxsohY2WCyEBQ

Looks useful there -

Still Roger found the original post - 10 years, eh ?

Newcomer!

http://tinyurl.com/2ggkgh

(I'm sure someone else will have an even earlier one; I would if it had
been kept)

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

In message , Bob Eager
writes
On Thu, 6 Mar 2008 00:44:10 UTC, geoff wrote:

http://groups.google.com/groups/prof...qZxgAAAD7BciWR
7SVDryPznJCW8TdTE1ck5LHiTxsohY2WCyEBQ

Looks useful there -

Still Roger found the original post - 10 years, eh ?

Newcomer!

http://tinyurl.com/2ggkgh

(I'm sure someone else will have an even earlier one; I would if it had
been kept)

cor (new word that). what an old fogey ...

--
geoff

Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 6 Mar 2008 00:44:10 UTC, geoff wrote:

http://groups.google.com/groups/prof...qZxgAAAD7BciWR
7SVDryPznJCW8TdTE1ck5LHiTxsohY2WCyEBQ

Looks useful there -

Still Roger found the original post - 10 years, eh ?

Newcomer!

http://tinyurl.com/2ggkgh

Cor, the year after I left school ;-)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Thu, 6 Mar 2008 01:23:30 UTC, John Rumm
wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:
On Thu, 6 Mar 2008 00:44:10 UTC, geoff wrote:

http://groups.google.com/groups/prof...qZxgAAAD7BciWR
7SVDryPznJCW8TdTE1ck5LHiTxsohY2WCyEBQ

Looks useful there -

Still Roger found the original post - 10 years, eh ?

Newcomer!

http://tinyurl.com/2ggkgh

Cor, the year after I left school ;-)

Oops, found one for when you were at school!

http://tinyurl.com/22ty8d

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

geoff wrote:

This is probably the most useful entry page:

http://groups.google.com/groups/prof...qZxgAAAD7BciWR
7SVDryPznJCW8TdTE1ck5LHiTxsohY2WCyEBQ

Looks useful there -

Still Roger found the original post - 10 years, eh ?

One could waste a lifetime talking to you lot!

(oldest post of mine I can find is Mar 95 which is probably close to
when I first got a demon account)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

Bob Eager wrote:

Cor, the year after I left school ;-)

Oops, found one for when you were at school!

http://tinyurl.com/22ty8d

A blast from the past... my Internode ltd co-director for wrote a BCPL
compiler many years ago (in basic on an Atari 800). It worked but was
rather slow, so he then re-wrote it in BCPL and used it to compile
itself etc.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
John Rumm writes:
Roger wrote:

Usenet itself does - by a long margin (predates HTTP). This group looks

It predates the Internet, and had a much wider spread than
the early Internet. We used to get some groups on a dialup
uucp feed in the early 1980s, which was the main transport
for Usenet at the time, but a good number of the Usenet links
around the world then were were magtapes sent in the post.

like it was created at the end of '94 if google's archive is to be believed:

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-i-y/about?hl=en

The first recorded posting is dated 5/12/94 but I suspect that google
doesn't have anything like a complete archive. IIRC the archive in those
days was deja but deja went to the wall and some time later google got
its hands on dejas archive but as published it is certainly not
complete. Some of my early contributions are missing.

I think when Google bought the archive from Deja they only got about six
years worth. I remember many of my first usenet posts in '95 ish were

Deja had been falling apart prior to Google taking over the
archive and in the final month or so, it couldn't search back
more than around a 6 months to a year. I started archiving
uk.d-i-y at that time, thinking that it might otherwise all
get lost. I stopped when Google got the archive back up working.

not included to start with. Over the following couple of years though
they sought to repopulate the archive using whatever sources they could
find, including CD ROM compendia etc and much of the oldest material did
reappear - but not for all groups - and certainly not for all the groups
outside the traditional usenet hierarchies (comp, rec, sci etc).

I sent them some archives which I had dating back to something
like 1993, but they were sparse (it was a newspool which was
being accidently archived occasionally). I think uk.telecom
would have been the main uk group in my archive (and several
non-uk groups).

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
Roger writes:
The message

from "Man at B&Q" contains these words:

LOL. Looking at the first archived post for '95, nothing has changed.

Oh yes it has. Dribble (or Adam as he was then) didn't arrive on the
scene until much later. 2000 at a guess but it might have been even
later.

He started off as John Burns-Curtis.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
Roger writes:
The message

from "Man at B&Q" contains these words:

LOL. Looking at the first archived post for '95, nothing has changed.

Oh yes it has. Dribble (or Adam as he was then) didn't arrive on the
scene until much later. 2000 at a guess but it might have been even
later.

He started off as John Burns-Curtis.

I suppose with a moniker like that Adam sounds quite reasonable.

--
*"I am " is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:13:20 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:

Cor, the year after I left school ;-)

Oops, found one for when you were at school!

http://tinyurl.com/22ty8d

A blast from the past... my Internode ltd co-director for wrote a BCPL
compiler many years ago (in basic on an Atari 800). It worked but was
rather slow, so he then re-wrote it in BCPL and used it to compile
itself etc.

IME that's the "normal" way to write compilers.

M.