Yesterday night I wasn’t in the mood to be too productive, after all, the week end was just starting.  I was randomly browsing the Internet, looking for food for thoughts.

I came across Steven Noel‘s personal blog and notice at the bottom of the page some links, including one to its first usenet post in 1994.

I immediately asked myself, when was my first post on the Internet ? Or, at least, what is the oldest trace of me that Google can find ?

A few minutes later I found

April, 4th 1992 : I answered a question about Stacker (a disk compression utility) compatibility with Windows 3.1 (still in beta at that time)

Same day : I explained how to send FTP commands to an internet server, using a proxy BITnet email server.

My BITNET email address was INFSTDSTORM@BNANDP51.BITNET

Are these my first posts on BITNet’s LISTSERV system ? I can’t remind.  These are the oldest one Google can find.

I can’t resist to add a third one, this one dated from October 1995, I asked on comp.lang.c++ on USEnet how to get the day from a given date.  I received many answers but the one I like most is the last one from the thread :

(23*m/9+d+4+(m<3?y--:y-2)+y/4-y/100+y/400)%7

It is applicable to the Gregorian calendar, with m=month, d=day, y=year

Today, because this post is not business related, because it is the week end, because my friends and family in the US just celebrated Thanksgiving, I would like to finish this post “a la” Doc Teger, i.e. with a song.

It’s a french song from author Alain Chamfort : “Trace de Toi” (traces of you)