Techie meme

[chickenfeet]

Did you have a cell phone prior to your thirties?

I don't think they existed though I had a pager in my early 20s.  I'm guessing my first portable ohone was a Motorola brick circa 1995

Did they exist?

See above

Did you have cable when you were a little kid?

Bwahaha.  I think we got colour TV when I was about 9

Do you know what 8-track tapes are?

Yes

How about cassette tapes?

Of course.  A seriously crappy technology but I did use them.

When did you get your first DVD player?

Good question.  I held out for a few years but I've had something that would play CDs for at least three decades

Did you learn to type on a typewriter?

No. I wrote essays in longhand for 'O' levels. My 'A' levels are in maths and physics and my degree's in maths so no typing needed.  I eventually became a reasonably proficvcient two finger keyboard user but honestly I prefer fountain pens

What was the first computer you owned?

Not sure.  I think it was a Compaq Mk II with a 5MB hard drive

What age were you when you first got e-mail?

Personal email: Maybe 1983. Work came later.  I'm guessing early 90s.  I know there was a big kerfuffle about whether it was "professional" to have an email address on one's business card.

Was the Internet around when you were a kid?

Definitely not

What age were you when Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal, and Dreamwidth started?

Facebook seems to have started in February 2004, see below.  So 46.  You can work out the r

What was the first printer you owned like?

It must have been dot matrix but I really don't remember.  It would have been c.1990 when laser printers were still crazy expensive

Collegiate papers: typewriter or computer?

To quote mountainkiss Which part of mathematician was I unclear about?

How old were you when streaming came into being?

Music or video?  I've only used it very occasionally for feeds from various European opera houses. 

What age were you when you got your first MP3 player?

Forties I think.  Tiny iPod for use while running.

Did you own a record player, cassette player, CD player, or MP3 player as a teen?

Yes no no no.

At what age did you start blogging on the Internet?

45. It was April 30th 2003

What age were you when the e-readers came out?

Kindle appears to have launched on 19 November 2007, at which point I was 50. I've had one for maybe five years

How do you listen to music?

Live mostly.  I watch opera recordings or listen to CDs using either a six speaker home theatre set up or headphones.  I very occasionally listen to stuff on my phone.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Right ageist this one, innit?

Some of us can actually remember a time before any of this stuff (give or take the hi fi. :o) existed.

[ranunculus]

Yep!
Did I have cable as a kid? Nope, and no TV either. Didn't even own a TV until I was in my late 20s.

First computer was a TRS 80.

[cmcmck]

My family were that thing called poor working class- I first owned a telly when I was 21!

I learned on BBC's

[ranunculus]

For my first 9 years of life we lived 3 miles from the nearest neighbour and were pretty desperately poor despite my parents college education.
I remember Mom making me a plaid wool skirt with suspenders on it when I was in first grade. I wore that darned thing all the way up to 5th grade. At some point the suspenders got removed, and I'm sure the waistband got let out every now and then. Its last outing was as a makeshift swimsuit when we were in Mexico! Must have been really tough material.

[mountainkiss]

So what are eight track tapes?

[chickenfeet]

I'm actually surprised you don't know this as they are one of the few applications of a Möbius strip I can think of. Basically they were a largish cassette with an endless tape loop with eight parallel audio tracks on them. They were mostly used in cars.

[mountainkiss]

Pure mathematician. Can’t do applied.

[chickenfeet]

So am I at heart which is probably why I was discussing the Group Theory view of the solutions of x^n=1 with a colleague at lunchtime! The geometry is fun too.

[mountainkiss]

I am thinking about rereading Hardy and Wright.

[sollers]

I held out against CDs for a long time because in the early years BBC Radio 3 kept on having problems with them. Apparently at one time they found the best way to sort the problem was to pour a libation of tea on the carpet in front of the player (they said it was something to do with humidity but I'm not sure that even they believed that)