Aardvarchaeology

Me and my Internet Service Provider go way back. I got my account with algonet.se in early 1995 and put up my still current web site there after a few months. I've been using my e-mail address there as my main one ever since, publishing it indiscriminately all over the web and UseNet, and still I don't get too much spam.

Algonet is a legacy domain. There is no longer an ISP by that name: the domain and its user accounts have passed from ISP to ISP and are currently handled by an outfit called Glocalnet. Since new Algonet accounts haven't been issued for years, I guess us users are a dwindling group of old-timers now. But the service is satisfactory, it offers unix shell access and there are several reasons why I would't want to lose it. For instance, since my website has been around for so long, it has an inbelievably high Google search position for "arkeologi", the Swedish and Norwegian word for archaeology. These days, of course, I very rarely connect to the net via that account's modem pool, relying instead on broadband connections.

Algonet was started by my childhood friend Ragnar Lönn, the kid who introduced me to role playing games, currently the proprietor of Gatorhole. At the time, he was living on Älgö, "Elk Island" outside Saltsjöbaden, and that's the etymology of the name Algonet. This looks really obvious to non-Scandies, but to us, those diacritics turn A and O into entirely different characters. For all we can see, Algonet might as well be named Elginet and it wouldn't look less like Älgönet to us.

Here's more in Swedish about the early 90s introduction of home internet access in Sweden.

[More blog entries about internet, isp, Sweden, algonet; internet, algonet, Älgö]