Let's all meet up in the Y2K

Aug 06, 2026 01:43 PM - 2 hours ago 1

Back successful 2024 I posted a fewer of these connected Twitter (thread reader) aft digging retired aged photos from the dot-com boom. I was moving successful London astatine a integer agency called Blueberry. Please return a spot for highest translucent integrative frutiger aero aesthetic, agelong earlier the word was coined, and immoderate play flashbacks if you were moving connected the web astatine this time.

I’d travel from schematic creation agency Form, but wanted location to do bigger web projects pinch different likeminded souls. Blueberry was much for illustration a societal nine than a job, and we still shipped a batch of activity for clients for illustration Laura Ashley, Ben & Jerry’s, Ted Baker, The Times, Boo.com, Snow24, and galore much I forget. Everything I produced was hand-coded successful HomeSite: HTML, JS, CSS. This was earlier browser CSS support came of age, truthful it was each array layouts pinch azygous pixel spacer gifs: bully times!

If you’d for illustration to cognize really crazy those days were: astatine 1 constituent they asked maine to activity a play and I already had plans, truthful they asked what it would take. I wanted a classic FIAT 500, truthful I named the value of the car: aggregate thousands of pounds. The guidance said yes, it was their only option. So that’s what I sewage paid for a play building a tract cipher other could get done.

Home & Away

That’s maine connected the near of the first shot, curling my bottommost articulator erstwhile I’m heavy successful thought arsenic I still do today. I must beryllium 23 aliases 24 years of age. HomeSite undoubtedly unfastened location successful Windows. The reindeer connected my show pooped small brownish jelly beans erstwhile you pressed down connected its rear end, a gift from my woman astatine the time.

On the table facing the camera, my bully friend Morgan Gibbons’ (Creative Artworker extraordinaire) Graphite Power Mac G4 tower, Apple CRT, translucent Pro Keyboard and Mouse, Sony headphones, promotional postcards: Phwoar! G4, immoderate Renault Clio car porn, and of people a bully cup of tea. His desktop wallpaper is Quake III, which we each utilized to play complete the LAN “…in your face!”. There’s an charismatic Dreamcast mag successful the area featuring Crazy Taxi, which dates this photograph to March 2000. I besides spy a Bowser wrist remainder successful beforehand of the keyboard, an Apple rodent mat pinch rainbow logo, and an Iomega Zip thrust conscionable to its right.

Bubblegum iMacs were everyplace connected the floor. One sat acheronian among insubstantial trays; different was connected pinch Aqua-era desktop creation and a purple translucent mouse.

Later I moved upstairs onto a concealed task and upgraded to a Sony VAIO PCG-Z600RE laptop, a Palm Vx, and a Sony Ericsson phone. And of people I had a trial iMac of my own. We tin spot my being a FIAT instrumentality boy because by this constituent I was driving the car I bought pinch a weekend’s earnings. There’s besides a NGPC (Neo Geo Pocket Color) successful its container nestled amongst the messiness of my desk, and a promo transcript of Dreamcast crippled Crazy Taxi for maine to return home.

For immoderate logic I’m sat astatine personification else’s desk, sizing up the tallness and fresh of the chair. Diesel jeans and jumper, Deliverance nutrient container connected the partition (decades earlier Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats, etc). I conjecture we must person been moving precocious 1 night.

After that I deliberation I complained and sewage moved downstairs again, sitting adjacent to the fable that is Shaun Jackson, who I americium still successful touch with. IIRC I’m helping him retired pinch a tricky spot of page layout!

Getting Things Done

The unfastened scheme floor, pinch offices astatine either extremity and a room half measurement down, was each curved purple desks and CRT monitors. A hive of activity and location euphony aliases drum’n’bass. I person fond memories of BT (Movement successful Still Life), various Deep Dish compilations (Yoshiesque) and the backmost catalogue Omni Trio being played regularly, astatine slightest by me.

Closer in: 2 computers per-desk, magazines and CD-ROMs connected the partition, a MiniDisc player!

Everybody was ever moving astir arsenic they worked connected different projects. I’m beautiful judge this is different photograph from Morgan’s table erstwhile it was 1 land distant from his first desk. The PlayStation 2 and Phwoar! G4 are the giveaway. I’m judge personification will beryllium capable to day that manner magazine.

Reception

The entranceway from the corridor: frosted Blueberry doors, solid wall looking into the barroom stools, Christmas lights still up successful the atrium.

Inside, reception had chrome stools and a bar-height counter. Visitors could surf the web sat successful dentist chairs pinch iMacs connected plaything arms. Naturally!

Backroom

There was servers furniture successful astir rooms, and we had a dedicated server room: rackmount drives, a move pinch a bird’s nest of bluish spot cables, a CRT console successful the mediate of the stack, and a beige building connected the level beside it. It was successful the server room that unwitting group were first subjected to Goatse (do not hunt this) and were cries would echo astir the building arsenic 1 of the web guys mislaid a crippled of Quake III aliases Unreal Tournament.

Todo

This whiteboard has my sanction adjacent to immoderate of Thursday’s tickets:

Finish Instant Win — Matt
All different schematic changes — Matt
Home page — Karen/Gus
Store designs / Postcard designs / Banner ads / Affiliate conception — Gus/Karen

Viral Email

We had a sister institution called Magic Button that did connection marketing. Unfortunately, a woman who worked location sent an friendly email to a feline she knew. He forwarded it to his friends, who forwarded it to their friends, and truthful on, until location were truthful galore news reporters swarming the building that the woman had to return a fewer months disconnected to calm things down. You tin publication much astir that astatine The Guardian, 15th December 2000.

Game Over

By April 2001 the downturn was already successful the waste and acquisition press, and yet the liquidators arrived.

Just earlier they claimed everything, I took a Bubblegum iMac arsenic a parting “gift”. Then a 2nd one, because the first didn’t person a DVD drive. For a while that instrumentality ran OS 9 and concisely the OS X Preview. I utilized it to play imported DVDs and study much astir really Mac OS X worked.