Every download was exciting and new, it seemed like there was a vast frontier of unexplored internet, software, IRC channels, and things I could make. Of course, there was nothing I needed on my PC at home, and nothing worth doing on it with a janky setup that only refreshed after each click, but it was fun to make.

Later I used an mIRC DLL extension to control the mouse, my shitty web server, some program the took a screenshot once per second, a real web server, a dynamic DNS service, and a dial-up timed dialer to cobble together something that connected my computer to the internet during my 'computer applications' class at school and let me remote control it. I think mIRC sockets were only intended for text, or there was a distinction between text and binary variables or something. I remember it would serve a text file just fine, but images usually got corrupted. I figured out how to open a socket, listen for incoming connections and just by printing out what I saw when I pointed the browser at localhost I reverse engineered HTTP and created a shitty web server in mIRC. You could find DLLs that would extend mIRC with arbitrary functionality. It's an obscure beginning, but the first time I ever wrote something that could rightfully be considered 'code' was mIRC scripting language. I believe once or twice I even called a friend and asked them to look something up and read it to me over the phone.

I can't even recall the number of times 13-year-old me totally screwed up trying to install Mandrake 7 or some such misadventure, and had to sweat through getting it to boot again without the aid of any other internet-connected device. This brings me back to a time when computing was fun, but also fraught with danger. We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is being used in order to improve your user experience. This information is collected by major web servers by default. This information includes information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser user-agent and the time and date of your visit. We want to inform you that whenever you use this service, we collect information that your browser sends to us. This section is used to inform website visitors regarding policies with the collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information if anyone decided to use this service.

To save generated audio, right click on audio player and press 'Save audio as.'.

It should be done nearly instantly, as the interface tries to generate audio at x16777215 real-time. Wait for generated audio appear in audio player. All voices have lower and upper pitch and speed limits. Note that BonziBUDDY voice is actually an 'Adult Male #2' with a specific pitch and speed. Microsoft Sam TTS Generator is an online interface for part of Microsoft Speech API 4.0 which was released in 1998.

Bonzi buddy animations