Oblivion came to be in the Fall of 1995. Jestapher noticed certain things happening around Olympia High School that were a bit out of whack. A zine focusing on this stuff seemed to be the perfect idea, zines are an extremely fun and challenging hobby. We could have articles on everything from the football-protesting soccer players to the smoking lunch ladies.
The next big boost came when Jestapher was walking downtown with Mr. Orange, and told him about the idea. Mr. Orange thought it was good, and after a while of walking and discussing names like Insight and The Informer, Jestapher came up with Oblivion. The two went to a local mailbox rental place and got a mailbox. Now they would have to create the zine, or they'd be throwing money away.
Nemomancer and Jestapher met one day after school while waiting for the city bus. They discovered they both had an interest in computers and telecommunications technology. They started hanging out more often, and Jestapher discovered that Nemomancer had a greater interest and knowledge in such things. Hell, Jestapher couldn't even tell you what a gold box did without checking back issues of 2600. Nemomancer told Jestapher about his friend Wheeler who had been expelled from a local school for writing an essay.
The first time Wheeler and Jestapher met was on the Auger Inn, a local BBS. Jestapher paged Wheeler and they started chatting about his situation and writing for Oblivion. Wheeler thought Jestapher was just another loser at first, which probably wasn't that far off. The two met face to face when Nemomancer took Jestapher to a local modem user discussion (MUD).
The first issue came out at the end of December. We had some problems with the administration, which you can read about in issue 2. Dagda, a friend with web design experience, put the first issue online. Nemomancer got an account with olywa.net named oblivion, so the next issue, we moved the web page to www.olywa.net/oblivion/. Oblivion was getting good feedback, and by the time issue 3 rolled out, we had oblivion.net up and running as a virtual server. Jestapher and Nemomancer we're learning web design and graphics creation as time went on, and things were looking good.
We tried to get a linux box for oblivion.net when we first registered the domain, but it didn't pan out. Recently, we resurrected the idea and it flew. Nemomancer put together a cheap box in a couple weeks, a Cyrix 200 with 16 megs of RAM and a 2.1 gigabyte hard drive. Below is a picture of what it looked like the first night it was up and running. It's the small box, the large one to the left is Nemomancer's Digital Microvax. It's amazing how much crap that guy has. If the lighting and detail were better, you'd probably notice things in the background ranging from security systems and credit card scanning keyboards to old military rotary phones and other telecommunications devices.
Oblivion has always been free (send postage), and we hope to keep it that way. We are trying to make money for printing, computer equipment and other costs by selling web and graphics design. We're making Oblivion the main feature on oblivion.net, but not the only feature. Hopefully, it will turn into a resource for youth and youth issues, with organizations like YouthSpeak, a few zines, and other cool stuff.
Oblivion wouldn't be possible without all of our great contributors, but there are a couple people who should get mad props. Nemomancer and Jestapher are the biggest forces behind all of this. Jestapher does most the soliciting and editing of articles, and a whole bunch of writing, news searching, and things of the like. Nemomancer is more like the behind the scenes guy, he's the one who sorts through all the email, put the linux box together, and he's the network admin on oblivion.net. He definately deserves mad props.