սէնց տեքստ էի գրել անգլերէն, զի ինձ առաջարկեցին ներկայացնել ինձ sdf֊ի մէյլինգ լիստում։

ես վստահ չէի ինչ գրել, ու արդեօք չամաչել, յետոյ մօտ մի ամիս անց հաւաքեցի ինձ, գրանցուեցի մէյլի լիստում ու ուղարկեցի սա՝

happy birthday sdf community!

let me introduce myself, i am currently an owner of user ‘tanakian’ in sdf system, and i play deep dark inky sets on anonradio for several weeks now.

sdf is a very important community for me.

i was groing up in yerevan, armenia, and was lucky to have a grandfather who was fan of electronics and radio. he got me the first computer in late 80ies, that was a machine without graphical mode, without colours, but it was possible to program it.

so i was exposed to programming and assembly language since childhood. however, more serious machines, like atari st, or even gaming ataris, or ibm pc compatibles were out of reach for me - it was too expensive.

i got some experience of dos programming while studying in the university in 90ies when i got access to ‘computational centre’ there. then i was in the army, and when i got out, i was working and collecting money for about 8 months to be able to buy second hand pentium 233mhz machine. it was the time when pentium iii machines were already widespread.

and that was a first time i as able to connect to sdf system.

but let me tell you how it happened. the problem was, in early 2000s, internet was extremely expensive here - it costed about $50 per month for a dialup connection. and the salary of regular citizen was about $20. i was getting $80, so i also could not afford it.

however luckily we had a project, authored here, but supported by united nations development program, which created freenet.am - it was basically email server, free dialup, and proxy server which allowed to connect only to local armenian servers.

the best thing about it was that it was possible to use telnet to connect to freenet.am email server, which was running solaris and some commands were available there: pine (i use alpine till today), write, pico (we know nano now) was used to edit .forward, .plan and .project files. we also had finger, and the most important - we had telnet which allowed us to connect to any other telnet server in the world.

so someone told me about several servers to connect. one was hobbiton.org, another was cyberspace.org, and the other was sdf.lonestar.org, if i remember correctly.

so i started to use those on a daily basis.

thanks to sdf i was able to use console browser to search and read internet forums and pages. i was able to learn more about unix. i was able to use micq and ysm programs for messaging (may be not on sdf). i was able to download mp3 files, split them to the small 200kb pieces and send to my freenet.am email address (that was the attachment limit there) and merge those pieces on my machine later.

i was able to chat using ‘com’ as today.

some time later i was able to get a job of unix administrator at one of local isp’s and that was also because i learnt many things thanks to sdf community.

today, since 2011 i run local diaspora pod and free xmpp chat service, since 2018 local mastodon instance, since this year i host two socialhome instances on fedi - one dedicated to photography, and one is basically my blog.

the other thing i can tell you about myself - i like minimalism in technologies, and i love oberon language and operating systems family. i have two oberon compilers - one to native x86 code, and other is the fork that translates oberon to c, that one is popular and called vishap oberon compiler. because vishaps (armenian dragons) are like aliens and like sci-fi, and oberon is also like that.

i was always very interested in music (who isn’t?) and i heard that there is an ‘electronic music’ movement, but it was really hard to understand what is that. i found some works of classics, but was struggling to understand how is it connected to the modern house music. it was a long and slow process. also because when one searches for ‘electronic music’ in the web, if they don’t know more exactly what to search for, they get a lot of crappy works. so it was really hard for me to find some groups i loved.

later i realized that my love for some prog groups like elp and gentle giant was also because of usage of synths. and that’s funny because unfortunately my grandfather died early, and he was a musician who was interested in electronics, and he was able to repair synths, and i was just a child and was not able to talk more to him. i remember his early experiments on my computer, he was trying to digitize audio signal and draw a wave with ascii art on a screen of my computer.

he had a weak heart, and was very much upset after the earthquake of 1988 which destroyed half of our ‘republic’ back then and took many lives, and the family believes he died because it was hard for him to witness the catastrophe.

so for several years i got in to djing somehow. i had no clue were to start, i did not even understand exactly what djs do. i didn’t know there are ‘live sets’ where people use ableton or something similar to play compositions live, and there is a more ‘mainstream’ way of djing, with usin mixers and eqs and playing ready tracks.

how did i realize i need to become a dj? one day our small diaspora community gathered at someone’s place, and we talked about music, and i was so obsessed with some electronic works, i connected my jolla phone to the very cheap bad speakers of my friend, and tried to make them listen for some parts of some works. and jolla sailfish is linux based, really multitasking system. so i found myself using two music players simultaneously to play one track after the other, and i noticed what i do is sort of djing, because i hear two tracks simultaneously. then i decided to get more serious about that, because i was in love with sharing the music and the pleasure i get from it. so i found mixxx, and found one cheap midi controller - hercules rmx2 it supports. i obtained that thing, and that was the first year i was invited to the university to teach operating systems. it was very tough time for me both personally and professionally.

i was always disconnected from communities because of my rejection of mainstream social media. i got some connections during the blogging period, but when people moved to facebook, i lost them all. i also was able to chat with my friends who had gtalk without having a google account - by my xmpp server. but then they all migrated to skype and facebook messenger, and i was seeing how smaller and smaller becomes my contact list.

my close friends were joking forcing me to join mainstream media. i remember i saw an amazing girl on a bicycle i liked, and then my friend came, and i told him - you know i just saw an amazing girl, and then i heard ‘oh was you able to get her phon… jabber id?’ i don’t use a phone either. but i use jabber and my friend did realize that not a lot of people use jabber.

so that was very lonely time for me, and i was struggling to be able to prepare good classes for the university, and i had the other job as the unix specialist in industry, and was loaded with these two jobs. coming home i had almost no free time or energy to deal with djing, but was sometimes trying to use mixxx with the controller.

for about six months i was doing that, then when the classes were over, i got more time, and was playing every evening at home.

then once it so happened that i was in the club, and my friend was introducing the guy who came from france to volunteer here to the club owner, and that volunteer was also a musician so they agreed when he will play at the club. the club owner was a well known dj in the community, and he was also very active in politics. later he became one of the main people behind the 2018 velvet revolution in armenia, that was standing against corruption and autocracy.

so i also told him i am playing things at home, and he asked me what do i like, then brought me near the pioneer mixer i never saw, and asked me to mix a couple of tracks. that’s cool - he said - do a warmup for me in friday night. and that was the first time i played live.

then later i started playing at this and other places, where the ‘bohemnots’ community was inviting me. i was very proud that i played at one year anniversary of the velvet revolution event.

so i found out about sdf.org recently again, because of my fedi experience - i am interested in retro computers, have some machines myself, participated in mini game competitions, and i am also interested in operating systems, and noticed many people with the same interests on sdf mastodon instance. i remembered that’s the sdf i did know 20 years ago and that helped me in so many ways.

and i joined the community again, with my ‘tanakian’ nickname. tanak means ink in armenian. ian is the indo-european suffix ian you all know, that’s the ending of armenian surnames. i imagine myself being inky with inky hands etc because i deal with texts, even if the text is the code. i also like dark music and sound of synths.

later i got the email from anonradio staff that they are searching for djs and i am happy to participate.

so i play every saturday at 21:00 UTC, underground deep dark inky sets.

thank you everyone and happy birthday to sdf community!

this is so amazing that you exist!

ու տէնց։

բնօրինակ ծմակուտում(եւ մեկնաբանութիւննե՞ր)