Jesi's Story
10 products that made me curious, creative, and obsessed with building joy into the things I make. Click the first stop to start: a card pops up, and each one after unlocks as you go. Answer correctly and quickly for the most points. A few come with a video or something you can actually play, if you're curious. The static version of this story is on the about page.
Reset everything?
Your score and every answered stop go back to zero.
Start here
11 stops along the road that turned me into someone who makes things. They unlock in order.
- Open the next stop and guess the year that thing arrived.
- Closer is worth more. Exact is worth the most.
- A near miss still scores, and sounds different from both a hit and a miss.
- You get 25 seconds, and the time left only pays out on a guess that was already close (within 2 years).
- Answered stops stay open, so you can go back and read or watch any of them.
- A few bonus questions are tucked off the path, too. No clock on those, and each is worth 50 points, if you can find them.
When did Math Blaster! arrive?
Arithmetic disguised as a space game, and the reason a generation of kids asked for more math homework exactly once.
Davidson & Associates shipped the original in 1983. Math Blaster Plus! followed in 1987, and New Math Blaster Plus! in 1990.
Not a making tool, just a favorite. I played the DOS one, and it is nostalgic as hell.
When did The NES arrive?
A grey box under the television, two controllers, and a cartridge you had to blow into. It restarted the home console business after it collapsed.
Nintendo brought it to North America in 1985, two years after Japan.
My brother Eddie is eight years older, so games arrived in my life already loved by someone I looked up to. The first Super Mario Bros. was mine, and I would still put it on today.
When did Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing arrive?
The typing tutor that taught a generation to stop looking down. Mavis herself was never a real person.
Released in late 1987 by The Software Toolworks, though the screen above is version 2.0 from 1992. Mavis was invented: the face on the box belonged to a model working a perfume counter, and the name came from Mavis Staples.
The clip is the Amiga version, which was identical to the DOS one.
I learned on whichever version was around in the late 90s, driving that ridiculous car down a highway I actually did learn to type - and fast. Ask anyone, I’m peelin’ out when I type these days.
When did The VTech Video Painter arrive?
A plastic drawing tablet that plugged into the family television, so whatever you drew showed up on the TV.
Shipped in 1991, spun off from VTech’s Socrates console. The commercial above is the 1993 spot.
Mine came under the Christmas tree. I was seven, and the TV was suddenly something I could draw on.
When did The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past arrive?
Two overlapping worlds, a pedestal in a lost wood, and the game that taught a lot of people what an adventure could be.
Japan got it in November 1991, North America in April 1992.
I sat in my room and finished it, then started it again immediately, and again after that. In hindsight, an early and extremely obvious sign of how I do everything.
When did The HP Pavilion arrive?
HP’s first computer built for the house rather than the office. A beige tower in the family room, sold on the idea that a PC was something everyone used.
The Pavilion line launched in August 1995 with the 5030, HP’s first machine aimed at homes.
The clip is a 6630 running Windows 98, a few models after ours. Our upgrade path went DOS, Windows 3.1, the big jump to 95, then 98.
Ours arrived when I was thirteen or fourteen, and everything else on this list happened on it: Photoshop, Dreamweaver, the HTML, the tablet, the internet. It is where I learned how to operate inside a system rather than just use one.
When did Dreamweaver 1.0 arrive?
The web design tool that let you build a page without hand-writing every tag. Macromedia’s, long before Adobe owned it.
Released December 1997. Adobe only got it by buying Macromedia in 2005.
The clip is version 1.2, from 1998.
I learned it in high school, after an HTML class at fifteen, and I built sites on Tripod with it. I was sure I was going to be a graphic designer.
When did Google arrive?
A search engine with a famously empty home page, started by two Stanford students.
Incorporated in September 1998. The page above is a couple of years later, when it was still counting the web in the millions and pointing people at a directory.
I was early enough that I bought the t-shirt and wore it to school like a giant nerd. I was sixteen and could not buy the stock, and I bring it up more than necessary.
When did The Wacom Graphire arrive?
Wacom’s first tablet aimed at people at home rather than studios. Slate blue, about the size of a postcard.
Released November 1999 as the entry-level line.
Mine was the slate blue one, from a warehouse store in 2001. I asked without expecting a yes, got one anyway, and used that thing into the ground.
When did Photoshop 5.0 arrive?
The image editor that made everything else look like a toy. This is the version that finally let you undo more than one thing.
Photoshop 5.0 shipped in May 1998, the release that introduced the History palette and editable type. Version 1.0 was Mac-only, eight years earlier.
This is the one I dabbled in, in ninth or tenth grade. After MS Paint it was genuinely intimidating, and it took me until Photoshop 7 to feel like I had the hang of it. Corel Draw and I never got along at all, which I took personally at the time.
Last one, and it is not a year
Free pages, animated GIFs, a spinning envelope and an UNDER CONSTRUCTION banner. Which 1990s web host finally went dark in 2026?
Lycos switched off Tripod and Angelfire this year, and neither domain resolves any more. GeoCities went in 2009. Lycos itself sold for $12.5 billion in 2000, then $95 million in 2004, then $36 million in 2010, which is the whole dot-com story in three numbers.
I built my sites on Tripod. Years later I ended up living on a street named Angel Fire Drive. The universe is mysterious.
The eight-color box that started it all — when did Crayola release it?
Crayola's first box shipped in 1903 for a nickel: eight colors, red through black.
Coloring is one of my earliest memories. Although I'm not THAT old, I do remember coloring in the late 80s with my mom as she showed me how to shade gently, I was mesmerized. It was magic and I never stopped coloring.
Before the MacBook arrived in 2006, what was Apple's flagship consumer laptop line called?
The iBook launched in 1999 as Apple's consumer laptop, under the professional PowerBook line, until the MacBook replaced both in 2006.
I got an iBook for my sixteenth birthday and could not be stopped. I had wanted a laptop for years — more than a phone, more than any console — and it unlocked my digital creativity completely.
Not counting ports or remasters, how many mainline Zelda games are there?
Twenty-one mainline entries span from the 1986 original through recent releases, Four Swords included: Nintendo counts it as standalone despite it first shipping bundled with the GBA port of A Link to the Past.
The reveal trailer still gives me goosebumps.
It's my favorite video game franchise, full stop. Breath of the Wild is my current favorite.
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This whole thing was built with Claude, Cursor, Astro, and my latest Wacom tablet. If any of it — or anything else here — made you want to work together, say hi.