In days of yore, I was paying only AU$300 – 400 on my tri-annual webhosting fees. This figure increased to over AU$900, so obviously I decided to move hosts so as to reduce costs.

With other bills just around the corner – coming fresh from a recent root-canal surgery – reducing costs has become my focus in this early part of the new year.

In doing this move, I’ve come to recognize that I’ve drifted away from many things that were of interest to me. There were Bulletin Boards for MMO games, forums from a Clan I had a falling-out with, download files for FPS Shooter Servers. But it was the Megamek Files that got me really reminiscing.

I’ve always been a great fan of the Battletech Universe. And recently I bought a copy of the current Battletech Game. It has been fun to play a game or three during the week. But Megamek and Megamek.Net were something different.

Back then (circa 2006) I was a struggling Programmer with nothing to do thanks to poor choices in Employment, and I had poured a lot of my creativity into developing side web applications for this open source game which was based on the Battletech Universe.

I decided to have a go at setting up a web-based star map for the game, but quickly found out that a key file no longer existed in the directory. Reading through the .php file. It has been so long since I’ve even looked at programming that I could hardly understand what I had previously done in inspiration!

In Battletech, there is this term “LOSTECH”. It refers to any technology that had been lost during almost 300 years of near continual warfare in the Successor States.

These .php files are my own personal “LOSTECH”. Part of me wants to try to recover that which I have lost. Return to some of that inspiration and skill that I’ve surrendered in the 12 years of pure “Adulting”, knuckling down on the job and being a responsible taxpayer and earner. In the rush to do what was needed, I put away things that I wanted.

“LOSTECH” is a return to my dreams. A return to something I can look forward to.