I have obtained the domain name www.expectingrain.com to give it a unique and recognizable Web address.
The server is now Apache on a UNIX machine. All the contents has been created on a Mac.
Karl Erik, September 1997
The address for the Bob Dylan server "Expecting Rain" used to be http://bob.nbr.no/
It was running on a Macintosh II fx where I worked, using WebStar1.2, which I bought for my own money, just to be able to bring Bob information to you.
The files took up about 80 MB, plus some image files that were on a UNIX server.
The geographical location was Mo i Rana, Norway, just under the Arctic Circle. My name is Karl Erik Andersen. I work at the National Library, collecting Norwegian radio and TV recordings. We unveiled Mo i Rana's new landmark in early May 1995, a statue that stands in the water looking out the fjord. It is a man with his arms down along his side and a face of no set features. It's called "Havmannen" (The Ocean Man), and was created by British artist Anthony Gormley. Here is a picture of Havmannen and my son Greg!
Another big event in Mo i Rana was the opening of the ACR - Arctic Circle Racetrack on 12 August 1995.
The beginnings of the material displayed here was Bob's Jokerman video, from which I had earlier digitized the images, for a friend. Then word came from the EDLIS mansion in Cambridge: I was assigned the upkeep of the EDLIS Who's Who and Dylan Atlas files.
Clinton Heylin's list of people in the back of "Behind the Shades" was a major part of the first Who's Who. For several months I just had these two files sitting there, adding material when discussions on rec.music.dylan came up with interesting information. From time to time I posted the whole file to r.m.d. Soon, however, the Who's Who became too long, and besides, I was not happy about the layout I was using. Then someone posted a whole database of extracts from The Rolling Stone Record Guide, consisting of all mentions of Bob Dylan in other people's entries. At the same time I was beginning to think about making a "home page", and maybe the hypertext aspect of the World Wide Web would work well with the Who's Who.
I started this server in the fall of 1994. From August it was a home page on the National Library's UNIX machine. The first external visitors in the log came on September 19th, 1994. The pioneers were:
Then, during a weekend in Oslo in October, I spent a lot of time with the Powerbook, converting my files into one for each entry, and adding the html codes needed. When I came back, I put the files on the Web.
When I found that I could be running my own server on a Mac, I downloaded MacHTTP 1.1 and set it up on my desktop Mac II fx at work. It was dead easy! I was on the Net! My oldest surviving log says that I was visited on Nov 19, 1994 by someone with the IP number 139.102.90.40
