By Ed "Hazukashii" Howell
Originally published 26 Dec 2018 // Updated 10 Mar 2020
Update: Originally published on the 20th Anniversary of my website, this update is provided to help get the word out to the next generation of hashers around the world. (Shameless plug follows . . . Please ensure your local webmaster adds a link to [
http://gotothehash.net ], if not done so already) It may not seem like it, but this pile of shiggy I call a website does require many hours a year of upkeep and maintenance. Over the past 5 months since I retired, I have been travelling around the world enjoying as many new hash clubs and hashing experiences that I can get to. Fortunately, the COVID-19 panic has not yet had any effect on my travels. After joining my old friends in Japan last October for All Japan Nash Hash, I have had the good fortune to visit 20 different countries (so far), and run about 70 hash trails with 38 different hash clubs. This has taken much research, especially for the hash clubs in the Pacific Ocean, so I created a new contact list specially for those remote locations -
http://gotothehash.net/pacific.html . . . as explained below, the worldwide hash contact links on the left hand side of my website are maintained by many different hashers around the world. We do this all for free, so please make an effort to contact your regional webmaster to provide updates (and THANK them) to your hash clubs listing. Please read on to see how this all started . . .
This is the story of the Regional Hash Webmasters from back in the mid to late 1990s, and our effort to organize. Harken back to the day when E-Mail was king, E-Mail Lists were the social networks, and flame wars were abundant (not that they cannot be found on F-Book now). Created in January 1998 from primordial internet fudge, GoToTheHash.net (a.k.a. WORLD HASH LINKS), is now [over] 20 years old. Originally, GoToTheHash.net started out as just a listing of a small group of hashers that managed websites containing links and contacts for the H3 clubs within a country or region. Our merry band of hashmen back then included: AFRICA = Slumpy, ARABIAN GULF = Baldrick2Dogs, AUSTRALIA = D2HD, CANADA = Mr. PeeeeNut, CHINA & HONG KONG = Geriatric, EUROPE 1 or EUROPE 2 = Floater or Prof, INDIA = Spiderman, INDOCHINA = Hanoi H3, JAPAN = Beerhead, SOUTH KOREA = Hazukashii, MALAYSIA = Sim Campbell, NEW ZEALAND = Wendy, PAPUA NEW GUINEA = Dimple, PHILIPPINES = Scar Face, SINGAPORE = Dirty Hacker, SOUTH PACIFIC = Web Head, THAILAND = Rottweiller, UNITED KINGDOM = Prof, and the USA, SOUTH & CENTRAL AMERICA, and CARIBBEAN = Flying Booger.
[The current list of Regional Webmasters can be identified on their own linked website. Please contact them directly to update your listing . . . or you can contact me and I'll help you get in contact with your regional webmaster]
Built on the small "homepages" provided with an AOL email account back in the 90s, the address was long and hard to remember. So, in an effort to make it easier to remember, a forwarding service was found and
http://go.to/thehash became a simple solution to the concern. In January 2001, GoToTheHash.net got its own domain name and has been there ever since. The site went through several color and design changes in the beginning, but for the past [17 years] has settled into what you see today, and now only the information changes. It may look tired, but the information is normally up to date.
Over the ensuing years, various features have been added, including a digital hash T-shirt museum, a hash events calendar, Hash Songs, an extensive Hash History, a mailing list that provides monthly updates, and a Facebook page for announcements. Now that a significant majority of hashes have migrated to Facebook, the need for this old tired website may no longer exist. I'll keep it up and running as long as there is interest, we'll see what happens over the next year or so. On-On!
For many more articles like this on the history of hashing, check out . . .
http://gotothehash.net/history/inthespotlight.html