Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Didn't Even Say Goodbye 

In 1997 I authored my first Web page.

I read up on hexadecimal colours and just started making colours up. More red! A bit of blue... How much green? The first page had blue print on a green background. Agggh. I read about tables and I went full on with the TD this and the TD that and the 'what the...? What's going on? Why isn't this working?' Then I learnt about accessibility and went back and made it all accessible. Then I learnt HTML 4 and dropped all the tables. Then XHTML.

I learnt HTML from Elizabeth Castro's book on Visual Quickstart Guide to HTML 3 and I learnt about accessibility by checking all my pages with CAST's Bobby (now owned by Watchfire).

I could never work out what links to share on my home page - I'm not fickle but then it didn't seem right for just a few hyperlinks to be the final word on my interests. What I really wanted was to update all the time. Hello?

Around the same time I first wrote a Web page, I joined a mailing list for people interested in (but mostly affected by) retinal degeneration. Every time a link came my way, I felt compelled to bookmark it for later reference. In case someone else wanted it, you see.

So I started placing them on my Web site, which somehow kept growing until it had thirty pages, nearly all containing just links and each with little sections and internal page menus.

A couple of day's ago at work I went to show someone what I meant by internal page menus, apologising in advance for the licorice allsorts design of the page.

Only it wasn't there. The page. Or my site!

I've changed ISPs and just pay for an account with my first ISP so that I can keep my first Web site in its place. I paid that account late (and I've received a receipt) but as it turns out, my first ISP doesn't use it's original name/domain name anymore and my site, as a consequence, is gone. Thanks for the e-mail letting me know old ISP!

So, do I buy another domain name just so I can host my former obsession? Or do I let it go?

I could keep it attached to GirlFriand in a separate folder. Or maybe Temporal Island, which sometimes is more disability-focussed, could have it's own domain and the RD-related stuff could hang around it? Do I have time?

I don't know. Maybe it's time to let go. But it's such a big collection of links!

Comments:
Hey Dee,

just catching up on Blogs for the first time in ages. You should get your own domain name if you can afford it. There are tons of free hosting sites. If you get an .au it is very expensive but .net are reasonable. I'm with DotEasy which Canadian, but it doesn't matter what domain name you have.

I'm doing heaps of photography of late - even getting work in Sydney. I have some of it up at http://wdmedia.deviantart.com

O'well back to marking and then dinner I suppose.

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Cheers
Andrew
 
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