14 years of public nuisance

"Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy."
-- Joseph Campbell

Wow, it just doesn't seem like B2 has been cluttering up the W3 with homepages for 14 years. I originally undertook maintaining a personal Web site in 1996, but under a different name. Those of you who remember the W3 when there was no color and only a few millions of users understand me when I say that by 1996, I made certain that version 1.0 incorporated every annoying color, bell, whistle, and gimcrack imaginable.

Site content? I included everything and anything, to the point that the site grew so unwieldy that it became disfunctional and impossible to maintain. Since my first foray, 14 other Website versions have come and gone -- not including the five stand-alone Weblog versions (Blogger and WP) and one commercial firearms site. This was necessary because as the Web changed (W3 standards, HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, the DOM), the older site architecture was not able to adapt.

A long time ago

Just for grins, I compiled screen shots of all 15 Website versions and provide them in a handy slide viewer below. Holy crap, many of them are ugly...ugly and clunky! Ugly with a Capital U. But back then glitz was king, frames were everywhere, and ugly didn't matter . . .

At any rate, B2Journal Website ver. XV is now up and running. Sleek, clean, easy to maintain, and hopefully functional enough to mature gracefully. It was developed from a basic Web template from Arcsin, so I didn't have to start from scratch like I did with the others. No PHP, a smidgen of JavaScript, nothing fancy and very, very easy to maintain.

Regardless, I don't want to go through another major site redesign for a long while -- I still mostly hand-code with an ancient version of CoffeeCup. My only regret is that thanks to a hard drive suicide and the moron (me) who didn't have his data backed up, much of the B2 content prior to 2003 is now lost to the ether. Check it out but be mindful that a few of the links and resources are still being tweaked and have not yet been activated.

Longer ago

But even 1996 was long after those of us my age caught the computer bug. Oh man, the computer tsunami of the 1960s and 1970s was epic! Those of us old enough to remember life without computers -- especially at university -- were enthralled as MIT, UCLA, Rand, DEC, IBM, Bell Labs, and others released their daily technological bombshells on the media. Even though most of us didn't really understand what they were doing or what computers would actually accomplish, we did have a plethora of 1950s Sci-Fi thrillers, Star Trek, 2001 - A Space Odyssey, and Atari's Pong to whet our imaginations. And we all wanted one.

We wanted computers as badly as we once wanted IBM electric typewriters to replace our clunky old Royals, only worse. We instinctively knew that computers would make our lives easier. Wasn't the Calculus easier using a Hewlett Packard or Texas Instrument calculator rather than a slide rule? And cost be damned -- for a few fortunate souls, at any rate.

Breakout

After military service I worked a few jobs for a few years, then jumped into college with a wife and two small children in tow. I never had a desktop computer at university, although later on there were a few models available to the public (DEC, Apples I and II, Commodore Pet, Tandy TRS80 pictured above). The problem, however, was that their cost equaled a year's tuition back then, and when you're scraping for clams each semester just to stay in school and feed your children, a computer was not high on the needs list. Though as a chemistry major, I would have sold my soul for anything that would help ease the research, lab, filing, report, and thesis load.

But then something magical happened. I fell into employment with IBM as the 1980s began. This was a heady time because it was at my work site where IBM was developing and ultimately manufacturing its PC, or Personal Computer. IBM had its own Intranet -- Big Blue, a nice primer for what was soon to become affordable to access and thus available to the world: the Internet and W3. IBM employees -- even in facilities maintenance and shipping -- were urged to use the new machines, play games, and take them home. Even though the first model used floppies and had no hard drive, I was hooked. When hard drives were introduced, the heavens parted, trumpets blared, and we were blinded by the light.

Onward

From there it was on to PSINet and CompuServe, online gray screens, usenet channels, and a few million users worldwide. But that was then. Today there are 1.9 billion users, with no discernible end in sight -- in either user numbers or Net applications.

Obviously, I've left quite a bit of the timeline out, but you get the drift. We have now reached the point where our cell phones perform more functions than Star Trek communicators. We can only imagine where this technology bloom will take us, but each leap forward is happening at an ever-quickening rate. Cranial implants? Optic nerve plug-ins? Ingest a B2Journal capsule while drinking your glass of Tang?

I can't wait.

Hype and Chains. Happy computing!

© 2005 the b2 journal