It’s odd how a bit of technology, mass acceptance and a few decades can change the way we view things. I grew up in my formative years about the time that computers were beginning to enter our homes. I was always a bit of an outsider kid, that really only fit in with a few fringe crowds. Computers happened to be one of those fringes, so obviously it was an attraction to me. Back in those days, being a geek was certainly no badge of courage, and certainly not something that would get you into the “in” crowd. None the less, I began exploring the world of computers, taught myself to write programs in basic on a old Radio Shack TRS-80 computer. Eventually, I graduated to a Commodore 64, but that was still a long way before the world wide web would become mainstream.
Fast forward a few years, and I’m a regular working guy in the IT department at our local university. The internet is beginning to hit it’s stride, at least at the university level it is. The academics were one of the early adopters of the world wide web. Great for sharing research and contacting distant colleagues. It was here in an introductory to web design and HTML that I really started to learn about the inner workings of the web. It’s a lesson I never forgot, and one that got me started towards working in the much more geek friendly and fashionable world of websites.