A Brief History of My Internet

TRS-80 was my entry point. I first logged onto the STARS network in ’85 on what the cool kids say today is a TRASH-80. STARS was an education collective for schools. Teachers and students could use it as a resource hub. Acoustic coupling connected us. This was my first online experience.

The link was frequently dodgy and had a measly 300 baud rate — painfully slow compared to what’s expected from our online connections today. The computers displayed text in a single colour. The screens themselves were black.

I went away from computers for a while to pursue an alternate career.

It would take another ten years before I’d come back to computers and another year or two before connecting to what had become the World Wide Web.

My new photography business needed an online presence. The Web was growing fast, and I received calls (almost daily) from companies wanting to build me a webpage and host it, but I thought I could do it myself and find a host of my own.

I’d never written an HTML page, but I figured it out. Jan 4th 2000, was when my work went live on the ‘net. I had callers right away.

I soon started writing in Macromedia and producing Flash embeds to make my site look ‘fancy’. While folks were hooking into MySpace and ICQ, my site became the central component of my photography and writing interests. It continued to draw interest daily.

And then, in 2006, I took my foot off the accelerator. I became frustrated with the website (and cameras). It was impossible to keep up with the constant changes in technology. Mobile phones forced a change in the Internet — profoundly affecting how we browsed it and how webmasters like myself wrote and presented our pages.

MySpace folded. The pages I had on that platform (called Captain’s Log) were set to vanish, but I received an email saying the blog could be transferred to a new platform: WordPress.

I didn’t know what to do with the content, but I migrated it anyway and saved it there, choosing to decide on what to do with it later. (As you can see, I decided to use it.)

WordPress presented me with their solution. All I’d have to do is fill their templates with my content, and the site would adapt to change as it happened. The templates were automatically upgraded. There was no re-writing for me to do. The WP developers did it all!

The site grew and adapted accordingly, with the most significant changes in mobile device responsiveness (and video imports). The pages on the site recognise what type of device is browsing them (i.e., vertically held small flip-phone vs large horizontal tablet vs laptop.) and arrange themselves to fit accordingly.

I’d never be able to keep up with that kind of programming development!

Gone are the days when a well-written webpage attracts traffic. The challenge now is podcasting and social media linking. It’s a complex online world today.

I wonder what my online life will be like tomorrow.

–Michael. (Author)

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