Post #174

How I got involved in web development

19th January 2004, evening time | Comments (19)

Pictures Dunstan drew years ago

Someone just asked me how I got into web development. Well, the short answer is I used to do quite a lot of (decidedly amateur) computer graphics, specifically vector and 3D stuff, and through that, and a general interest in computers, gradually fell into making a web site.

Here are some pics from… oh, 1994 – 1999. Most were silly things I did for friends, some were from Sport Science books I illustrated, and a couple were contracted work for clients.

On the whole they’re daft :o)

All of them were made using Acorn RISC OS computers (view the history of Acorns), running ArtWorks (vector), TopModel (3D) and a bitmap program whose name escapes me right now.

(How I developed my interest is a completely different story, involving: A Girl; A Sexy Voice; A Wonderful Pair of Breasts; A Raging Need To Have Sex; and… Molly Holzschlag. But I’ll leave that tale for another day ;o)

How about you? Any good stories on this front?

Jump up to the start of the post


Comments (19)

Jump down to the comment form ↓

  1. Stuart:

    Was the bitmap program ProArtisan?

    Posted 3 hours, 12 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Dunstan
  2. Dunstan:

    Ah, Stuart, don't tell me you were a RISC OSer as well?!

    Actually it wasn't ProArtisan, I never got on with that program. I've done some searching and the software I used was Photodesk [1].

    Cor, it brought back some memories searching through the program lists...

    [1] http://www.photodesk.ltd.uk/

    Posted 3 hours, 19 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Stuart
    Inspired: ↓ Stuart
  3. Sian:

    You 'ole horndog you. Mine started with AOL, the need to prove to a certain individual on there that her writing style might be witty but she was crap at websites, a chance conversation with a Hairy webdesigner and the rest is history.

    My designing talents are very later 1990's, I'm starting to get quite proud of them now *g*

    Posted 3 hours, 23 minutes after the fact
  4. Stuart:

    Certainly was a RiscOS user. In fact, I now use the ROX desktop, which works like the RiscOS Filer. I loved it. Wimp_Poll and all that. Loved it.

    Posted 3 hours, 57 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Dunstan
    Inspired: ↓ Dunstan
  5. Dris:

    I was always interested in computers. I met a friend who was also interested, and just about as competent. We decided to make a website.

    Well, that site never really got off the ground, as we were still early in our web-building ways. However, this sparked enough interest that I decided to keep going at that.

    Posted 7 hours, 39 minutes after the fact
  6. Jon Hicks:

    Oh, I used to have an Acorn Electron! Wasn't much good apart from playing 'Chuckie Egg'.

    I trained to be a widlife illustrator, and had planned to spend my life painting birds. The market is hard to get into though, so I gave up and got a job in a design studio. Then in 1999 I started playing with a free copy of Adobe Pagemill for Mac and got hooked into making websites. I loved how easy it was to get something 'out there' rather than paying and waiting for printing. Those pagemill sites were terrible, but it gave me the buzz.

    Posted 13 hours, 14 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Dunstan, ↓ Sian
  7. Kitta:

    I got interested after I created a horrible online modelling portfolio for myself.

    Let me set the scene: Black background, purple/pink font and way too many pictures on free hosting.

    Not good at all.

    Posted 18 hours, 15 minutes after the fact
  8. Aaron Mathew Wall:

    Being a nuclear reactor operator on a submarine spun me into suicidal depression.

    The navy destroyed some of my work records before I got out and I wanted everyone to know what I thought about the navy...(not a fan of "navy nuclear power") thus I learned search engine marketing. I still am bad at design, but I can keep learning :)

    Posted 20 hours, 28 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Dunstan
  9. Chris Hester:

    "A lot of (decidedly amateur) computer graphics"

    I take it this is a joke? When I first saw the graphics I could only think "So... much... talent...". Well I was thinking about your cool blog as well, the javascript colours in the comments, the new tabs. Superb use of colour. (Bettered only by Stopdesign IMO).

    Posted 23 hours, 50 minutes after the fact
  10. Dunstan:

    Jon. Chuckie Egg is my single favourite game of all time.
    I'd play that for hours on our ZX Spectrum 48K, lying on the carpet with the tape player/loader next to me.

    I'd love to have that on the PC...

    Posted 1 day, 1 hour after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Jon Hicks
    Inspired: ↓ Sian, ↓ Dominik
  11. Dunstan:

    Stuart, every time I install a Windows program and see it dumping files all over my HD I think of the Acorn, and it's lovely single directory for each program...

    Do you know I used to edit Acorn User? :o)

    Posted 1 day, 1 hour after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Stuart
  12. Dunstan:

    Holy crap Aaron.

    That's one of the best uses for a blog I've seen. If it's genuinely helping you then that's great, good luck with it!

    Posted 1 day, 2 hours after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Aaron Mathew Wall
  13. Sian:

    I used to have an Acorn Electron home computer, had for christmas one year and within a few months the company went bust (I'm positive it was an Acorn Electron). My favourite games were Boxer and the leaping frog game, I can still hear in my head the squelching sound when the frog was squashed.
    Hang on, maybe that's why I'm a bit unhinged.

    My sister friend (best friend but more like a sister) had a ZX Spectrum, it was black with rubber keys. Really cool. Bitch.

    Posted 1 day, 2 hours after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Jon Hicks, ↑ Dunstan
  14. Dominik:

    Looking for Chuckie Egg?
    Check out this : http://retrospec.sgn.net/games/chuckie/index.html

    Posted 1 day, 2 hours after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Dunstan
    Inspired: ↓ Dunstan
  15. Aaron Wall:

    Hi Dunstan

    "Holy crap Aaron.

    That's one of the best uses for a blog I've seen. If it's genuinely helping you then that's great, good luck with it!"

    Thanks for the complement. The truth is I already feel well. The goal of that site is to collect honest feeedback to do a good bit of offsetting the advertising that goes into making SSRI drug sales a $6,000,000,000 a year industry.

    The hardest thing is competing with drug companies and heavy spammers for distribution since it is such a high profit sector. Eventually I will kick their buts though :)

    Often times people are prescribed drugs which are not needed. I have had multiple people tell me my advice has restored their sanity...not bad for a kid that was kicked out of the navy about a year ago :)

    Click on my signature on this post to get a real idea of what I am trying to fix. Sorry if this was long winded.

    Posted 1 day, 4 hours after the fact
  16. Cam:

    I started back around 1994 when I discovered that you could see the source code to any page in (the very new) Mozilla. I think I was using Ed or something similar - it was on a uni's Sun machine via a friend's (I wasn't a student there) account. I was up there SO much just tinkering with this page ... Happy memories!

    Posted 1 day, 15 hours after the fact
  17. [m]:

    Alas, I don't have a great story of my babtism with webdesign. I'm going to tell it anyways.

    I was in the second grade of highschool when a friend of mine (aren't they all friends?) showed me a program called 'Flash 4'. I was stunned by the possibilities of it (the multitude of panels throwed me off a bit) so i decided I'd give it a go. Since there was already a new version of this program on the site, I downloaded it and started to play. Going through the lessons, scurring the web for tutorials, .fla's and other free stuff I could find. I was hooked ever since. Actionscript is and will be my first, my last, my computer-love.

    Did the actionscript game, and knew quite a lot. In fact, I was kind of bored. There were more html sites that flash, I wondered why this was the case because clearly flash-sites are better in every aspect to html. I was beginning to set my sights on HTML and anwsering the all-importent question: Why?. Than CSS came, along with a thing called 'semantics' and 'usability'. Now I knew why flash ain't all that. But it still rocks any binary markup.

    I had found my torture. I was on a quest again.

    Now I'm here. Actually learning a bit more every day. My searching skills on the ol' internet are improved exponantially and i'm having fun again in this whole computer business. I never *actually* designed a website for actual cash, but I know more that any average webdesigner. Sigh.

    That's my story. I said it wasn't all that great, don't blame me.

    PS The hardest thing ever to learn in flash was to do a good motion tween. Those things are biotches. And I'm waaay to young to ever played on those vintage 'ZX' things. I did however play a little frogger on the atari when my body was still small enough to fit in a cardboardbox. Sadly, almost all memory of that has disappeared. Of playing frogger, I mean.

    Posted 2 days, 1 hour after the fact
  18. The Wolf:

    Hmm, I got into web design stitting on this exact seat, using a similar computer to this in another house.

    I started to play with html, moved on to use a forum on my site, then I really started to learn how to design.

    I can now design very nice, valid semantic code to produce very usable clean websites.

    I started in 2002, I'm quick at picking these things up...

    Posted 5 days, 8 hours after the fact
  19. Dunstan:

    Thanks Dominik!

    *plays Chuckie Egg*

    Posted 1 week, 3 days after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Dominik

Jump up to the start of the post


Add your comment

I'm sorry, but comments can no longer be posted to this blog.