10 years online!

Today is a bit of a milestone for this website. It is officially 10 years old. The very first version wouldn’t impress many today, but at that point, it was pretty decent for someone who had no formal training in web programming. If you would like to find out for yourself, go on and have a look at the site as it looked then.

The software behind the site has changed several times, as have the ambition level and the design. But I think my aim behind the site is the same as always. I created the site out of fun and I still keep it for fun. Back then, I didn’t have much content. In fact, the site was predominantly a set of links to other sites. With time, I added more and more jokes, but back then – with nothing but static pages – I eventually had to give up. It was too difficult to update.

I don’t have any jokes on the site anymore. The primary content is in this blog and in my photo album. And here, the world has changed dramatically. The blog may be on my site, but the actual page creation is courtesy of Blogger and the photo album is created by JAlbum. I put in the raw photos and raw text. The software makes it presentable.

In the last few years, the internet has taken a dramatic turn. It is no longer the domain for programmers and other variations of geeks. Instead, the geeks have made software that allows other (more normal) people to use the web. They use the social aspect without worrying about the technology. My friend Matthew is a guru in this field, and he can take a fair bit of credit for me having a blog… and for finally adding the comment field. To many today, that is a just a fact of life. For me, it was a bit of a challenge. I had to accept that people other than myself could write comments that would appear on my site.

Like I said at the beginning, this page was created and is kept alive because I find it amusing, not because I really use it as a tool. But maybe that will change.

I have had fun with my baby website this past decade. Perhaps I will soon have to take the biggest step yet. Not one of technology, not one of design, but one of intent. Perhaps it is time for this site to be a real tool for communication and sharing of ideas rather than my personal playground. What do you think?

31 (in Earth Years)

On January 23, 2003, the last, very weak, signal from the Pioneer 10 space probe was received. Having been launched on March 3, 1972, the spacecraft was on track for almost 31 years. It was the first spacecraft to travel through the Asteroid belt, and the first spacecraft to make direct observations and obtain close-up images of Jupiter.

I am a fan of science fiction as well as real science and I actually get a kick out of looking up on a starry sky, wondering what might be out there for us to discover. And Pioneer 10 is one of the highlights so far.

Quite impressive, and yet – I have beaten one of those statistics. Contrary to one of the most fantastic pieces of space faring hardware ever built, I managed to celebrate my 31st birthday.
Turning 30 last year was a big deal. Psychologically, it is one of those moments where your life starts to change. Or at least, so everyone expects.
In my case, I can look back at several changes during my 30th year. I got married. I got a new job. Pretty big stuff, you could say. But I have so far avoided growing up or even showing hints of eventually growing up.

Birthdays are funny in the way that they are perceived as actual occasions. I love them, don’t get me wrong, but they are an odd construction, aren’t they? I mean, if the Earth had been any faster or slower in its rotation around the Sun by even a third of a percent, the year could have been 364 or 367 days long, and suddenly, birthdays would follow that rhythm instead.
And seasons aside, very few things really follow the cycles around the Sun. I change only slowly as part of the growing up that I deny takes place, or through sudden events, like when I first met my wife. It rarely follows a 365 day pattern with an additional day almost every four years.

For the first time ever, I celebrated the day with my wife (the first of my birthdays since the wedding). Breakfast from the local bakery gave a nice start to the day. And it also ended rather well, with dinner and a movie. At my request, we had sushi. I mention this only because everyone who knows me has asked if it was my idea, since they know me as a picky eater. But yes, sushi is one of those things I had learned to love over time. Hopefully, that is not a part of growing up?
After dinner, we saw the last instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean-franchise. Seeing a film about pirates helped me keep up the illusion that getting older doesn’t mean getting wiser or more grown up.

Geek – Moi?

Is «Geek» a term you can claim with pride for yourself or does it have to be given to you by the schoolyard bully as a Mark of Cain? Most people would probably say the latter, but in my own memories going back to school, I knew that I was geeky. It was my identity and I was willing to fight for it.

In my teens and early twenties, the Geek in me was very noticeable. But in recent years, it has become less obvious. I still role play but not as often as I used to. It simply couldn’t compete with other more normal pastimes such as playing computer games (which in the days of play stations and x-box is considered «normal»). The Danish Star Trek fan club has been around for a decade. I haven’t watched Star Trek in over a year, but back then, I was one of the three founders. The only thing geeky that I never did was wear a pocket protector. Well, that and I never actually learned how to programme in visual basic, C++ or anything like that.

I am married, go to work, and pay my mortgage and all those other things that indicate that I can function in the so-called real world. Admittedly, my hat might lead you to question my normality, but that is your right. For me, it is simply a minor quirk.

All this normality was brought back into question a few weeks ago, when I sat down in front of SAS for the first time in over six months. A sentence or two ago, I proclaimed that I never learned to programme in C++. That is true. But I found my personal geek alternative. At university, I learned how to write SAS code, interpret output and rejoice in the glory of statistics. But in institutions of higher learning, we can claim that it has relevance. Hence, geekdom is easier to conceal. The give-away was that my personal quality of life was improved because I got to write snippets of code, heavily laced with semicolons and always ending with one word: «Run».

Normal people would take the hint and run – far, far away. But real geeks (with a fondness for SAS) know that running SAS can be done from the comfort of an office chair. If you are nodding in agreement, you might be like me (perish the thought): a geek disguised as a normal human being. And only the occasional smile when faced with a statistical table, a strange hat or perhaps a fondness for books by Terry Pratchett would give it away. The wonderful thing is that «normal» people usually don’t notice these small signs as they hurry along in their «normal» lives.