Stuff to See!
In the Market For...
At this point I can see the end of my freeloading days.
I'm not quite there yet, but soon enough, I'll have to venture out into the world to purchase a good chunk of web space (so I can upload higher quality pictures), as well as a domain name. The free web space I have now will still serve for a little while, but not forever.
I was running through some previous rants, attempting to archive them so that I could perhaps send a copy to my father in Ohio. He expressed some curiosity about what I've been writing and since he didn't have internet access I was unable to show him much of anything.
So I went to a location where I knew I could print off the vast majority of what I've written. One hundred and twenty-seven pages later, my mission was complete. While going through this rather boring task I took note of the various misspellings and poor grammar which plagued some of my writings, but decided that it would be better to send them as is. I have subsequently fixed the vast majority of them and uploaded them to my site.
At home, I converted the various HTML files to Microsoft Word format, and instead of 127 pages I had merely 122, or 115 without any sensible page breaks. The question arose in my mind: is that really so much? I don't think so, although I've been more productive this year than in years past.
After spending an hour or so going through a rigorous grammar and spell check in Word, I finally closed down the 300 or so kilobyte document. I may even post that one day, either in .doc format or .txt format, if there's any demand for it. Maybe, if I felt industrious enough, I could use that as a portfolio of sorts to secure a job in a field where writing is actually useful. If nothing else, the variety of topics should itself prove interesting to the right people. I have yet to meet those people, however.
In the end, though, the pictures will kill my available web space, leading me to actually spend money so that no one can read what I have to say. Actually, that last part is not quite true. I've had enough hits recently from people I've never met to realize that real people out in the world, aside from one or two of my friends, have actually seen my site. Encouraging? Depends, I guess, on what my intent actually is. Do I want to share my feelings on anything and everything under the sun with people I've never met? Or am I just ranting for therapeutic reasons, using the internet as a 21st century 'Dear Diary'? For this site, it's more the latter than the former, since I probably could increase viewership exponentially by trolling around various message boards and dropping a link. I'm certainly not looking for direct financial benefits from this enterprise, since I have nothing to sell except for free speech, which is obviously bereft of monetary remuneration.
A (small) number of people have approached me about crafting websites for their use, although nothing has come of it. It's pretty easy to build a website, actually, assuming you have the content on hand. The hardest parts are creating a visual esthetic and finding server space, whether free or not. Even after going through multiple design revisions, for the most part adding a new page is just a matter of injecting content into an available template. The site design itself is simple; the most complicated feature I use is a three-column table. Basic HTML itself is very simple to learn. I think I learned enough to turn my own stories into webpages in a little less than three hours.
Or you can find a design you like and copy the source into a text editor (I use Appleworks on my Mac and Wordpad on my laptop), with the only stumbling blocks being that you have to supply your own pictures and change some HTML tags. This comes more easily to some people than to others. Some people even use programs designed to create web pages, such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage, or various utilities included with popular web browsers. Plus there are all the vagaries of Java, Javascript, Flash, cascading style sheets, XML, DHTML... the list goes on. These are all useful things, but not necessary to putting together a basic website.
Once upon a time I thought of joining one of the many web development companies which have come and gone. Stability is not one of the strong points of this field, so I stayed in my safe financial services environment. I'd probably lose out to someone who had more experience and more education even if I did decide to crack into the business, since many universities offer web development as a major nowadays.
My friend Jacquie in Pennsylvania, as opposed to Jakki in Baltimore (more or less), expressed some trepidation once upon a time concerning putting up her own webpage. I'm not sure if she's moved forward with it or not, but her concern was that her copy of Dreamweaver wasn't working properly for whatever reason. I believe I asked her what the purpose of her site would be... I certainly don't remember the answer, as my memory is not what it once was. I believe that she could get by without that program, but she didn't have confidence in her ability to pick up HTML. Maybe she has by now. I haven't heard from her since I went to a wedding with her. I wonder what she might be doing?
As I've mentioned before, my friend Jakki (in Baltimore) just earned a promotion, which is a Good Thing (TM), or at least I hope so. I'm sure she'll make the best of it. If you happen to talk to her, congratulate her.
On the plus side, I was able to fix my mother's computer yesterday. It runs Windows 98 Second Edition, and like any pre-XP box, has some of the most unfathomable connections between one application and another. Their AOL was acting wonky...turns out by reinstalling Compuserve, I was able to get them back on to the Internet. I also advised them to at least double their RAM and get rid of all of the bs stuff running in the background, such as Weatherbug, which in my opinion is little better than a virus.