Way back when, part 1: 1996

Let’s go back to 1996…

At the time you used mosaic and netscape to browse the world wide web, and altavista to search it. Highway robbery was common, 6 figure sums for web server software licenses. You used that newfangled Apache thingie, if you were smart and could stomach the ridiculous multiple configuration files, or NCSA. The average charge for a domain name was $75, if your reseller was nice. SSL was a nightmare, virtual domains took 10 steps to set up, 28k modems were still common, nobody had bandwidth charges but disk space cost a premium. It was the era of those brave cowboys (and girls) who would build html pages, configure the server, write the perl scripts, set up databases, go into photoshop to create horizontal rule graphics and buttons (remember those?), cheery animated gifs, optimize every image, enter the data, take the photographs, write the content, fight with sendmail and DNS - all before the first coffee break of the day. You could do it all, and you had to do it all, unless you had very large budgets. You had to figure it out as you went, invent solutions to problems nobody had yet started to discuss.

In 1996, most online interactions were in newsgroups, forums, irc and icq (people always calling for the death of xxx for new interaction services please note that all of these still exist. The community might be smaller, but none of them are dead, although some are full of zombies). 1 in 3 people online probably worked in technology or the web, if not more. People built a personal site like today a myspace or facebook account, so people could find them. Webrings were common, the stumble-upon of the day. If you were there you’ll be going “oh yes” and if you weren’t there, well… You had to be there for this to make sense.

The wayback machine allows us to get a peak at what it is we were doing then - and I just had a peek at this site’s past.

This site started as static pages in 1996, on the domain imagisphere.com (which was stolen when I changed providers). The wayback machine has a few horrible archives of it. The content lists a lot of topics which never were fleshed out, from women on the web to content about my involvement with teamOS/2 user groups, and its crowning glory was the list of all ISPs in Switzerland, by region, modestly called “The great provider list”. It looks horrible.

I had totally forgotten about that! This was compiled as a result of a job trying to set up a hotline support service and selling it to ISPs in Switzerland, which had me call and visit all of the names on those lists. I had set up the knowledge base for the operators, the website, and I got quite a few of the ISPs on board when the company which was going to set up the telephone service itself decided it was too far out of its comfort zone.  A tough one on one’s first job and foray in entrepreneurship…

I kept the list and some of the knowledge base and put them on the web, and maintained them for 2 years. I had totally forgotten…

What have you forgotten about old sites you did? Check internet.archive.org, it might be fun! Embarrassing like baby pictures, but fun.

And some things never change:

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My backgrounds - made on the web!

Note: this is a talk-out-loud piece written wearing the hat of an average user - it is not written wearing the hat of the web and software professional - that’s why it is in my personal blog and is written in light conversational style.

In the past I have often said that as cool as I thought many rich-online-applications that seek to replace desktop apps, I hadnt really started using any of them. But recently a shift has started to happen, and it hit me in recent conversations about some images and patterns I used on my site - all of them had been whipped up playing with online applications.

So I guess it is time to reverse the pattern of posts saying “web app x, tested, stopped using” to spread some love to the ones I do end up using.

1. Aviary (& donationcoder)

When I first heard of aviary, I really wanted an account. I registered my interest but alas never made the cut. Luckily for me some of the delighful people on the Donation Coder site had some invitations to share, and I got to get my hands on one. I am amazed as to what can be done with image manipulation online nowadays. I guess I shouldn’t be, having been in the web development field for long enough, but it’s actually different seeing first hand what can be done, and how smooth it works.

Screenshot: Vector editor in opera

Even though I only just dabbled with the tools, I ended up paying for aviary, in part to support them and get them to implement all the promised apps, and in part because the ability to have access to tools such as these from any computer or any OS really will make my life easier when travelling. I can access them on a friend’s computer, I can use an older laptop, or a netbook, because I only need the RAM and CPU to run the application and view the result, not to process the image. And of course I can boot on FreeBSD or opensolaris or anything with a modern browser available, and aviary should work. No more “crap, I wanted to quickly whip something up on this photo but the machine is booted to BSD and running something and I dont want to switch” (of course I might get the whole virtualisation thing finalised and wont have that problem at all anymore, who knows? But that is another story)

As I said, I mostly just dabbled with the apps - especially peacock, which is just like pipes but for images generation.

Screenshot: Peacock with my little triangle experiment

I was playing with triangles, which are my favorite shape (as much as one can have a favorite shape). At the time I was trying to create a set of nice sharp triangles as a basis for a website design - another idea which didnt really make it through. But the background based on triangles I created in peacock was used on this site for a while, and is still my background on my computers. It doesnt look quite that great on white, but it is a transparent png and creates a fascinating depth effect on a dark background (don’t take my word for it, look!)

See this on aviary

Out of the full applications they are planning to do, I am most interested in the font creator and probably the “real medium” painting simulator. And I am a bit disappointed they seem to have cancelled any idea of web design tools. It will be interesting to have access to things like sound editing without having to install any application, since I need it maybe 2-3 times a year (at the moment I just use wavosaur when it happens, since it is a no-install app). We’ll see!

Edited: one thing I forgot to mention about aviary is how people often share their creations, complete with all the actions used in their creation. This makes it a great learning feature, because not only can I admire what people created with the tools, I can also see how they did it.

PS: Donation Coder is a great community, by the way. I joined it a while back because I wanted to donate something back for some apps I was using, and as an addict to independent software this was a great place - full of addicts like me, and developers. It is also a very supportive learning community. I should write a bit about them, but just go check the site, the software offered on it, and the discussion in the forums.

2. Colourlovers

I have been working on a slight update of the colors used on different sections of the site (not that you could tell, like half of what I ever do it hasn’t made it onto anything visible). Now I am a)lazy b)not a designer so I thought it would be fun to use a webapp to play with color schemes. So I found Colour Lovers a few months back and played with it a bit. Created several palettes at random, some of which became the currently half-finished themes on the site.
I also played at creating patterns from those palettes and others, and in spite of the rather limited set of available patterns (especially ones that use the full set of 5 colors), I had a bit of fun. Since I was just messing about I cannot comment for the app’s suitability for production work, at first glance I would say it is not sufficient. But it might be a good one to get a bit of inspiration in a way that does not kill concentration, prior to going to work in the professional tools.

Screenshot: Colourlovers

I particularly enjoyed the option to submit an image and have the system offer colors from that - although I mostly found that some of my favorite photos of my own turned out to make rather lousy color palettes. What works in a photo does not work in a flat color setting.

In the end though, Colourlovers, like other very narrow fun-social websites before them (eg: wordie) is something I can see myself using in short bursts followed by months of forgetting about them, especially since for the pure work of palettes and texture, aviary mentioned just above has some pretty nifty tools.

See the patterns on colourlovers

both files are to be considered released on CC license, attribution required (a link to this post would be enough)

Plunder is now Age of Booty and it’s available on Impulse - but not for me :(

Game: Plunder

From: https://store.stardock.com/application.aspx?id=agebooty&theme=impulse

I was checking the Impulse preorder list and the screenshots for that game “age of booty” looked familiar. So I went to the Certain Affinity website and sure enough, the game is now called Age of Booty - live on the xbox, coming any day now on PC.

The reviews speak of “well crafted”, “easy to get addicted”, “catan for the rest of us”, “sharp humor”. I think I will preorder - at $9.99 they deserve a chance

AoB’s own website is at http://certainaffinity.com/ageofbooty/
Bunch of reviews at http://www.giantbomb.com/age-of-booty/61-20564/user_reviews/

UPDATE: Grrr - tried preordering on Impulse but no luck “Not available in your country”. Now what is the point of digital distribution if they keep the outdated market limitation view?

More about Plunder

Online Fiction Find:

Read it at http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/2008/09/17/tom-edison-and-his-telegraphic-harpoon/
A bit of a steampunk alternate history, a bit loose but a fun read :D
There are quite a few more tales available on that site, worth a sniff through.

Use-what-you-have-challenge: I need a plan

This refers to Challenge: use what you have

I’m not doing too bad on books and havent bought a DVD in a long time, but games are tough - I am not playing my existing games and still tempted to buy some of the great games coming out… maybe making this public will make me stick to the challenge…

Games I plan to revisit:

Descent 2 and Descent 3
Sacrifice
Freespace
Red Faction
Evil Islands (under way)
Might and Magic 6 (under way)
Disciples 2
Sacred
Neverwinter Nights
Arcanum
SWAT 4
Oddworld
Chaser
Fable
SIlverfall
Max Payne
No One Lives Forever 2
Prey
Iwar 2
H&D 2
Armies of Exigo
Europa 1400
Virtual Villagers
Hostile Waters

That’s just a random grab from my list  - I’d welcome suggestions/votes as to which one anyone is interested in my revisiting and writing about

The embarrassing games list (or “why i shouldnt buy any more games”)

There’s actually not too much damage since the last time I published this as I didnt buy that many games this year - but I did buy a few.
And I didnt play back many old ones, so the list of not-really-played list is still embarrassing.

Still I did manage to give Avencast, Depths of Peril, Evils Islands, Might and Magic 6, TF2, Dwarf Fortress, Warhammer Online and a few others a whirl - not much of a dent on the list though :S

I do think I am missing some, will add them when they come back to me.

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Nth half baked redesign

You might have noticed a few color changes around - this is because I am finally making good on my plan to have a separate “webwitchery” blog. It is taking form behind the scenes as we speak.

As always there is a huge amount of i-dotting and t-crossing and checking and polishing that needs to be done, especially since I am mixing so many different data types (games, blog posts, book entries) and mixing and matching them in two different sections.

I’m just keeping a list of todos here for now, some of them might even require me to badger some of my designer friends for advice…

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King’s Bounty review

Game: King’s Bounty

From: http://jaguarusf.blogspot.com/2008/10/kings-bounty-legend-review.html

I follow a lot fewer games nowadays, but this one still looks like a winner :D

Quests are fun, simple, and varied as a sky full of snowflakes. At one point, the proprietor of the Dragon Fang Inn sent me to fetch his business’ namesake. What could have turned into a nasty battle with a blue dragon was resolved with a mean left hook. That’s right, I knocked the dragon’s fang out with my bare hands, and he thanked me for it. (Medieval dentists are hard to come by.) Another time, a creepy royal wanted me to fetch him a frog, so he could kiss it and turn it into his bride. Naturally, the first frog I came across was male, and none too happy that all his women were being snatched up by a perverse prince with a propensity for puckering up with those of the warty persuasion. Before this game’s release, there were a lot of rumors concerning the translation, but I’m happy to report that the dialog is a blast to read. When I asked to join a swamp witch’s coven, she interrogated me with a series of questions. After carefully considering each response, she finally hit me with a stumper: Can you be a woman? Because this is a witch’s coven (yeah, yeah… she got me)!

More about King’s Bounty