OP here. This is a follow-up to my original essay: "This is a web page." https://justinjackson.ca/words.html
BTW: does anyone know of a lightweight, retro "hit counter" that can grab my GA stats and display them at the bottom?
I'm a fucking webmaster
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: I'm a fucking webmaster
#42Re: I'm a fucking webmaster
#43I remember when bandwidth was at a premium and 1200 baud was fast. There were pleas everywhere to use simple html, white text on black. Images were links to download if you wanted to view them and encouraged only if they added to the content. Nobody was trying to make the web into television.
When 1200 baud was fast there were no pleas to use simple html - there was no html!
You might have had me with 56k or even 28.8kbps (V.92!), but 1200 baud. When 1200 baud was fast - yes, everywhere was simple text on the screen (maybe ANSI colors), but more along the lines of Compuserve or a BBS. And yes, you had to download images. The best were the progressive scan ones where you could view the incomplete images as they downloaded.
Ah, the memories...
Re: I'm a fucking webmaster
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree. For emphasis on the power of being a "webmaster" AND to capture what that meant in the cultural vernacular of various pipsqueaks who claimed that title when it was a thing, you could do little better than a qualifier like "fucking" or "motherfucking" or "goddamn". You could for instance, write this with a theme embodied like, "I am webmaster, hear me roar" or "webmaster of my domain or something", but I thi…
It doesn't read that way to me, it just reads as an adjective to make the article more "shocking" and illustrate the role of a webmaster to appear more against the grain of our little IT/startup world. I think the rest of the essay does a great job of explaining why and how webmasters were so important and how they were/are the ultimate problem solver. No ego boosting qualifiers necessary.
Mainly those who are indeed somewhat shocked (usually due to some still active puritan heritage) actually think that such words were meant to "make the article more 'shocking'".
The rest don't even blink when we see them -- especially from countries without a history of a prudish outlook on things.
One can see people getting slashed with knives and shot in the head on PG13 movies -- words like these are nothing compared to that.
Re: I'm a fucking webmaster
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
See also: http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com
Ugh, more of this low-contrast nonsense. Give me black text or give me death.
This one is obviously for you: https://bestmotherfucking.website/
Re: I'm a fucking webmaster
#46>And when you publish your own HTML to a server that you control; that's fucking powerful. Autonomy and independence are central to the web. We can't forget that. >The world still needs some fucking webmasters. We might not all be making websites professionally anymore. But we should keep making websites. The passion, the freedom, the joy: we need to pass this on. I appreciate the enthusiasm for wanting to empower pe…
Most people never wanted to be webmasters in the 90s, either. They'd spend their time finding fun apps to make weird characters or RTF-colored chat text, ASCII art, l33t speak, and flashy forum sigs. If they were really artsy, maybe some .gifs.
Creativity came in many forms, and still does. Webmasters were just the "left-brained" types (yes, i'm aware that's a pop-psych myth). Nowadays it's the "let's reinvent everything in a new language" types trying to shove an operating system into a web browser, versus the people making art, music, culture and community using technology.
Now that I think of it, I actually learned to program because my brother used Geocities' webpage-making template system to make his own site, and I wanted to know how he did it, so I read the source.
Re: I'm a fucking webmaster
#47I love nostalgia posts. I think all of us who were "webmasters" all have a differed "what we are now", but if everything didn't start this way for me, I don't think I'd be doing what I am doing today regardless. I remember making a ball bounce in Flash with some elasticity and people wanted it on their website no matter what their website was about. The 90's were such strange times. "Can you put that bouncing ball on…
Remember huge Flash intros to sites? I overheard someone trying to add that to a site in 2015 and being adamant that it's what people need to see because they don't know what the site is about until they have a pretty intro.
I've noticed the people that insist on micromanaging everything like that with web technologies tend to not stay in business very long or don't want to do much besides pay for the website like people pay for refrigerators. Great for the web hosting companies that will take $30 / mo on a site that gets 1000 hits / month but terrible for web designers that need repeat business once in a while.
Re: I'm a fucking webmaster
#48OP here. This is a follow-up to my original essay: "This is a web page." https://justinjackson.ca/words.html
I have stolen the exact css from that site on multiple occasions. Which small BC city were you in? I'm in Victoria.
Re: I'm a fucking webmaster
#49>And when you publish your own HTML to a server that you control; that's fucking powerful. Autonomy and independence are central to the web. We can't forget that. >The world still needs some fucking webmasters. We might not all be making websites professionally anymore. But we should keep making websites. The passion, the freedom, the joy: we need to pass this on. I appreciate the enthusiasm for wanting to empower pe…
But if web sites were easier to make, more people would make them.
In the 1990s I had friends who literally knew nothing at all about computers but still managed to hack together their own sites with a text editor and some persistence.
It was so easy anyone of average and above IQ could do it.
Often the results were - let's say - not that great as graphic design. But they got the job done well enough to be useful.
So I don't think it's an illusion at all. I think the barriers to entry have become way too high. There's certainly
If the barriers were lower, I'm not convinced we'd need FB and Tumblr and the rest at all.
Re: I'm a fucking webmaster
#50Are the profanities really necessary? I guess they are, considering you're using them as a crutch for the lack of anything interesting to say.
I suppose you should've used some yourself.