Baby steps and the birth of a monster

Head Rambles Posted on by

Grandson was here yesterday.

“Grandad, Mam told me you once made a famous website?”

This puzzled me for a bit as I have made dozens of websites. Could he be referring to this one, and if so, why the past tense?

Then I remembered! He meant my very first site when I knew sweet damn all about websites and the whole Interwebs was in its infancy and not even out of the virtual maternity hospital.

At the time one of my jobs was to install software on the PCs in RTE so that people could access this new wondrous invention. First I would install the IP stack and then install Netscape Navigator Gold. One of the very first questions that would be thrown at me was did I have a list of good websites they could use.

I pondered upon this question when I had an idea. At the time, Netscape used a file called bookmarks.html. This contained all the sites a user had bookmarked. It crossed my mind that I could edit this file and add a list of common sites such as HotBot, Dogpile and the Irish Times [Google hadn’t been invented yet]. So when I did my installations I included my edited file which instantly gave them most of what they wanted. As I did my rounds I also got suggestions for other sites to add to my little file.

It was a bit of a pain having to install this file and it crossed my mind that it would be easier if I could put the file somewhere on RTE’s internal Intranet site and people could then just link to it. I approached the boss with the suggestion. He told me to fuck off, that no one was allowed stick their personal stuff on the Intranet. Typical RTE!

A friend in Engineering had a little sideline where he had gotten himself a web server. He heard my dilemma and suggested I put my file on his server, that all I needed was a name for the embryonic website. Irish Lynx was born!

I did a bit of home tutorials on the wonders of web sites and how to write them and soon had an actual website with an Index and pages of categorised links. I even managed to add some images to make it more professional looking. I had created my first site!

Over the months, the site grew into quite a large repository of several thousand links. As the site was public, people outside RTE started using it too. It became very popular. The mainstream media began to take notice.

Irish Lynx is a portal site of, well, Irish links (the more obvious domain name of www.irishlinks.com was already taken by a site that has nothing to do with Irish interests). It was initially set up two years ago with the idea that if you have, or know of, a good site, share it. This is one of the basic philosophies of the Internet, and it’s good to see this ideal being so well honoured here. Up-to-date, accurate, a great resource with graphics and colour kept to a minimum, it’s easy to use.

The Irish Times Oct 3rd 2000

The site became very difficult to edit as every entry had to be put into several files. What I needed was a programme to do it for me. I knew nothing about databases so I decided to use an Excel spreadsheet to contain the information. I then created a Visual Basic Macro to run it. I would add the new links to the spreadsheet and then press “Compile”. The macro would then delete the old files and create new ones from scratch. It was cumbersome but it worked. At this point the site contained tens of thousands of links.

I was approached by management. They wanted the site. They didn’t say why. I told them to bugger off.

They said the site was theirs as it had been written on company time and I that had to hand it over.

I told them to bugger off and that the site had been written on my own time at home.

They said they owned the “Intellectual Property Rights” to anything and everything produced by a staff member regardless of when or where it was created. This sounded very suspicious as they could claim ownership of everything I had ever written since I started working there [including shopping lists?]. I didn’t quite believe them.

I told them to bugger off.

Stalemate.

Eventually they backed down and offered to buy the site. A price was agreed and paid.

They killed the site.

To this day, I don’t understand why they did what they did. The site just vanished. No notice or apologies to the public who were using the site. They let the domain lapse and it has since been owned by various people linking to sites that have fuck all to do with Ireland or indeed the Lynx.

The site wouldn’t stand a chance now. Google and their ilk have seen the end of portals and made them redundant.

It’s funny, but up until yesterday I had forgotten all about Irish Lynx.

 

You have to hand it to me

Head Rambles Posted on by

I met up with an old friend in the village yesterday.

He had buggered off foreign a couple of years ago so it was a while since we had last met in person.

The village was pretty full even though it was still morning. The coffee shop terrace was fully occupied but my friend had already arrived, had grabbed a table and had the mugs served up. It was nice to feel the firm handshake which was a physical rebonding after a long absence. It was a trivial matter yet it had huge significance.

It’s the first time I have shaken hands with anyone since the beginning of last year, or even earlier. For nearly two years it has been relentlessly drummed into us to shun our fellow humans. We mustn’t stand nearer than two metres and if we feel compelled to make a physical connection we are told to use that abomination of a virtue signal – the elbow bump.

The elbow bump is up there with the mask in my list of Covid hatreds. It is a naff, twee invention that didn’t really serve any purpose. Most animals, and in particular primates are physical beings. Touch is an essential part of any interaction. While us humans don’t go in for the full grooming effort, we have refined touch down to a simple handshake [or in a lot of cultures, a kiss on the cheek] which is a sign that we are unarmed and open to friendship. We come in peace. To bump elbows is meaningless or could even be misconstrued as a gesture of hostility: come any closer that that’s what you’ll get in the throat.

So we sat in the sun and chatted. It was good to be with a friend doing what friends do when there isn’t madness in the air. The only disturbance was the village clock which they finally fixed a short while back to it now chimes the hour. Though I think “chimes” may not be the appropriate verb – it sound more like someone belting a field gate with a lump hammer – maybe “clangs” would be a better word?

As we parted, we shook hands again. It was normal. It was natural. It was sane.

Life is good again.

 

Allowing foreigners in

Head Rambles Posted on by

Back in the Good Old Days when people started putting up their websites, there were two essential items.

One was for any site owner to call himself [or herself?] a Webmaster. This title was to somehow imbue a sense of power and awe in the readership. No website was complete without an address somewhere – webmaster@whatever. That practice seems to have vanished into the mists of time and I haven’t heard the term in many years.

The other essential ingredient on any self respecting site was to have a little page counter, bragging how many people had visited the site. Naturally a lot of kids set up their site and initialised their new counter to show around 100,000 visits before the site was even launched. It’s a hell of a long time since I have seen one of them.

I must confess that in the early days [and even the not so early days] I used to keep a keen eye on statistics and visitors, Google Analytics was my friend. I watched the numbers climb over the years, but then got bored with it. What did it matter? I was scribbling mainly to amuse myself so it didn’t matter that much if my readership went up or down [provided it didn’t drop below zero?]

A while ago I all but scrapped Google Analytics and installed my own system on a server to monitor “my” sites [Matomo, if anyone is interested]. It’s a lot more accurate and isn’t cluttered with a lot of Google’s nonsense. One of the statistics which does interest me is where my visitors come from. Usually the figures don’t vary much. The UK accounts for around half my visitors followed by the States, Canada, Ireland and Australia in that order. For some reason the Irish never had much time for me, accounting for around 10% of visits.

Lately there has been a change. A couple of weeks ago I noticed a spike in traffic in the early morning hours. China had discovered me! I don’t know [or particularly care] what caused this spike but it became a fairly regular feature.

Then another mob joined up from India. Now the UK still remains at the top but China and India vie for second place.

Today’s visitors –

Weird?

 

Points to Ponder

Head Rambles Posted on by

I read a little piece the other day over at The Foggy Mirror.

I was going to copy it and paste it here, but Mac has already gone to all that trouble so I’ll leave it where it is.

So go on over there and read it NOW.

I can wait.

…

Right. You have read it? Good. Now all I ask is that you list the inaccuracies, because I can’t find any. Surely there must be some?

And while I’m on the subject, I noticed a telling little piece last night.

They harp on about the efficacy of the vaccines and how they are the Saviour of Mankind. They implore us all to get punctured as only then will we all be safe. Little mention [i.e. dead silence] is made of the number of hospital cases involving people who have already received the Elixir of Life.

But then last night our Chief Medical Officer [blessed be his name] made his little daily sermon, once more spreading doom and gloom and how we all have to wear masks and “act responsibly” because the Worst Is Yet To Come. He did however mention one interesting snippet –

Over 70% of cases are in unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people and we are seeing a high incidence of COVID-19 in adults and teenagers aged 16-29.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but if 70% are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, then surely we can deduce from a complex bit of mathematics and a heavy dose of logic that 30% of new cases are fully vaccinated?

Just sayin’