Skip to main content

The first post


This is my 500th post.
The funny thing is that I was trolling through some old material on a storage drive. I used to have a domain name called 'TravellingCompanion.com', something told me back in 1989 that travel would be an important segment on the web.

It sat unused for a while (I had loads of domains including WombService - for first time mums and GoodGrief a portal into the after-life...cradle to grave).

Conversations with my mate Steve Garton convinced me that I should come up to visit him in Hong Kong. The web was going off there. The wealthiest man in in HK was about to float TOM.com on the stock exchange. It had no business model, no purpose or evident way of generating money but Hong Kong was ablaze with excitement. Given that the principal player was fabulously wealthy ordinary folk seemed to believe that some of the good fortune would rub off on them.

I imagine it would be a good idea to make a record of my trip for my (then) wife to be able to read every day. I had a digital camera (a lowly 3 megabyte camera that was considered 'pro-sumer' in it's day). I also had a laptop - a G3 Powerbook - once again 'state of the art' at the time and a doorstop today. I was making websites using a programme called NetObjects Fusion. So all the pieces fell into place. it was all very web 1.0. Just figuring out how to make a connection to the web from Hong Kong was something of a mission, but I figured it out.

I've posted the pages - it's just a week's worth. The photos are tiny because everyone had 56k modems in 2000.

The thing that strikes me is that TravellingCompanion.com was, effectively, a blog.
Others were undoubtedly doing it too. But I'm going adorn myself with early adopter laurels.

My favourite of the seven days of posting was 'What's wrong with Iowa?'. I've left the design and content untouched as an artefact (I didn't know how to do css at the time - and little else for that matter).

Travelling Companion

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse...
1 comment
Read more and leave a comment

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St...
Post a Comment
Read more and leave a comment

Why billboards must go.

The problem with billboards and advertising in public places is they are an invasion of privacy. Unlike magazine, tv, radio (etc) advertising you cannot choose to turn it off or avoid it. Nor does it offer anything in return. It is a medium that offers no benefit or advantage to the person it is inflicted on. At least television ads subsidise the programming. Without doubt some billboards are entertaining - I thought the anti GE poster for short lived MADGE activist group was particularly good. But most are rubbish. Literally. Badly executed. Nothing important to say. The debate has led to a great deal of hysteria - mostly from people with a vested interest in perpetuating the deployment of hoardings. Perhaps the idea that the issue at stake is 'property rights' is the creepiest. If you own a building you have every right to plaster anything you like on its external surfaces. Is that an antisocial point of view? I think so. In the UK you could have an ASBO slapped on you for si...
Post a Comment
Read more and leave a comment