Next on my list of hobbies is “computers”. Even a quick glance down the list will confirm that I am a geek, so I’ll not bother to apologise.
My interest in computers started pretty late on. All through primary school I ignored them, while the other kids played on “My World” and this trendy new “Windows” thing. It was only at high school that I started to become interested in computing. The big reason for that was (I’m sad to say) AOL. One PC in the School Library had AOL’s walled garden installed, on a patheticly slow modem, but I was hooked. I’d queue for hours, waste lunchtimes and stay late after school, just for a 15 minute slot on the Internet.
Slowly the school added more and more Internet connected PCs to its network. And by now, these weren’t AOL. And they weren’t dial-up either. The school had a radio link to Lancaster Uni’s “proper” connection. I began exploring the delights of TeenChat and Yahoo!
It was Yahoo! that introduced GeoCities to me, right at the end of my school life. At last, instead of just reading the Web, I could write it too. With friends, I created a handful of sites, from the Britney Spears Appreciation site, to the delightful www.eggybread.iskinky.com. Thankfully these, and other moments of madness, are lost to the sands of time.
At about the same time as Britney Spears entered my consciousness, so too did a little-known operating system called Linux. It was Rob I have to thank for showing me a disc of Caldera OpenLinux 2.3. He’d installed in on one of the Boys’ Brigade PCs and I was mesmerised. It was like Windows but different. Things looked the same, but to use them, I’d have to learn new things. It was this encounter with Linux that started my inquisitive nature about computers. I wasn’t happy using them anymore unless I had some sort of manual next to me, learning new things to do as I went.
Eventually my Dad bought me my first proper PC. It came with no operating system installed (it was one I’d picked from Ace Computers, our local hardware shop), which was perfect. I stuck in the disc from the back of one of the manuals I had picked up, and an hour later I was up and running.
Since then I’ve been using computers for more and more things. I’ve built a Media Center – a sort of Digital Video Recorder on steroids, I’ve built PBX’s – phone exchanges which can place calls across the internet. I’ve learnt new programming languages, I’ve forged a career in Website Development. But most importantly, I’ve made sure that I’m constantly learning something new. Thin Clients are my current big thing, so I’ll keep you up to speed on how that goes over the coming weeks.
