‘Stories can be either bacteria or light, they can infect a system or illuminate a world’

I was just reading the recent post on Cameron Moll’s website about the first domain name he registered, it set off a discussion in the comments about people’s early website design. It reminded me of a bunch of my early web designs, I enjoyed the nostalgic reminder so I went and had a look at some of it. I’m fortunate to have stayed a part-time employee since I graduated art college in 1997 so all of the stuff I did whilst a student / intern there is still there.

Here’s a few choice items I enjoyed looking at:

Suburbia:

http://www.personal.dundee.ac.uk/~rjcurran/

Suburbia as a name was kicking around in my head way before this blog came into being as you can see from this site under my personal webspace at the college.

Red dust, Roadtrains and redbacks:

http://www.personal.dundee.ac.uk/~rjcurran/australia/index.htm

This was a travel diary I wrote whilst in Western Australia for the first time. This predates the term ‘blog’ so it’s a ‘travel diary’!

Websight

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/tvimaging/tba3/welcome2.htm

This was a site designed for my class at college, it was originally very bright with multi-coloured textured graphics (photoshop filter overdose!). After a while I changed it to this monotone version after I grew tired of the colours! Click on the OK button to enter, then click on the ‘Enter the body’ link to meet all my classmates. Ah the memories!

Time flies when you’re having fun…

I can’t believe it’s been almost 10 years since I graduated and almost 12 years since I first designed a website!

In case you’re wondering about the title of this blog it’s a quote from a writer called Ben Okri who I read a lot around the time I was at college, I came across the following image whilst looking through these old websites:

Stories can be either bacteria or light, they can infect a systeom or illuminate a world.

For Grandma:

According to my Mother-in-law my “Website needs more Nat pictures, less computer stuff”! So, for her here are a few pictures of my daughter Natalie to end this post, these are from 21st Nov 2003 – just to keep with the nostalgic tone of this post!

Natalie #1

Natalie #2

Natalie #3

Natalie #4

~Rick

Cars, Meteors, Jonestown and Office Space

Here’s a few things I’ve come across on the web, as well as just a few thoughts about things, news etc.

Car Dealerships in Second Life:

Picture of Nissan IslandHow can you buy a Nissan, Toyota or Pontiac car for around $1US? Well, get into Second Life or course where Nissan, Toyota and Pontiac hope you will check them out. Now cars come out of vending machines…


Leonid Meteor shower:

Image of Leonid meteorThis weekend sees the annual Leonid meteor shower happen, if you’re up around 04:45 in the mornings of Friday, Saturday or Sunday then you might be able to see up to 150 meteors per hour at that time.


Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple:

Image of Jonestown movie posterToday is the 28th anniversary of the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana, an event often referred to as ‘the largest mass suicide/murder in history’. There is a documentary out now called ‘Jonestown’ which documents all of the background to this event.

I’m interested to see this film as I actually lived in Guyana at the time this happened. Although I was only 6 years old at the time I do have some memories of it, I was at a North American school there and I remember there being armed US Marines being stationed outside the School due to there being a bit of a backlash against the US (or at least fear of a backlash).

If you want to read more about this then there’s an interesting page on Wikipedia about it. You can also see a trailer for the movie over on Quicktime.com.

Wanted: One new office:

I just found out on Friday the floor of the building where I run my business will not be available after the current lease held by Scottish Enterprise runs out. So, it seems I’ve now got to look for a new office! Even worse I’m probably going to have to do so before the end of December which doesn’t leave much time.

It wasn’t the best news to find out last thing on a friday, we had thought we were going to be able to stay on beyond the expiry of the lease but it seems the Landlord’s had a better offer apparently. If you know of any nice office space around 300 – 500 square foot, preferably with a nice view then let me know ;)

~Rick

MacHeist – Want an invite?

If you’re a Mac user, like free or cheap software and don’t mind a little challenge to get it then you might like to check out the invite-only MacHeist.

Picture of Macheist website

MacHeist has been described:

MacHeist is a 5 week long event that will be invitation-only at first and will work towards an über bundle at the end with the last week starting on December 11th.
~PaulStamatiou.com

Anyway, if that’s got you interested then I have some invites for it, I’ve got 7 at the moment so if you want one get in touch! So far the 1st week’s challenge has already been done and I’ve got 3 little applications for free already.

~Rick