‘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

Can’t surf the web, but can surf the waves!!!

Good news on the laptop front, my damaged powerbook was going to cost over £2000 to fix so I’m getting it replaced by the insurance company! So I’m ordering a nice shiny MacBook Pro any day now. So that’s cool, but I’ll still have to wait 3 or 4 weeks before I’ll get it so Annie and I are still without a computer to use at home.

Even though I can’t surf the web I can now surf the waves, yep, I finally got a surfboard! I’ve wanted one for ages and my friend Aaron was moving back to New Zealand and didn’t want to pay to ship it back over.

Surf's up!

It’s a 6’6″ custom Mark Richards board and it’s a bit thicker than a regular board so it should be pretty good for the surf around here. I’m looking forward to taking it out on the water even just for a paddle about, I know it’s pretty cold over here for surfing compared to say Australia, but there’s a big plus side too – NO SHARKS!!! ;)

Fun picture of Natalie time!

Here’s a picture of Natalie chilling in one of her favourite environments, a ball pool!

Natalie chilling in her domain
This was taken (with my phone so quality is low!) at the Marmalade Pot restaurant in Dundee whilst dining with Uncle Alistair, Aunty Maureen, Granny and Daddy (Mommy was in Ireland so she wasn’t there).

~Rick

Happy Birthday Natalie!

Today is my daughter Natalie’s 3rd birthday, last night we had a party and invited a few people over. Here’s a few photo highlights:

One happy Snow White...
Natalie was (and still is!) L O V I N G this dress! She really wanted to go to bed with it on, but I managed to persuade her it wasn’t a good idea!

Angels gotta eat...

Even Angels gotta eat! I think this is her ‘grumpy’ face, another Snow White vertically challenged character reference.

Ooh, candles!
Cake! Pink! Just as she requested! (‘Happy’)

Cinderella dress
Ooh, a Cinderella dress too! There were more costume changes than a Christmas pantomime!

Jemima, Natalie and Jay
A group shot: Jemima, Natalie and Jay. You can see Jay ‘helping’ Natalie open a present by operating her hand for her!

Thank you to everyone who bought Natalie a gift, she was deluged with pressies and had a great party!

~Rick