Tuesday, 1st September 2020, 9 minute read
It is mid 2020, there is no sign that COVID-19 is over soon, I just started annual leave and was wondering what to do with my free time? Acting upon a sudden impulse I decided to revamp my website. Naturally, I had some more fair motives other than having too much time to kill.
I came into contact with software and web development with the first computer my parents bought around 1996: A 120 MHz 6x86 CPU, something like 8-16 MB memory and a 300 MB hard drive. We had briefly BTX, a kind of online teletext, before we had access to the Internet. Since there was no Skype, I used IRC to chat. Instead of Google, there were curated catalogues in form of websites but also books or magazines, and meta search engines such as Excite, HotBot or Alta Vista. Out of pure interested I tinkered my first webpages with HTML3, later 4. CSS was rather new and most website layouts were created using tables and transparent 1x1 pixels for spacing. Cross-browser testing was absolutely essential and while your website looked really good in Netscape, Opera or the Internet Explorer hosed your layout. HTML was not (and still is?) really a strict set of rules and not every browser enging was displaying the website the same. To complicate matters, automatic updates that installed the current browser version was not really a thing either, so the majority of users surfed with obsolete versions, not supporting the functions or HTML/CSS elements you want to use (and would make your life easier).
To host your private website, GeoCities or Tripod offered you up to 20MB for free. And there was nothing better than to use GIFs, Java Applets or Flash to add unnecessary graphical gimmicks to your website... To undestand what I refering to, have a look at Cameron"s cameronsworld.net, you are in for a treat. If you are interested, have also a look at the Web Design Museum.
Anway, after finishing school, I became a trainee for software development and focused more on the backend (ASP/PHP/JSP), software in general and administration. But I do not remember that the challenges to create a website changed much. Okay, there was HTML4/CSS2 and the browser landscape was much more monotonous, but you and your client still wanted to reach everybody including users with old browsers. Some years later, I went back to school started studying and ended up working in research. In that process my work shifted away from software development. Regrading my website, I have a de-domain since 2006 and used it mostly for email. Initially, I used the associated web space to learn (/ tinker with) PHP and JavaScript, to share images among friends or as a kind of cloud. I never had or need an online résumé or did a blog. So why am I investing time to revamp my website now?
As mentioned above, when I finished my training as software developer I knew it was not enough and that I want to know an do more. I decided to study. To be able to, I went back to school for my a-level and eventually started studying bioinformatics. Since then I switched more and more from proper software development to computational research and data anslysis. Instead of working with Java or C/C++, I used Matlab or R to solve problems. And the few times I had to go back to to solve a computational problem, I was fine utilising bash or a short phyton/perl script. So quite some time passed between now and the last time I dealt with HTML/CSS.
I never worked with HTML5 or CSS3, have no idea whats new in PHP7 or if there are any new developments regarding Apache, to the point I questioned myself if I can still put these skills into my CV. So I thought it is time to roll up one's sleeves and to find out. And I do not regret having done so. So, I decided to start with an online résumé and a custom blog, only using notepad++ as IDE.
Compared to 10+ years ago it is so much fun to create a website. First CSS was a little bit like witchcraft, but damn cool witchcraft. It nicely allows to separate design from content and actually does what you think it is suppose to do. At some points it was a steep learning curve but once you get the concept it is a bliss to put what you have in your had into the browser window. Why were there no pseudo-classes, variables, grids or flexboxes in CSS1?! With my previous experience it did not take much effort to pick up whats new.
On there server-side, I do not have the feeling that much changed. Setting up a webserver is the same as it was some years ago. Although, I had to look up the exact syntax of PHP before I dived back into it, but I am not really sure what is new compared to PHP4/5 without looking into the changelog. I love that it is possible to do type declaration in functions. Also, I do not remember that the object orientation was so sophisticated back then.
A very positive surprise to me was that I did not have to change a single line to make the website compatible for other browsers. I started with no special browser in mind and I did not spot any issues while cross-testing the pages with different browser engines. Another surprise was that there was no need for jQuery or similar libraries for what I planned. I was always a big fan to minimise usage of libraries to avoid overhead. The native functionality of JavaScript/PHP and CSS itself were enough.
My old teachers can certainly attest to you that I was very bad in German and especially English (as foreign language). And I believe that my teacher for latter would be in utter disbelief if she learns that I live and work n Ireland, plus, did my Ph.D. in English. Today I have no problems talking in English and I can write professionally. However, I do not really enjoy it and doing it is feels more like a chore. And I do not want to think about the mistakes I made in this text, or how exhausting it is to read for a native speaker.
But the one thing I learned by moving to Ireland was that even I can do English. Just confront your fears: Doing it over and over again helps much more than trying to pick up English by reading books. So every single bit of text I will write and share here will help to make me a better writer.
Although you find me on Twitter or Instagram, I have to force myself to post anything there. Contrary to the saying quality rather than quantitiy, 280 characters or a simple image is sometimes not enough. I don't want to say that it cannot be enough, but I am not a skilled poet or artist (yet) who is able to communicate heavy thoughts or topics in that way. Also, more than one time I wrote a bit of code that could be useful for others. Sometimes I not even end up using it. Another trait of mine is that I like to take pictures on walks, but it ends often there.
So why not sharing what I am doing and think? So my plan for the future is to create a small section on my website to post my best pictures free for personal use and random thoughts about everybody and his dog. What can go wrong?
It is not rare to find myself spending hours in tinkering with new tools or a new software library. Often more for the sake of finding out what it can do rather than using it for something productive. It is also for a good while that I wanted a virtual server, just to try out things.
Nevertheless, I have also some ideas I would like to implement that would require an server in the internet. So instead of further procrastinating I decided to just do it.
There was never a real need for me to have a proper curriculum vitae and the last one I wrote is more than out-of-date. But I think it became more and more important to network and to be visible in today"s professional work, especially in research and IT. Although, I have a profile on Linkedin and at my universitie's website, I do not think these really represent my skill set and experience. So, one of my goal is to create general version of my résumé and, importantly, to keep it up-to-date.
For now, I just wanted to have my rough idea of the design implemented, with focus on my résumé and a straightforward functioning blog. For the latter, there are still some functions I want to implement: such as like and dislike buttons, and maybe a way to allow comments and to curate them. Currently, I am not sure if I want to integrate a gallery to share images I shoot with my DSLR into the blog, or if I should have that separate. Speaking of pictures, I have some pictures I want to shoot in mind for the decoration panel to the left.
Otherwise, I want to spend a good bit of time to prepare my past and current research Page. Further, there are plenty of small construction sides: such as implementing a proper contact form, optimising the design and its colours, tweaking the template system I implemented, having some pages in multiple languages, and more.
I do not have the feeling that I forgot any skills over the years. Naturally, it took one day or two to learn about the new features but it was easy enough to worry about. Creating the content still claimed significantly more time than computationally creating the website from scratch without any fancy tools. And that is a good thing! Being completely honest, I was worried that I get annoyed and midway out of frustration, but that was not the case. It fells good to know that I am still able to do it and would animate everyone to not hesitate to dive back into the topic. Creating a website is more fun than it was 10-20 years ago!