When I was young and wanted to change the world ...
21 September 2004 9:48 pm
Before I knew anything about blogs and html, I designed web pages using Microsoft Frontpage. That was in 1998, the year I graduated from uni and entered the National Institute of Education to get certified as a teacher. One of the courses I had to take as part of my teacher training was Instructional Technology, where you had to learn how to use an application program or software from a variety of education-related ones. I chose web design because I thought it would be the most interesting.
Microsoft Frontpage was the only web creation tool available to us. At that time, I found it mercifully easy to use. This was the outcome of my tinkering, which was an assignment I turned in for the course. This afternoon I gave the home page a facelift to make it look less embarrassingly old-school and amateur. The rest of the pages are works in progress. If you check out some of the links, you'll gasp in horror at the preponderence of childish clip-art images. Where did she find so many to paste on her pages like stickers on a fridge, you might say to yourself. You will die wondering. :-)
What I'm most proud of is that counter thingie you see on the home page. It reads "319,831", at the time I'm writing this entry. That number, my friends, is for real. That many people have actually visited that site, or at least it has been visited that many times by someone (not me! *coughs*). It was that bloody counter that motivated me to maintain the site after the assignment was done, and I continued to do it for the next 2 years. I was happy enough when I saw the counter jump in hundreds, but when it went on to the thousands I was ecstatic. I was making a difference! I was doing a service to the (Macbeth-reading section of the) world! I was da bomb! I rocked! My ego got fat on that counter way before I got fat on, er, fat.
Then there were the "fans". These were desperate kids from all over the world who had to turn in essays within a week and needed tips, hints, advice, answers, whatever I was willing to help them with. I was their Shakespeare Agony Aunt. Some organisations contacted me too, said they would pay me to put their banners up on my site. (No, not porn banners.)I actually got a check for something like US$20 from one of the organisations. It wasn't worth the trouble it took to deposit the damn thing. With the administrative charge and conversion rate and what-have-you, I think I enjoyed S$10 of it. But still. Best of all, some distance-learning school decided to feature my site in their textbook as an example of good web design. They sent me a copy of that textbook too. I was really something then. *brims with rekindled pride*
I had to let the site die, though. I chose to do Macbeth for my web assignment because it was a popular play and I was very familiar with it at the time, having just graduated, but the play wasn't in the syllabus when I got posted to this school (and still isn't), so I never taught it and lost touch with it gradually. As the years went by, it made less and less sense to keep up with the demands of my "fans", especially when my workload started to pile up. Maintaining the web site ceased to be a labour of love. I abandoned it and never went back to visit.
Until today. I just felt like it. It was like visiting the house you grew up in. I felt a whisper of the youthful, idealistic person I once was reaching out to me from the screen, beseeching me to relive the glory days. That's why I decided to revive the site.
I don't know how long I can sustain the interest this time, but I'm glad I made a trip there anyway.
Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006