Vogon.com Celebrates 20+ Years Online
This site is something of a museum exhibit. Once upon a time it was award-winning.
It was selected as Netscape's site of the month for innovative and extensive use of
then new JavaScript, and by a couple of web design guilds for images and navigation.
Best, it was linked from all the largest Douglas Adams fan sites and HHGttG portals. It's how I taught myself
web. It was a heady time. Just look at my mid-twenties youth and washed jeans of the era.
But that was a long time ago even in human years now. Vogon.com went live in 1995 and has
existed essentially unchanged even with a few server moves ever since. And therein lies the problem.
It was one of many technology hobby projects that I walked away from when my career took off,
and every year I said I'd come back and do something with it. At the time its dynamically created
pages were pretty unique and as technology has evolved it could have remained amazing if updated
using new web standards without the need to hack everything from scratch.
But soon I was working with real clients like AT&T Bell Labs, NASA and Disney and playing
with "real" technology on "real" infrastructure. I couldn't abandon the site- it's a sentimental
throw-back and I was too attached. And so like a lot of old code it just sat, minding
its own business. The last update was ten years ago in 2005, and I joked here that I'd "update it maybe by 2013".
Wrong, 2015.
So visitors, press, analysts, customers and recruiters here remains a time capsule, my tribute to the pioneering days of the web,
back when you paid $29.99 for Netscape. I just can't part with it. And if you're a young person
just embarking on your discovery of programming and technology, I hope its at least a bit inspiring.
Know that even the early steps of expressing your imagination into logic, structure and artifacts may
well lead you to a lifelong career- A career that excites you to get out of bed every morning even as your body
gets a smidge less so.
And for the thousands of you who still come here every month, thanks as always for visiting.
Cheers,
Patrick
