1. 12 August 2006

    About for everypage

    830 days ago

    Hi, my name is Kjell and I’m just a kid. Right now I go to college. I secretly want to just quit and find something better to do with my youth, but everyone says just eat it, finish up, and you’ll be happier that way. I’ve had this website for a while now, I think of it as my notebook. I always wished I was artsy enough to keep one with my drawings and writing; never could. I like computers and the internet, work part-time for slantwise as a programmer. I’m 19 and a junior, if you care. I’m a fan of soccer, and play on my school’s team.

  2. 16 March 2006

    Why have a website?

    979 days ago

    I’m not quite sure. When I started this site, blogs were nothing new. They were really just coming out of the margins, getting popular. I thought it was a bit funny – who the hell would want to keep their thoughts on the internet, where anyone could read them? I took it as being a bit vain and even more odd.

    I think the first blog I found out about was stopdesign, I’d come across it figuring out this whole web design business. So one summer I started a blog as a one of those things that just a hilarious self joke (early 2003 I think). Used it to play around with html and css. It ran on my mac; wasn’t hooked up to the internet. It was mostly just me posting stupid shit in all caps (hey, being vain enough to have a blog was funny to me).

    MY CAT LOVES ME SO MUCH HE JUMPS UP INTO MY LAP AND PURRS. THEN HE HOPS ONTO MY KEYBOARD AND IT GOES LIKE THIS: SW45R12G.

    I maybe went through two designs, and the thing didn’t die. I’d always liked the idea of keeping a journal, but never had. It’s later in 2003, and at this point everything is still running on my mac. I switched from MT to TXP because all I ever really did was tweak my templates – and MT needed to go through and rebuild all the pages all the time. Which wasn’t just painfully slow, but would bring my poor old iMac to it’s knees. And I’m real impatient.

    About then I decided to set up site up on the internet through dyndns. Still running on my mac, but now it was on the internet. Anyone could drop by to hear my deepest inner thoughts! I’m really a shy person, and to this day I haven’t actually told anyone about my website. I hadn’t yet thought of the implications of having my own website, and I don’t think I’d yet associated the site with my real name.

    Something about putting yourself out there was interesting to me, but this site has always been more of a technical exercise for me. I’m no designer, but like to think my site is pleasant looking (sorry, IE). And I wish I had some sense of design. But the site ended up moving from a testbed for html/css and into more of an archival exercise. I’ve yet to tell someone that I have a website, and I’m still a bit ambivalent about people coming and discovering my website.

    But I think to 20 years from now, and like the idea that I’ll be able to look over all this stuff posted almost daily by myself. That idea really impresses me. Yeah, I’m guessing 90% of it is complete shit (I hope it’s at least steadily improving shit). But that’s one of the paradoxes of the internet age, no escaping nearly everything being shit. This site could be around for a really long time. 100 years after I die, someone might just stumble across this site. Leaving my legacy behind, the human tendency for self propagation plays a role.

    Which gets to the other real reason I started the site: self cultivation. Really the best way I can put it, a way to get myself to look into new things, to learn, and to better myself. I don’t know how it’s working out. But the fact that this site is public facing, and it’s mine, with my name attached, motivates me to both express myself, and try to impress people (not that any ever come here – but I’m thinking legacy). Saying that I’m trying to impress people really makes me mad, because I’m anti showing myself off. It’s more that as long as someone comes along, looking to see who I am, I’d just as well show them who I really am. It’s a bit tongue in cheek, but I’m really rather self inflated.

    Thirdly, I really don’t think this site would’ve happened if it weren’t for TextDrive. I mentioned textpattern earlier, it’s the system this site runs on top of. The guy behind txp, Dean Allen, schemed up a way to start a webhosting company “by the people and for the people.” It was announced in the txp forums, the VC200. I saw the thread, thought about it for a day, and bought in.

    There was something about Dean, I don’t know what made me trust him to not just take the money and run. I’d never met him, all I knew about him came from the txp forum and his blog, but he had flair, he seemed classy.

    I’m glad I did. Txd has turned out to be great, and it doesn’t look like the company will be folding anytime soon. Nor my site, I think I’ll be able to find something to do here for a long time to come.

  3. 06 February 2006

    About

    1017 days ago

    My about section sucks, so I’m cutting it back to nothing and putting what I had here for posterity’s sake.

    So, who are you?

    Kjell Olsen, in case you were wondering. Get in touch. Read on if you care to do so.

    I like computers, the internet, listening to music, taking pictures, doing things and going places. I love playing sports, especially soccer, skiing, and biking. I think everyone should have a sharp mind and fit body, along with complete control over both.

    I’m a bit of a computer nerd. When I was just a wee fifth grader, I got selected to do a project with the walker art center on interactive media, which is how I convinced my parents to get this crazy thing called the Internet. That was about 1997, on the linked page it says I was 11. It was fun, and I got to go see their new media lab, where there were some artist/hackers doing cool stuff that piqued my interests. I got the internet, then broadband a few years later. After borderline obsessive gaming for a few years, around ninth grade I walked away from medievia and never went back. For awhile I managed to have quite the social life, before getting bored and spending all too much time on the computer again, this time reading lots and playing around.

    I taught myself basic web design, played around with it for awhile, and eventually decided I’d move on to programming. Learning ruby was one of my new years resolutions for 2004, I chose it because it looked cool. I’d done a bit with php before that, but never liked it. Ruby proved to be a great choice, it’s really gaining popularity, probably the most talked about programming language around right now. I wish I was better at it. I managed to catch the ruby on rails train before it picked up too much steam, and have lately been enjoying that. If I could, I’d probably marry any of the 37signals.

    I’ve been an apple fanboy since my family upgraded the Commodore 64 to a performa sometime before I started kindergarten. I decided to start flamewars in fifth grade (although I didn’t know they weren’t called as such) along with a friend against anyone dumb enough to contend that PC’s were indeed better then Mac. I got a powerbook this summer, and it completely rocks. I quit a job mostly because I had to use a PC.

    my headshot

    And hey, for reading this far, I think you deserve a photo. I really hate having my picture taken, you can tell I was a little bit surprised at the camera going off in my face. This was my 18th birthday, 1/11/2005.

    I sincerely hope putting all this shit up on the internet doesn’t earn me any stalkers. But I’m really all too boring, and don’t worry about it too much. I also have this crazy philosophy that I shouldn’t do anything that I’d be ashamed of telling the world about, and having a website holds me to that a little bit.

    Why have a website?

    I got lucky and bought into textdrive, a web hosting company, as a member of the VC 200. I decided that $200 for the life of the company was a gamble I was willing to take. Textdrive got going and kicks ass. But that’s the real reason for this site – lots of storage and bandwidth and really nothing to do with it but play.

    Site Composition

    I made this site up by hand, with a little help from textpattern, a terrific little blog/cms written in php.

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