About Me

The application of imagination makes me happy

Early Days

In 1995, with the help of a geeky friend I was privileged to be on the Net in the really early days. While connecting my little Mac Classic though, he turned my trash bin into a blue telephone. I think the term really should not be connecting but hacking!

These were the glory days of believing that governments would never take over and big business was just not part of the equation!! We were idealistic, naive and SO wrong.

Building websites started in 1996. My first web app was called “Homepage” and I loved it. In those days it was really only geeks who were on the Net and I was able to join user groups that were way beyond my understanding or expertise. I remember when I saw my first browser – Netscape Navigator, and I was SO excited – what a brave new world was in front of us all!

my history with the web

One of my first sites – built in 1999 was called Lifelong Learning.

On the original page was a notice saying:-

Please turn images on. This site is composed of text and images, deliberately mixed so that you learn easily. The images are mainly small and only take a moment to load. We are on a 28.8 modem, non ISDN line and this frame, which is the one of the largest takes about 10 secs to load. We believe it is worth the wait 🙂

The site was up for quite a few years and loads of education institutions, new to the Net, wrote to me asking if they could use it for their educational courses. I was both thrilled and delighted!!

rapidweaver – blocks & stacks

It wasn’t long before Homepage came to an end and I needed to look for other website software and of course I found Dreamweaver. I really liked the early days of Dreamweaver but very quickly it became to complicated for me to use and I had to go on the hunt again.

So, in 2004 I discovered Rapidweaver. A small indie company based In Brighton that had set up only a few years before.

I’m still developing sites with it and if you are interested in the sites I have made please go to Alston Web Weavers where you will find an assortment of sites that I have built in the last couple of years.

Interestingly the first major breakthrough in Rapidweaver’s development was a plugin called “Blocks” developed by Isaiah Carew of Yourhead software. This plugin, like the Blocks in Gutenberg for WordPress took Rapidweaver to the next level. Since then Isaiah developed his next advancement for the software a plugin called Stacks.

Alston Web Weavers

And so to wordpress

I hated WordPress with a passion. HATED IT!!!

And then there was Gutenberg. And all of a sudden I can drag and drop like I’m used to. All of a sudden there are the options in an inspector that I can use to move things about and design them the way “I” want rather than the way that the theme builder wants.

And of course, soon Full Site Editing. Hallelujah!! At last a way of taking a blank sheet and developing and designing that sheet as I want it. Or actually as the client wants it.

I’ll live with the bugs and spam, viruses and anonmoylies for now as Im SO chuffed with what can be done with “Gutenberg!!

shallow focus photography of computer codes

Who Me?

My web/avatar name is “Alixnotes”.

I made it up years ago and it seemed apt at the time as I’m dyslexic and I saw the applications that I used on my computer as me keeping notes. Doesn’t really make any sense, but it did to me at the time and now it has just stuck!

I crop up in a few odd places and I can be found on such dreadful things as Facebook and other forums under that name.

And if you have got as far as here, well done. I wish you all the very best of health, inspiration, curiosity and happiness!!

PS: Thats my poodle “Hashtag” in the header and one of my hens. She doesn’t have a name! They are firm friends!