My Life Revisited — Part 2: 1978
This is me, in my back garden...in a matchbox. While I was at primary school, there used to be a summer fete held every year, and for at least some of those years they held a fancy dress competition as part of the fete. These fancy dress competitions were not so much for the kids...they were for the parents.
I have to applaud the inventiveness and technical abilities of my mum and dad as they did all the work. As I was only six at the time, I doubt that I personally suggested going as a matchbox, and I further doubt that I had much involvement in the construction process. When anyone goes to a fancy dress party today, it seems that people most likely will just hire or buy their costumes. But in 1978, costume hire was not really an option (at least not in Haverhill, Suffolk) and so there was a need for ingenuity and considerable amounts of glue and tape.
I think that the bulk of this ‘costume’ was fashioned from the cardboard packaging of some self-assemble furniture. There was a quite a bit of attention to detail in that there was - at least as I recall - an inner box that could slide within the outer container. The detail on the front of the box is a fairly good (hand painted) replica of an actual brand of matches that you could buy in 1978 (for just three pence).
My parents also gave me a red swimming cap that I was meant to put on my head so that I would physically resemble a matchstick in the matchbox, though somehow I think I opted to not wear that on the day of the competition. I don’t recall winning the contest, but I do remember there being more than one prize so I may have won something (best costume in the ‘Smoker’s accessories’ category?). As I recall, there were lots of entrants in these contests...but there was only ever one matchbox!
My Life Revisited — Part 1: 1977
This is the first of a short blog series featuring some old pictures of me from the distant past, along with some commentary on my memories of life at that time. Let's start by seeing how my youthful visage looked back in 1977:
This school photo was taken when I was five or six years old, it’s hard to be sure because the photo would have been taken near to the start of the new school year which was also near to my birthday.
At this point in time, I had just started my second year of ‘primary’ school. Different regions in the UK have different systems for schooling. In Suffolk, there were (or still are) primary, secondary, and upper schools. The primary school I went to had an optional ‘nursery’ year (like kindergarten in the US I guess), which I also attended. So technically, this was my third year at the school. My teacher that year was Mrs Jackson and my main memories of her — well my only memories really — were that she seemed very tall and that she wore jeans a lot.
At that time, we were learning to read and write English, but not the form of English that most people would recognize. Our school embraced what seemed to be a widespread (at least in the UK) experimental way of learning English. The system was called the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA) and looking back, it was a very strange system, not least because the alphabet has 42 letters! Still, I can’t say that it has caused me any long-term damage in my subsequent education.
One of my main memories from that year at school was that one pupil — a certain Mr. Todd if memory serves me correctly — was keen to demonstrate to the class that he could generate a cool and somewhat mysterious sound simply by the act of walking around. The teacher allowed him to demonstrate this to the entire class and so he proudly strode up and down the room. Sure enough, as he marched back and forth, we could hear a faint noise that appeared to originate from his lower torso. The teacher then calmly explained to him that this noise was simply due to the fabric of his extensively flared trousers rubbing together as his legs passed each other (
everyone
wore
back then). I think this factual explanation left him feeling very deflated as he was pinning his hopes on more of a magical reason for his trouser-based emanations.
Sometimes you remember uplifting, or life-changing events from your distant past. Me? I remember noisy trousers.
A new home
Moving home is listed among the most stressful events that one can experience in a lifetime. I wonder if 'moving blogs' should be included in that list too?
My first forays into blogging were around the time that Apple had just launched a set of tools under the '.Mac' umbrella. These tools were a successor to an earlier suite called 'iTools' and were in turn succeeded by the ill-fated MobileMe service (Dan Moren provides a good overview of these early transitions).
Under iTools and .Mac, Apple provided a web-based tool called HomePage that allowed you to create simple websites. As I recall, it was painfully slow to use and not very flexible. In 2006, things improved somewhat as Apple released iWeb, a desktop application that was part of the iLife suite of tools and which let you create websites that could be hosted on your iDisk (though you could also publish to other hosts).
The iWeb application made it relatively easy to create various different styles of website, and included a dedicated template for blogs. I used iWeb for a long time — hosting several different blogs, and my own personal website — before realizing that there were many things you couldn't easily do with the service. Support for iDisk-hosted websites continued as Apple transitioned to MobileMe, but the life-support cable for this service is about to yanked out, with Apple wanting people to migrate to its free — but iWeb-incompatible — iCloud service. Support for any iDisk-hosted sites will expire on June 30th and presumably these sites — along with any other files you may still have on your iDisk — will simply disappear.
Even before Apple announced iCloud, I had already been looking around for a alternative service to use for simple blogging and had started to use Posterous. Late last year, Posterous undertook some rebranding and became 'Posterous Spaces' with more of an emphasis on sharing and becoming a social network in its own right. This concerned me a little bit as I felt that Posterous's strength was in its simplicity, and Posterous Spaces seemed to suffer from a lack of focus. Further alarm bells rang earlier this year Posterous announced that they had been bought by Twitter. Although they claim that the service will "remain up and running", I'm now concerned that I can't count on Posterous as a long-term blogging solution.
All of which brings me — the writer — and you — the reader — to Squarespace. I've been hearing a lot about this company from many of the 5by5 podcasts that I listen to. For a low monthly fee, Squarespace will let you build beautiful websites to meet any need you have. So I'm now using Squarespace to host both my main website and my blog. It's been a useful opportunity to remove a lot of old content and try to give my website a much cleaner look. I'm still debating whether I should let all of my earlier blog posts remain on Posterous, or whether I should try to migrate them all to this site. In any case I'm really happy with the Squarespace service and hope to stay here for many years to come.