My name is Glen Hodgman, I am a trade qualified offset printer, Burmese cat breeder, and I enjoy learning new tricks, and skills. This past year (2015) I’ve re-discovered a passion for software development teaching myself the basics of C++, MySQL, and have also recently ventured out into the world of HTML/CSS and JavaScript.
As a young boy, I started out typing BASIC programs from computer magazines/books on a C-64 that my parents bought my brother and I. It was an excellent introduction to computers but it wasn’t until I picked up an Amiga 500 a few years later that my interest in computers really took off. Though the Amiga was incorrectly marketed as a games machine it was the production utilities available that really interested me. Apps such as DeluxePaint, the enormous Fred Fish collection as well as fiddling around customizing the OS would keep me happily entertained for hours.
After a year or two, I purchased my first modem in 1991 (a SupraFax 2400) and logged into my first Bulletin Board System. At this point, I felt that I’d really found something that really struck an accord. All of a sudden I was instantly connected with other computer enthusiasts from all over the world. This was just an amazing concept to me; the software and the message forums all kept me heavily engrossed.
Eventually, I’d move beyond being just a user to actually running a BBS in my own right. My first was called “Mr Chitlinn’s Blind Baby Farm” and this lasted only a few months running Max’sBBS. It was a fun board, but the software was extremely buggy and annoying. So I waited patiently for a few months and once it was released, I purchased Xenolink 1.98 and started LightSpeed BBS.
By this time, I’d upgraded to an Amiga 2000 which would eventually swell to containing 4 SCSI HDD’s totalling 2.5Gig’s (which was quite a bit back in the mid 90’s), 16meg’s of ram (which was completely overkill for an Amiga) loaded on an 040 accelerator, and three SCSI CD Rom drives. As a result, I learnt ALOT about computer hardware, I also learnt to code software in Arexx, and I also honed in on a skill to think out of the box.
One distinction LightSpeed had over other BBS’s especially, was that I was able to come up with a working solution to network an Amiga BBS with a PC BBS (running Remote Access) so that my callers could play popular PC door games (such as L.O.R.D) which weren’t available on the Amiga. It was crude but it actually worked and enlightened me to what one could achieve through thinking a little….differently.
So eventually with the popularity of the internet, I shut the BBS down after 5-6 years and I did what pretty much everyone else did; I leaped out into the web.
The web; for the plethora of information ready and waiting at your fingertips, there was one thing that troubled me and troubled me alot. Accuracy.
You see, I’m an ideas person, I like to build things, and I love to learn new tricks. But with that passion for new ideas and skills comes the research necessary to build those ideas into a reality. And the ideas that are different are usually not found in traditional channels henceforth we enter the modern day online message forum.
Message forums are excellent repositories for tips, tricks, and solutions to problems that others have shared. Often the advice returned is provided by experts and just works, but unfortunately there’s a significant voice out there from people offering (in some cases, very) bad advice that speak up where they shouldn’t. And unfortunately, much of the time these posters can tend to have a much louder voice than their more knowledgeable counterparts resulting in bad advice being heeded rather than ignored.
That’s where I had the idea for this blog. Because I’m almost ALWAYS researching at least something and because of my contempt for message forum advice, I thought I’d create a blog to champion the good advice I’ve found and provide some sort of vindication that it works.
In doing so, I’m hoping that others will find the advice that I’ve found works for them also.
I’m not an expert in any subject personally, in fact, I’m far from it. I just feel that if someone has taken the time to help me in some form, then it’s only fair that I should pass that on to help someone else.
Though this blog will consist mainly of tricks and tips, on occasion my posts may venture out into other topics from time to time depending on where my head/interests are at the time.
Anyway, I hope this blog may be of help to you and I thank you for reading.
Cheers,
Glen