Monday 23 May 2016

It was 20 years ago today...

… that my first dated item appeared on my website: a review of Clannad’s 1996 tour at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, attended a week earlier.

Back in 1995 I was working for Logica UK, and they started allowing staff to have webspace.  I took up their offer, and decided to start a review site, to learn about the web (it was new in those days!), and to keep an online review journal.  I fiddled about with the pages for a while, adding a few reviews, then, on 23 May 1996, I started date-stamping them.

To date, I have 434 non-fiction book reviews, 844 science fiction reviews, and 75 other fiction reviews: an average of 5-6 a month for those twenty years.  I also have nearly 200 SF film reviews, and over 70 SF TV show reviews.

When I moved to the University of York in 2002, I took my website with me, and it continued to grow.  Being an academic, I also use it to keep a respository of my publications; there are about 240 of those now.

What does the past look like?  The oldest backup I can find is from October 1999 (on a CD: remember them?), when my front page looked like:

October 1999 front page


Today, it looks like:

May 2016 front page

In the intervening time, I have modified the site to use CSS.  But, actually, there hasn’t been a major change to the structure, just additional content.

So, check back in 2036 for the next 20 year update…

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