Of Technomages, Lamers and Drupalists: An era with computers

It's been well over three years since my last post. Just days from my departure at Internet Unlimited (which concludes a worthwile 14 year interval of my life), I felt compelled to get back to my good old blog and write down some thoughts while they dwell on the past decade. Also, it's about time to make that annual hosting fee worth my while again.

Taking off the cover

Some interesting facts on my trusty Drupal 5.x website since I was last active december 2007:

• 7.793 visits
• 41.685 pageviews
• No.1 article: Create Separated Multi Site, Multi Domain Setup in Drupal, followed by: No.2: Defining Interaction Design, Part II
• Well over 400 spam comments which I deleted just now*
• Running smoothly for 3 years and 47 weeks

*I am sorry if there is anyone out there that commented on one of my posts. I know it's a sin to delete valuable user generated content, surely in my field of work. It was just too much work to sift through all the rubbish by hand. I just installed Mollom and I promise to take better care of what's going on frome here on. Please feel free to leave me any comment.

About me and the past 15 years

When I started this post I had a rough feeling of where I wanted to go. It turned out to be quite a bit longer than anticipated. This post is all about me, how my hobby turned into my profession and some revelations I had along the way. It includes Commodore 64 and Amiga, Science Fiction, Developers versus Designers, Lotus Notes, Java and Drupal, and a few other things. I hope you enjoy reading it. If not, there are several other (shorter) posts on this website that might interest you that involve either Drupal, software design or development.

Games

I have been into computers since I was seven years old. The arcades at the yearly local fair always drew me in, spending lots of quarters and several hours of my afternoons. When my father got us our first Commodore 64 around 1983, I believe I was the only one around that had our own computer (Commodore timeline). Note that every hardware expense seemed a fortune as there was very little of the sorts around and there was barely anything to compare with. There was no internet available to check for prices and reviews nor was there an abundance of magazines that provided inside information on these things.

I tried programming BASIC, but reverted to gaming almost immediately: programming wasn't for me. Except for the occasional poke that allowed to eliminate certain ingame life counters. This only worked on the earliest of games. After that, 'cracking' games became more difficult. Before long I found some friends that did get a hold of a Commodore 64 as well so me and my pals went to HCC (Home Computer Club), the largest computer fair event in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium at that time. We went there to obtain large quantities of floppy disks for prices that were cheaper than those in the few stores that had them. We bought literally hundreds of those soft, flimsy 5.25" 'diskettes' that we used soley for 'backups' *solemn look*.

Until Alzheimer kicks in (hopefully a cure will be found) I will never forget the poke for infinite lives for Fort Apocalypse (poke 36339,153). If there are any of you that remember specific pokes or other bits of useless bytes that you can't seem to let go , please put down a comment below!

The Elite and the Lamers

The Amiga was the C64's successor and by far the most superior home computer for the second half of the 80's. By 1987 a few friends (and friends of friends) now had one as we went to 'copy parties' all over the country. These parties involved some community effort, hiring a smalltown restaurant or library hall and a modest entrance fee. Often these parties would be attended by handful of 'elite' hackers that cracked games and added 'trainers' to them that allowed you to disable life counters, and degradable energy bars which in turn made it easy to play through the game (A few years later, when PC gaming emerged this would be known as 'God mode'). Both C64 as well as Amiga had cartridges like Power Cartridge, Final Cartridge and Action Replay which allowed to hack into running software and 'crack' it yourself. Aside from the games, which were marvellous in design, graphics and sound, the 'intros' would often be small pieces of artwork in themselves. Later these intros would be released as stand alone 'executables', known as 'demos' (preserved here, here, here and here).

These elite group of young programmers often provided the mainstream of new 'software' (games), which the rest of us 'lamers' greedily preyed upon. The term 'lamer' was first coined in the 'scene' back then. Despite the fact these 'pirated' copies weren't their goods, the fact that they obtained it firsthand (purchased or bootlegged) and 'cracked' it made it out to be. Often one had to give something in return. Of course I hadn't much new to offer them. I believe the 'peer-to-peer' concept closely resembles this situation. Bulletin Boards then emerged, which were more or less retro variants of FTP servers, on which you had to call in by modem. Access to the newest software was restricted in most cases. In the early 1990's we paid a small amount to some 'distributor' which we split, thus always getting 'the latest'.

Fanboys

I came accross an(other) infographic depicting the difference between Apple and Microsoft Windows 'fanboys' and gals. The differences between these platforms has been a tense topic since Apple's Macintosh computers emerged, somewhere late 1980's. The clearly provocative commercial ads explicitely state the obvious: either you were with Apple or you were against (Answer from Commodore). These 'turf wars' still rage today between Intel and AMD fanboys, Sun and Dell, iPhone and Android people, Developers and Designers, Windows versus Linux crowds, HD and Blu-Ray and Open Source and Proprietary (Closed) Software professionals. The bulk of end users merely observe and question us computer savvy: What should I pick?

Music

Another pair of tribes that went head to head were the Amiga and Atari ST fans. Atari ST often was the popular choice in the professional music industry, as it had an out of the box MIDI (Music Instrument Digital Interface), whereas Amiga sold it separately. As MIDI was de facto standard for its industry, it became a very popular alternative. Having seen both platforms the Amiga was in fact producing superior sound. Having a larger community producing astounding compositions of only 4 simultanous channels, the Amiga became the dominent multimedia platform between 1985 and 1993.

'Making music' could be done through an application that allowed you to play the notes and hook up a keyboard through MIDI (sold separately). However, the popular way was to enter hexadecimal codes onto four 64 lines arrays, that played digitised sounds (samples). These samples could be a single piano tone or just about anything that you could 'grab' from an input source. The hexadecimal codes could adjust the reverb, filter or vibrato of the sample, resulting in unique sound 'patterns' of four combined 'tracks'. Soundtracker and Protracker 'modules' can still be played today on Android, iPad or PC. Commodore 64 had similar soundtrack creation programs, but I didn't get into those.

I produced about 10 music modules, which were reviewed for including in demos by some elite prominents. Unfortunately they never made it that far and when I got me the friends that I went hanging out in disco's with, I sort of went onto other pursuits . I never learned to read the notes, but I always found the 'composers' (called Musicians) of those pieces of music to be the Mozarts of our time. Great names include Rob Hubbard, Matt Gray, Allister Brimble, Michael Land and Chris Huelsbeck. A subculture of music hero's with their own interviews, selling their own CDs. The vast collections of game soundtracks are still maintained to date for Commodore 64 (HVSC) and Amiga (Modland). The C64 Orchestra which performed a few years back in presence of Jeroen Tel is proof of its lively fanbase.

Graphics

Around the same time I was composing sound in code, I got a hold of Deluxe Paint for pushing pixels into graphics. Graphic design actually involved per-pixel 'painting' which wasn't for me. Many great graphics in games and demos were produced by hand-drawing pixel per pixel backdrops and textures. Like the musicians, those designers too, were true artists of their time, referred to as 'graphic artists'. Musicians and graphic artists were often hired to work for gaming studios, which at the time, wasn't as big a business as it is today. I suspect the fame those guys got from working on popular games was in those days just as much a reward as the money.

I tried rendering (also called 'ray tracing') in Real3D which worked out well. However the 7.14 Mhz Amiga 500 took roughly 6 hours for only 1 still (Amazingly the Amiga's were used for CGI early on in production the Babylon 5 TV show, for which it was renowned). In 1992 the Amiga 1200 (with a whopping 6MB of RAM and 180MB harddrive) allowed for more professional desktop publishing (DTP). This is when I got truly engaged with graphic design. CD covers, folders, flyers and covers for thesis were my kind of thing. I spent almost as much time working the contents as I did on the layout of my papers.

While gaming still remained to take up the bulk of my spare time, I also got into scripting utility diskettes and printing my own 'blog' magazine. In may 1997 I was hired as graphic designer at Byelex, a small software company in Rotterdam (currently located in Roosendaal (NB)).

Graphic design

After the demise of Commodore, I entered the PC era mid 1996. Together with my friends (and roommates), we obtained the components for our first PC at the HCC, november 1996. After drinking beer all evening at a birthday party we assembled our PC later that night. With a few more beers on the side, it took us the better part of the night before it was up and running. A glorious moment it was! ...I would suggest: The drunken master who can sucessfully assemble his PC, is a true tweaker.

By 1997 I had mastered the basics of Adobe Photoshop (version 3). It's early Microsoft Windows releases were fueling much of the malcontent between Apple users and PC users: Around the year 2000 Adobe released Photoshop on Windows first, whereas Apple had been the designers platform of choice.

Before I realised my hobby had turned into a professional carreer, as I learned about DPI, design patterns and usability principles. My work varied from designing logo's and printed materials to early websites and interfaces for Lotus Notes and Sun Java (Application Server) based applications. Wireframing, concept design and efficient slicing into xHTML and CSS were my core 'interaction design' activities.

Cool Spot

From 1996 to 2000 I was sharing an appartment with two friends in Rotterdam. Of course three guys living in an appartment is one big party most of the time. I always enjoy telling the fact we had our mailserver running in the hallway months before we got ourselves central heating (There was none and in the house we were in we had to have a gas heater installed). It was well in december when moist was coming out of our mouths and friends and family were complaining that we decided it was time to upgrade our house with some heater. We were actually one of the first cablemodem users in Rotterdam, once it came out. We used the flaky coax connectors for a while until everyhing became outfitted with Cat-5. We called our band of three: Cool Spot and our internal network Cool.net. We spent hours playing the likes of You Don't Know Jack, Atomic Bomberman, Forsaken, Quake and The Dig.

Technomage

Science fiction and computer geeks always have been a couple. The Transformers and Battle of the Planets (Gatchaman) anime series were my favorites as a child. Battlestar Galactica (both original and reimagined), Buck Rogers, Star Trek The Next Generation (the original series was before my time) and Babylon 5 still proudly stand in my DVD collection (or course I have the iPADD app). Of course I am also a Star Wars fanboy and I own Back to the Future in about every available format there is, including die cast. I was also one of those kids to have read The Lord of the Rings twice. Facinated by it I was handdrawing maps from Middle-Earth and knew certain miniscule details that Tolkien had contrived.

Can I say I am 'pop culture' because I can clearly state the identical story elements between Pirates of the Caribbean and the much earlier The Secret of Monkey Island? Or tell you about the progression of the four Reboot seasons, of which I won one entire season in some competiton dubbed from NTSC to PAL by Mainframe (currently known as Rainmaker) themselves?

'Technomage' actually is a reference to a character from Babylon 5. They are described to use science to create the appearance of magic. They combine those to do what's best for them, mostly beneficial to others but that is coincidentally. They are old, powerful and have great knowledge of technology. Outsiders would look upon them as odd, progressive and technical 'magicians'. I recognise in this what friends and family would sometimes say of me, who are depending upon me for helping them with their computers. Or some of our clients that I have worked  with over the years.

"It is within that ambiguity that we exist. We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things."
- From Babylon 5, "The Geometry of Shadows" by J. Michael Straczynski

Like Technomages we have been wielding hardware and software and we've been passionate about well crafted software (magic to some) and the results of passionate work that is timeless. It's great fun to be living through this virtual revolution and I hope to be part of it for quite some time and contribute to it somehow.

Norman doors

I mentored several interns and young professionals in graphic design and software development since 1998. While my studies in computer science focussed primarily on information analysis and OSI models, my passion for user experience, usability and interface design allowed me to work this field of expertise since before I started my profession. Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox articles, Donald Norman's Design of Everyday Things and Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think remain sources of inspiration to me and my team. Cognitive science facinates me and still do. Developing some soft skills were in line with the ability to actually think from the standpoint of others, particularly that of the user's.

I also started collecting examples of excellent design. Both physical examples as well as software. For example the Tangent Internet Radio with its retro looks is one brilliant little radio. I find  XBMC to be one of the greates pieces of software around (which is open source as a matter of fact). The separately designed XBMC Android app interacts seemlessly. Such examples of great software design for use by the masses inspire me. I too started collecting examples of usability havocs and 'Norman doors'. They're great examples to others who are in the field of designing, whether they're designing door knobs or websites. The human interface principles remain must-read material to anyone on my team to date.

Drupal

While technologies changed, possibilities multiplied. We were coming from a time where Mosaic and Gopher were actually dominent browsers and VI with its quirky interface controls was considered the 'elite editor' on UNIX platforms (UNIX was primarily used on my university for just about everything but Wordperfect which ran on Windows 3.11 PC's). With HTML, CSS and table-less design, web development had become a noteworthy profession.

By 2005 innovative web development companies were turning to Content Management Systems, allowing to separate content from design. My company had always been in the forefront of technological development. After reviewing IBM's report and testing Joomla, Mambo, Typo3, MMBase and Wordpress, we chose Drupal as our predominent development platform. It proved out to be a proper choice for about all of our clients we've had so far.

By 2008 I got a team of about 7 people working Drupal websites for clients like TNT and the City of Amsterdam. In 2009 we adopted a 'brand' name for all Drupal and open source related activities called 'Internet Unlimited', which was actually a 'spare' domain which turned out to work quite well within our market. My daily activities began to include coaching and training others, guiding the day-to-day operations, sales, marketing and account management and leading the Drupal team towards a top 3 postition in Holland as Drupal agency.

As from 2007 I learned equally as much about setting up a company (in the form of a division) and everything related to that. I worked out service level agreements, a portal for monitoring and managing Drupal projects, acquiring clients by telling them what we were about in a clear and solid fashion, coaching a team in a cooperative venture towards creating good software and upliftment of quality baselines by setting up de facto development standards, procedures and checklists. I am still striving to acquire the finesses of the commercial aspects of running a company. Reading stuff like Rework (from 37Signals, the guys behind Basecamp), I suspect it sometimes takes a few likeminded  people to cover all aspects of creating your success. You simply can't do everything and do it perfect.

I met Dries Buytaert on Drupalcon 2008 Hungary and Drupalcon 2009 in Paris where we held a stand and provided Drupal Water with logo icecubes. I also helped organising a few community driven events for working on drupal.nl and drupal.be. One of these was in our office where Dries also attended. November 2008 was marked by our Moroccan Roadshow which was one of the best trips I made.

Open Source Software

Open source is a bit similar to what was referred to in the 90's as 'shareware' or 'public domain'; Free software that people were allowed to use for free and redistribute. The strangest thing about open source is its intrinsic value for sharing. Perhaps my early encounters with medition, Wayne Dyer and Neale Donald Walsch encouraged this openness and ability to feel into the needs of others. I certainly feel the open aspects are stronger in the long run, which is why I intend to stick with them for now.

Of course being in the software business now, I have a slightly different approach to pirated software. However I have no doubt internet and its applications (in the form of multi purposed websites) will be available on a multitude of devices, just like the widgets that are shipped with modern TV's or apps on iPads. Software will become a service called SaaS. Though the names may change, I am very curious to see what part open source will play in all of this. So after 14 years I am moving to Krimson Belgium to explore new horizons in the Drupal universe.

Characters

A few people I'd like to name as they were referenced in this article or somehow significantly contributed sideways during the course of time...

• Esther Vermeulen; Esther is my partner and wife who I met at Byelex and who wondered about quite a few packages that got delivered (most of them PC hardware).
• My mom and dad; Who got us our first Commodore 64 and left me behind my computer for the bulk of my adolecense.
• Johan Peters; I got in touch with Johan in 1989 to swap Amiga games. We've become good friends and we were roommates from 1996 until 2000.
• Joost van der Wal; Being neighbours since 1980 Joost was always around to swap and play games with. I have been somehow living or working with Joost proably longest than anyone else, outside my parents. 
• Laszlo Spoor; With Joost and Johan we went out to dance parties, to HCC to purcahse floppy disks and PC components and shared the fee for obtaining games and software. I got to know Laszlo about the same time I met  Johan. We see each other though not as often as we'd like to.
• Gerard Schut; Doing my internhip thesis at Byelex myself, Gerard had coached me in Lotus Notes design and development as well as groupware principles and quality management. Today Gerard works for the UN abroad.
• Kevin McPeake; Our systems administrator until about 2001, who taught me some imortant things on internet security and was a great opponent in our friday afternoon LAN games. It was Kevin's birthday we went to before our nightly PC workshop.
• Ahmed Larouz; I know Ahmed from university. Coming from Morocco at an early age, Ahmed is a genuine Dutch Moroccan. It was with him that we went on roadshow, together with Koeweiden Postma and Brandnew design firms.
• Peter van der Helm; Years after leaving highschool I met Peter in Amsterdam a few years back where he runs his own marketing agency. Peter can make  friends with just about everyone which makes him extremely valuable to have on board! Peter has great commercial ideas that are way out of the box. The Drupal Water and icecubes came out of his can.
• Herman Vissia; My boss at Byelex since 1997 whom through his handson approach has tought me to take things face value in anything related to business. Herman offered me the opportunities to do the things I wanted to do for just about every year in my carreer thus far.
• Edwin van der Hooft; Collegues for 11 years and my coach and manager since 2008. Edwin and I have been working closely together on almost every step on the way. We've had great laughs but never without some hard words from time to time (which I consider a very good thing).

 Thanks to everyone else and I will be seeing you sometime now or in the afterlife.