I work on the web.

This is me and I work on the web

I touched my first computer terminal when I started my degree in London in 1978 - a PDP-11 mainframe. However, it was a few years until I got my first computer, the Commodore Vic-20 with 3k of RAM! GOTO's and GOSUB's abounded. I moved up to a PC (an XT with Hercules green screen and two low-density floppy drives) when I came to Hong Kong in 1988 and have never stopped upgrading. I still miss DOS and working with 640k. Sadly my code seems to have bloated along with my waistline! :-)

After working as a postdoctoral researcher in the field of positron annihilation physics, and getting the beam-line fully computerized (using VB6) so that it ran from start-up to graphing the data after a 12-hour, unattended run (still proud of that!), I realized I liked coding more than physics and left to start my own web company.

The money is poor, the hours far too long and working from home (alone) can be a struggle but I don't regret the decision. My designs are workmanlike (aka lousy!) and I like to concentrate on server-side code (PHP/MySQL). Recently I have spent time learning and using Javascript to enhance my sites, embracing the concepts of unobtrusiveness and progressive-enhancement. Similarly, Microformats and OpenID are beginning to feature more. I am not cutting-edge but I try to keep up with developments; in fact, that is what keeps me interested after 12 years in the web. I follow a lot of smart people (on Twitter - a Godsend to the lone developer) who make this stuff happen. Kudos to them! In my own small way I am lucky to be able to contribute to its development.

So that's me, Steve Fleischer in Hong Kong. I work on the web

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/flying_tiger/1881464983/