And so officially begins my new blog, The Right Glue. As is my tradition whenever I found a new blog on these wonderful Internets, I will introduce myself.
My name is Dean Whelton. As of today I am 22 years old and currently living in Florenceville, New Brunswick, Canada. I hold a bachelor of mathematics in computer science from the University of Waterloo. I have a wide variety of interests ranging from entertainment media to politics to proofreading to computer science and mathematics.
One of my primary interests — indeed, something I have been doing most of my life — is keeping an online log of my interests in a website of my own creation from the ground up. Roughly every two to four years I scrap my old web software in favour of something more robust. It started in grade 8 when I learned how to create web pages. Since then I have always kept a site going in one form or another. Originally these sites were about specific things, such as computer games I enjoy playing. Later they became about university life and politics (Unconventional Conformity; which is no longer online), eventually degrading to nothing more than a fancy link portal (Oh Two).
Each one of my websites was more complicated and robust than the previous. Originally they were nothing more than static HTML needing to be updated using non other than notepad. Later I created a Java application specifically designed to generate and update that static HTML. Later still I created a web-based Perl backend for my site including such novelties as user authentication. My last website, Oh Two, was an over-thought and arguably terrible DHTML window-manager concept, written primarily in JavaScript.
With The Right Glue, my primary focus is going to be on using the right tools for the job. This blog is hosted on my home Linux machine, in order to cut on costs and to maintain complete control over its environment. My Linux machine is not the most powerful machine today, nor was it when it was built some six or seven years ago; however, it does its job and it does it rather well. As this is the case, I have opted to use PHP and MySQL in this site's backend, since they are both supported by my outdated server without taxing its resources greatly.
Everything about this site was written by me and me alone. I am aware that there are many available (and free) web software packages in the world that would probably be robust enough to create this website exactly as you see it. In the real world of software development it's never a good idea to recreate that which was already created. In my case, however, I would rather do everything myself so that I can learn the hard way (read: the right way) how different web technologies work. As my previous post outlines, I can't very well use PHP, MySQL or any other technology at a high level unless I understand its minor details. To do so would result in utter failure.
I will update this log sporadically at best: whenever I can think of a topic worthy of a few hundred words I will commit it to my database to be displayed to the world. To that end I have supplied an RSS feed for those of us too bothered by the concept of periodically visiting a website (e.g. qedi, to whom I owe much regarding web design).
Feel free to add any comments of any kind to any of my posts. I will not enforce any rules on the comments, provided they are not incriminating against me. Be warned: html is not permitted in the comments in order to keep things simple.
I look forward to a few good years with this website, as well as you, my readers, until I move forward with whatever comes next.