Update History

March 1995

Decided to write a web page or two just to get some HTML experience. Still not entirely sure why I bothered.

April 1995

Got a hand scanner for some photos. Turned out to be crap (meant I needed Windoze, for one thing), and pointless since there's several decent flatbed scanners at work.

August 1995

Typed in lots of garbage on the portable, filling some of those many free hours. Added some of the shit acquired over many years which would otherwise be permanently sitting in the junk directory.

November 1995

Typed in lots more garbage, long into the night. Surprised that some people found it mildly interesting.

December 1995

Stuck the lot onto the student Linux box at work.

January 1996

Added a counter which I stole from somewhere. Rather primitive, but does the job.

February 1996

Went and did other things, forgot about the web pages.

September 1997

Moved pages off student Linux box, now hosted courtesy of Planet Tharg Cybertech Enterprises, aka my new cable modem!

October 1997

Finally got around to updating the pages and getting the links right after somebody complained. What? Somebody was looking at my web pages? Bastard!

November 1997

Removed all pictures of "cats and ugly girlfriends and suchlike" after a scathing article describing lame web sites found in one of the BOFH newsgroups. Pah.

February 1998

Discovered my HTML writing was rubbish. The home page didn't display properly in lynx, which is pretty serious. Installed weblint. Added more garbage to the junk page.

May 1998

The bastards took me cable modem away. Cowboy & Witless: may you rot in hell.

November 2000

After over two years without a connection, we're back. Change email address and add this useful comment. Also tweak for newer apache. So far, this Easynet ADSL thing is pretty cool, and I'd recommend them to anybody who can afford it.

January 2001

Invested in covert co-location and moved the web pages to the cocolo; we're now XenoPsyche, Inc. Now, what can I do with a 9 gig SCSI brick?

March 2001

Bought a bargain scanner and digicam, both of which are pretty nice. The scanner even works with UNIX, although I'm not sure if I really need 2000 DPI and 800 megs per scan.

June 2001

Got a new frontpage jpeg and a couple more domains. Now serving xenopsyche.{com,net,org} with a virtual server for pallfreeman.org. Do I really want to meet my relatives? Gak.

November 2001

Created pix directory to stash some of the photos and scans.

February 2002

Upgraded the web server with a few "spare bits". What the hell am I supposed to do with 9GB of mirrored 80MB/s SCSI and a 100Mb/s ethernet on a dual-processor box? The perpetual problem: I can build 'em and admin 'em, but...

March 2002

At long last, add the Member Home Page Finder. We are growing children.

April 2003

Blow me. There are silly little dots in front of my starfish! My hovercraft is full of eels!

November 2003

I liked the goatee, so it got added to the gallery.

February 2007

Removed guest book, since people were using it to promote porn sites. :)

July 2007

New hardware, first since February 2002. It's way overkill (dual Xeons, 2G memory, oodles of both IDE and SCSI) and surplus.

August 2009

Moved to yet another box (same spec), because the other one is like a parrot.

August 2012

Updated contact details. I no longer have a fax, and if you insist on texting me FFS use the text-enabled number.

May 2013

The surplus boxes keep on coming. We're 64-bit and using ZFS this time. And I've upgraded to Apache 2.

July 2013

Yeah, but what if the impossible happened? What if you could write what you thought? Made a feeble attempt at setting up some blogging software. Gave up.

Mar 2014

Goodbye Manchester, I'd like to say it's been nice knowing you, but I'd rather say fuck you, too.

April 2014

I only have 3 followers on Google+, so why are you reading this? For the record, I love my work but I hate my job. I haven't left Manchester, but my website has been evicted.

May 2014

The place to put photos of yourself is Facebook, see the big picture, said the clever boss, looking up from his Microsoft mobile.

March 2015

My website is older than the students I'm fucking. I should do something about that.

May 2015

The Green Wankers For World Peace, a online political party, have forced me to use Facebook anyway.

August 2015

Still on Facebook. Is there a league of little-used websites? Where do I enter?

October 2015

I've been cajoled into setting up a LinkedIn account, so will probably need to do some minor work on this site.

November 2015

W3 Validated CSS and HTML5 where I could. Work stalled, as usual.

February 2019

Upgraded to Apache 24. Nothing works.

April 2019

Sorted out access control and CGI directories. SSI still not right.

February 2021

Did the letsencrypt dance and now have https. I'm sure this will make the only readers of this website, the bots, very happy indeed.

April 2021

Cancelled the Virgin landline and TV, back to the BT phone. Update contact details.