SjonSvenson.com

Every site has a history and a reason for being.

   This site is a work in progress, and will remain so for a long time to come. This is a personal site reflecting my life as it flows.

   On this site I keep a daybook containing personal notes but also reflections on things that happen in the world around me. Apart from the daybook you will find some descriptions and articles about computer related stuff. And a series of recipes for cooking. I don't read much but what I read may find its way to the site as well.

   I have a full time job (lucky me) which doesn't really leave enough time to make this site perfect. It is a personal site, containing highly personal opinions and information. It is also a tool I use to transfer information from home to work and back. Appointments, jobs to do, reminders, etc. are all posted here so I can reach them wherever I am. So if my boss sends me, as usual without prior warning, to a client in Novgorod or Timboktou, I can take my data along without having to pack them. The result is that a lot of stuff will not be of interest to any one but me and maybe a few close friends and colleagues. On top of that quite some links may point to files on my local system or on the local network and will thus not be reachable by visitors from the web (I hope).

   I know that being so open makes me vulnerable to attacks from people that don't like what I do or have or say. I feel reasonable safe though. I have no strong opinion in politics or religion. I have no secrets to hide and I don't post links or addresses that are not freely available already.
And I can always retreat from the web if things get to hot

   This site started about halfway trough 1998. At that point it was merely an experiment with HTML. I only started to use the web in January of that year because we moved offices then. In the old office we didn't have PCs. After a few months with access to the web my bookmarks became a real mess so I copied them to a file and edited them. It was my first encounter with HTML. Until halfway 1999 the pages were available only on my own hard disk. Then I put them on the company server. Now more people could visit them so I had to make an effort to get some consistency and structure in.

   As long as the site remains small and simple I intend to use a simple editor (E or Wordpad) to write the pages directly in HTML. By using a simple editor I ensure that I am able to edit my pages anywhere, with almost any computer. I did some text of my biography on my Psion. And I use CuteFTP ( from Globalscape ) to upload to the web server. I am currently hosted at Mailbank. Mailbank has registered a whole set of domain names which they now rent out. This allows people to get a domain name that equals (or at least closely resembles) their name or their hobby or some other item they relate to for a rather modest cost ($5 a year) . The main reason for choosing them was the E-mail address which now equals my name. It is quite convenient to have your e-mail address and web site URL with your own name. And at that price ... .
While discussing with one of my regular suppliers he checked the site and noticed that it was registered correctly. After he registered his site (Masset.com) he got loads of mail from people in some village in the USA. The name of the village was Masset and its inhabitants had used that name for their Internet mail and sites without properly registering. Mailbank did register as it should
The subscription price went up to 9.95$ per year as off 1999/07/25. This doesn't affect already running contracts so for me nothing changes (until next year). Still worthwhile and still recommended, but less of a bargain.

   As mentioned I started with converting my bookmarks into a Web page. I set this as the home page in my browser because, having it on my local disk, it loads faster then the company home page which is the standard home page. After this home page I converted some manuals and user documentation into HTML. One project I managed was an interface overlay job where the classic ‘green screen’ interface from the AS/400 was replaced by a GUI interface running under Windows. For this project I wrote a developers manual and some installation guides using MS Word. I had problems placing screen shots in the text because often Word would change the layout behind the screens so that sometimes I couldn’t even reload a document that I created the day before without dropping all the images. I know that, given enough time and a Word course (and loads of luck) I would eventually get it right but I had neither time (you never get time for documentation) nor the necessary courses. I finally wrote the documentation in Lotus Word Pro (which I use at home and know enough) and then converted it to HTML because of the company policy to use Microsoft apps exclusively. At the end of this project I knew enough HTML to get on and start a whole web site for myself.

   I experimented with various backgrounds and layouts and finally settled on what you see here. I like a clear uniform background and at first I used the mottled grey background (steel.gif) but later (after seeing Tom Syroids original site) I adopted a gradient (yellow.png).

Like the background I pick up elements and design ideas from other sites but I am not simply a copy cat, I try to do things differently. That background for example. Tom had it in blue and although I like blue I found that I could not simply copy it. So I created my own version using Correl Draw (V4), same size and principle, but in yellow, my second favourite colour. I did spend several days on that but than it was the first time I used Correl Draw and getting it just to taste was not easy. Some colours don't work well on gradients (see my food pages).

   Using the web I started visiting the Chaos Manor, from Jerry Pournelle. I got there because Byte had just been sold and stopped to be printed. From Chaos Manor I reached Robert Bruce-Thomson and Bo Leuf. And from there I stumbled to Tom Syroid's site. All four of them had some form of day notes posted with interesting information. The most interesting thing about these daynotes however was that they displayed the personality of the author.
I have been keeping daybooks on and off troughout my life. Typically starting after some 'event' and slowly tapering off after some months. Since I work for RealSoft I keep a kind of log where I keep note of what I do at which client. This log is intended to report back but in the private version I sometimes added non work-related snipets. Seing these other daynotes on the web I switched over to keeping my own log in HTML. .