Geekness – Page 2 – The Jake of All Trades

A Virtual Visit to 2000

When I was a freshman I wanted to change the name of my computer to “Sanctuary,” over dramatic I suppose, something I do well, but the idea is there. This space, this thing contained inside my monitor is something that is mine is a way that nothing, not even my bedroom is mine.

I’m writing this from WordPerfect 9 running in Windows 2000. WinAmp is playing some Lauren Hill in the background, and I am back in the virtual space that was mine as I was leaving college back in 2001.

It is just a Virtual Machine, so a computer inside of a computer. My Mac and all of its modern-ness is just right over there, a three finger swipe away.

But this, this? This is something. This was me so long ago, and it feels so welcoming in a nostalgic way. The only thing that is missing is AOL Instant Messenger, something I very much miss. It was, in a way, a very real social network, but one where we talked to each other, rather than post in the noise and hoped someone heard us. Social media, ironically, disconnects us from each other in a way easy to feel but hard to describe.

Hell, I imported old email into Outlook from a back up so I could see what was in those PST files, so even Outlook is filled with this time period.

I was a fucking mess, for the record. But this post isn’t about that.

A lot has changed since then. I use so little of my computer these days outside of the internet. The start is there, AIM and lots of email, but also I did things, like write, more. So is there something about the space itself that is the issue? Something that has crept into our computer sanctuaries to remove us from that experience?

It’s not like I wasn’t online, using my browser, but I was also making things, playing games. I don’t even do that anymore on the computer.

And if I could, through this Windows 2000 machine, interact with the 2000 internet and all those people I miss, I would.

The space, familiar, the sounds, how I remember those sounds. It is so fast, so damn fast.

I need to use it a few days more to collect my thoughts, but my modern computer feels, thick? Dense? There is a lot, at all times, maybe that’s where I need to start, maybe not minimal install but minimal presentation. Return things to … I don’t know.

I know I was always one with 1,000 windows open. So maybe this is just the nostalgia speaking, the overload of remembering the marble table in the front room, the love seat I lived on, the monitor and 100′ phone chord that was the internet, and all the possibility that was still there.

But at this moment, listening to Enigma, it feels like it would be better.

Yes, “Return to Innocence” is a bit on the nose, but what the hell.

It was here, in this space, first in Windows 95, then 98, 2000, then over to OS X, that I would go to retreat to, to relax, to vent, to create, to dream, to dream, so much dreaming, to lament, to center myself after heartache, to let that heartache just loose in a way that was free, but private.

And no, I don’t need to be in this Windows 2000 world to experience this, but something like my phone or iPad, which I spend more time on than my computer do not offer this… this…? what? Personalization isn’t the right way of saying it but is as close as I can get. This connection to the space as mine. Apps are closed and don’t offer the kind of space a desktop does.

And this space is mine, even new and shiny, even old and pixelated, even cluttered and full of memories. So many files, filled with so many moments.

So I’m slowly making my 2000 era space again, sans internet. (For computer safety reasons, I’m keeping the VM offline) If anything, just to experience the overflow of nostalgia. (But also to go through some old files) Maybe to see if I can spot whatever it is that I’m feeling and move that into my modern OS experience.

And who knows. Maybe I’ll open up some of those WordPerfect files that haven’t been touched since I jumped to a Mac in 2002 and pick up where I left off.

Dark Mode Twenty Sixteen

I decided I wanted to have a dark mode on this site. It’s a nice feature, and with some CSS can be made to auto change based on the user preferences—meaning you will only see it if your computer / phone is in dark mode.

The theme I use is Twenty Sixteen, which I have previously modified for some changes to typography.

The task, similar to to the typography change, started by searching through the CSS file to find any reference to color. I then took those references and organized them by what color they were using.

The pallet turned out to be 5 primary colors, two accent ones (which were used as inverses of each other). I hunted for colors to use and put together a dark theme that looks like this:

screenshot of this website with the dark mode theme active, background is black and dark grey, words are white and blue

I used a simple media query to allow the site to change with the user preferences:

@media screen and (prefers-color-scheme: dark)

There was one issue I found. Twenty Sixteen has color customizations that load stylesheets at the bottom of the header. I tried a few things to get the dark mode css to load after that, which would mean both were working, but couldn’t get it to work.

I used the functions.php file to remove both the loaded CSS and the options from the customizer to prevent any issues. I plan to figure this one out so modifications to ‘light’ mode will work with ‘dark’ mode.

I did make an option pane to let you switch which dark pallet you’d like to use. Alpenglow is a theme for Firefox with a rich purple pallet, and I wanted to see if I could make something similar for this and have the option to change back and forth if I need to (spoiler, it worked).

Sometimes, the Beginning is the best place to Continue

I’ve been taking an online course on CSS that starts from the basics.

My original ‘course’ in CSS was on the job training as we converted a site from tables to CSS divs somewhere in the summer of 2000.

A lot has changed in the world of web programming since the dot-com boom when I was doing it professionally (well, as professionally as any of us were, I suppose), and while I still make web things, from WordPress plugins and themes to even dabbling in React.js and Svelte, it’s not my profession anymore. This means that while I’m dipping my toes back in everyone in a while—scraping through Google searches to find the answers to my questions—I’m not active enough in the space to catch up by working.

That was how I learned these things, programming Perl, then PHP, adding JavaScript to have mouse-overs. Tables for layout, and I’m going to admit here, in public, that there are days I wish we went back to tables for layout. I learned CSS ‘real-time’ as we updated the site from tables, hard coded styles and background images to a more fluid CSS layout over the summer.

The thing is this: sometimes the best way to learn is to start from the beginning. Sure, I know everything in the first couple lessons, but it wasn’t long before something new came out. A new term, a new phrase, a new best practice.

I know CSS. But I learned it then and patch-worked myself through updates and improvements throughout these years. I knew CSS, and even though I still use it often, the foundation is based on the lessons learned, right and wrong, all those years ago. At some point… at this point, the best way to continue learning is to start over.

Because it is not just specs and code that has changed over the years, but vocabulary, best practices, formatting and naming conventions (not that we had naming conventions in 1999).

This makes a basic course a refresher and a new foundation to build on from here. Don’t be afraid or prideful to take a step back and go over the basics once again.