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www.besucherzaehler.co  

Just a trans developer located in Calgary, AB who has done a number of things across a number of disciplines.
 

Philosophy Behind This Page 

If you’ve made it this far into my little Web 1.1 project you can probably tell that I have a lot of nostalgia and respect for the design philosophies and creativity that defined the early web. I can confident that I was an early adopter of the Net, loading mg first webpage in 1997. I even remember the first page I ever visited – the official website for the Canadian television network YTV. For those of us who remember huddling around a large CRT monitor hearing the sounds of a 56k modem screech as a page slowly loads – maybe it’s pure nostalgia but this new technology was enrapturing. 

And so with the corporatized and conglomerate owned web becoming the defecto “only option” in the past 12 years or so, this page stands as my own little act of carving out a section of our shared virtual  space. I know that I could never be completely free of the current corporate web, social media, but it doesn’t mean there can’t be space for small limited projects that aren’t monetized or designed for turning profits. There is value in creating art for the sake of art. 
 

Retro Tech 

It should be obvious that this page has been designed to be viewable on an entire range of devices, platforms and software that would now be considered completely out of date and in most likelihood abandoned. This page went through extensive testing (more details on My Projects page) using devices ranging from Windows 2000 with Netscape from 1999, to the Sony PSP and Foone even tried loading it on a Pocket PC.  

I’m what inspired the creation of this page’s were a couple things actually but most notably the “Web 1.1 Creating The New Old Net” thread on Macrumors. Browsing through that forum thread inspired me and showed me that the creative spirit of the bygone internet are not dead. 

This text is being typed on an IPhone 8, which I’ve had for 2 years now, before that I had an IPhone SE and before that an IPhone 5. Do you see what I’m getting at? All too often we view modern technology as disposable and replaceable instead of taking a step back and seeing if it can repairable and repurposed. 

And so, with that in mind I’ve created the “Live Like 2K2 Challenge”, challenging participants – okay myself, to only use the technologies and even entertainment from the late 90s / Early 00s. Sure that time had a LOT of “downtime” (read: Boredom) – but it also represented a time when being “offline” wasn’t just when your smartphone battery happened to die. So for 7 days this coming April I’m going to follow a group of loose rules that basically recreated a slice of that old offline life as a social experiment of sorts and document it all.  

If you wanted a short hand list of Retro Technologies I’d like to explore on this little web page over time they’d be: 

• Windows 9x / 2000 

• Continuing to spotlight and contribute to the broader Web 1.1. 

• Exploring the depths of the Geocities Archives for interesting relics Liz 

• Mac OS 9 / Early OSX – This is especially interesting to me because I never was a mac user at this time. I’ve always been a Windows user, even today that’s where I develop my games and software. So I get to go into 90s/00s Mac stuff with literal fresh eyes. 

Education 

Disability – Counselling Skills I / II, Addictions and  Casework Management 

Single Credit Courses  

Bow Valley College – Calgary Alberta – 2014 / 2015 

Bachelors of Art – Major: Psychology, Minor: Gender Studies 

Degree Conferred by Laurentian University August 2014