Category: Personal

The “Personal” category includes any personal posts, usually about life in general outside of all my hobbies and interests.

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Happy 20th Birthday Junknet.Net!

Warning: LONG POST!

I actually started writing this a couple days ago, trying to put some thought into how I would approach the reality that I’ve owned this domain for -literally- the last 20 years. Up until this year I’ve always had some minor amount of content on the site, mostly arcade-related stuff, and it’s been through many iterations of design (or lack thereof). I finally realized the design of the site was holding me back; trying to deal with themes, getting the colors right, getting the look down, etc all held me back from simply just USING the site or trying to find a solid direction for it. After some hosting issues that led to it being taken down for a while in 2018, combined with ditching Facebook, I decided to take the opportunity to start from scratch, go with the stock “blogging” theme, and this time, forego the “look” for now, and just start using the site.

That first line…owning something for 20 years…wow. For a kid that grew up in the 80s and 90s, I’m pretty sure neither myself nor anyone else I knew ever thought we wouldn’t be a kid at some point. We grew up in the age of video games and arcades, malls, Nintendo, Kiddie City, Toys R Us, the Simpsons, Saturday morning cartoons, riding our bikes until our parents yelled for us (no cell phones needed!), summers at the Wildwood beaches and winters sledding in the park. While there were definitely things going on, and we didn’t have a lot of money, life was good as a kid then, it seemed to last forever and we didn’t want it to end!

Fast forward to having my first job at a local computer repair shop (which also had a side business as an ISP), I had my first “real” web page, which usually came as a freebie site included with your internet account. If you didn’t have one, you may have also used sites like Geocities to host your own as well. Since there wasn’t a lot of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors yet, or at least any good ones, most people coded their pages manually, which in some cases resulted in some “really interesting” pages (aka really interesting train wrecks lol). Mine was no exception!

Here’s the header from my old web site, as of October 3rd, 1999:

I didn’t have a lot of money then, but figured I would make what was likely my first investment into my career, by buying an internet domain, and learning how the process worked. Learning how to register it, learning how to set up DNS, learning how to code a web site and bring it online. Back then we didn’t have many choices for registrars, and if I’m not mistaken, you had your choice of: Network Solutions. That was it. With a deal in place to host the site through a friend, I plopped down some cash and purchased junknet.net. The name was always a joke…before the internet I wanted to run a BBS (it never came to fruition), and always figured since it was running on “junk” hardware, I would call it JunkNet to reflect it’s…humble stature. Sadly the BBS never officially made it public as I never had the money to get my own phone line, but it was only natural to continue the idea that I’d probably be running my own web site on junk computers anyway, so I just stuck with it.

Junknet.Net – Circa 2001 Junknet Web Design Group – HAH! (One possible career avenue anyway)

I tried hard to make my site look professional. I probably used CorelDraw back then to create the graphics, and immediately themed the site to my interests, which still remain valid to this day. Sadly, I couldn’t come up with content. I was too busy doing other things, living life and switching jobs to take the time to sit down and actually code more pages up with some actual content. It wasn’t like today where I can do this from my phone during my lunch break; I generally telnetted directly into the web server and edited the site using Pico (no Vi for me). Graphics were a pain to deal with then!

My one source of content came from a car show I found on happenstance; I’ve always been into Turbo Buicks since I got my Buick Regal, and driving through the Phoenixville, PA area one day, I came across a sign for a Turbo Buick car show. Since work happened to have a digital camera I used a lot on weekends, I was able to attend the show and take what seemed like a bazillion photos. The pics were popular and got mentioned in “The Source – Turbo Buick Newsletter” amongst other sites. I attended the show 2 more years and took even more pictures until it finally died out. From what I understand, the original folks creating the Newsletter had health issues and eventually stopped hosting the show.

The site had minor updates and variations after that; I added a page to host my friend’s artwork in 2003, I put up various posts, then in 2006, I redesigned the site with a new “dark” look many would consider “goth” at the time. I really wasn’t goth, but looking back I think I wanted to be…maybe…ish. Whatever.

Unfortunately, yet again life got in the way and the site sat like this for a while. Around 2008, I started messing with and collecting arcade games, and I wanted to finally use the site to show off what I was doing with the games, so I redid the site again into my first content management system: Joomla. To give it a look, I used the Firenzie Theme from Rockettheme.

Joomla was finally providing me a way to quickly update the site, it looked good (albeit boring) and I finally started using it a lot more often by posting updates about fixing and restoring my various arcade games. It worked, but alas, over time the page wasn’t updated, the Joomla CMS needed constant updates and attention, and I gave up on the idea of updating it, but let it remain online for what little useful content there was. That iteration finally died in 2018 when a billing issue took the site down (it was my fault), and rather than restore the outdated Joomla install, I figured I’d try something different.

I’ll be honest, at one point the name JunkNet didn’t appeal to me anymore. While I have a reputation for always having some “junk” laying around, I wanted to lose that connotation and go with something new. I bought up some different domains, but I never found anything that had the same “fun” factor as JunkNet, so I decided to keep it, only this time having it represent the “junk” in my head, since I have so many hobbies, interests, and useless knowledge, there’s definitely plenty of junk to go around lol.

Outside of the site, its amazing how much change would happen over 20 years. Thankfully I’m still around, while many of my former classmates, teachers, and relatives have unfortunately passed on. I went from a 100 pound scrawny nerd, to a not-so 100 pound not-so-scrawny nerd LOL, but trying to keep things in check. I’m not so clean shaven anymore, and my hair is actually longer than 1/4″ (ok its down to my neck). Computers changed from 486s, to Cyrix 5×86’s, to Pentiums, to Pentium IIs, then Pentium IIIs, and now you can get a laptop only fractions of an inch thick. My electronics know-how went from rudimentary, to being able to troubleshoot digital electronics at the component-level. Relationships, cars, hobbies, friends, social media, and everything else just seems like a blur now. Days, months, and years FLY by faster than ever. Many places I enjoyed visiting over the years are gone or changed, some held on longer than others. Personal web sites are truly a lost art to behemoths like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and countless other social media networks all vying for our livelihood, yet many still remain online even if frozen in time.

Anyway, now that you wish you had that 10 minutes back, I’ll wrap this up by shouting out another “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” to my first domain, Junknet.Net, and hope it’s still online for another 20 years, and hoping I keep it going this time, as well as that the internet remains a neutral, open community for the world to enjoy.

PS – Big thanks to archive.org and their “wayback machine” for capturing and keeping snapshots of various web sites, including both of mine over the past 20 years. I also want to give a shout-out to Net-Thing Inc. (now SeoPhilly.com), Paul S., Russell J., and several others over the years that have graciously hosted Junknet.net for me and helped me get started in all of this.

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Why Do We Hate Color?

Did some mall walking tonight, and took notice of the recent renovations at the mall. What are they doing? Taking bleak architecture, and making it bleaker really. Replacing green railings with clear glass, and marble based pillars with columns of white. With white walls. And white floors.

Case in point, here’s dinner, and no I didn’t specifically choose these…

Looking around the mall I realize how devoid it is of color, of soul, of architecture. True no mall really has any worthwhile “architecture”, and I’m sure some designer that makes a lot more than I do would argue that the geometric designs on the ceilings, the funky windows, these giant light fixtures that I never even noticed, are indeed award-winning “architecture”, but I never notice most of it because they’re all painted white!

Is it because white is supposed to look modern? If so it is because “old” things have color and contrast, so white is modern and sleek? Or is it because the bland, sterility of the environment makes the products look better?

Again, here’s dinner:

The white everything does take a boring sandwich and make it really pop! This must be a good thing, I must like this out of the depressing void I’ve walked through to get here! /s

I’d even say it makes the stores look better, but even then a majority, if they use color at all, use such muted shades I wonder why they bother.

There are some exceptions though, notice how this place stands out:

and yet it also almost drives home just how sterile and bland everything else looks.

“But Jeff…you’re a friggin hypocrite! Look at your web site, its no different. Boring fonts, bland design, and no color!” Yes, because it’s literally the stock WordPress template (for now). Thankfully it had a dark mode to bring contrast, and this time around I try to add more pics to give it some substance, but I digress, it’s “easy”, and perhaps patching white paint is easier than matching color in a public place.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe its my ADD screaming for stimulation, and maybe I should invest in a paint company when all the depressed millennials realize they’ve been living in a black and white world in an HDTV era. Could a color revolution be coming?

It’s not just shopping malls, modern design everywhere call for white and little contrast. Modern UIs are blank white screens that are a guessing game for input. Oh that question mark…yeah thats a 20 character search box, but it’s not a box because boxes were soo 1990. Microsoft Office? Your choice of white, gray, or grayer. Literally. Number of colors modern monitors can reproduce: 16.7 million, or was that an old number? Number usually used: 3.

Ironically, all the optical stores I walked by will gladly sell you some blue filtering glasses..color must be really bad!

If you’re a designer, I get it that trends are trends, but please don’t forgo soul and functionality for form. Don’t be afraid to use some color, some contrast, and keep the box in “search box” lol.

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From boxes of photos to boxes of disks…

This is actually based on a post I did on another blog eons ago. In doing a lot of cleaning lately, I’ve been coming across random, usually unmarked CDs and DVDs from my old computers and desks. Apparently I used to lose my sharpie often as many of them are literally unmarked, but I can tell there’s data on them.

I actually get excited when I find these, because there’s a small chance its an old backup of some photos or files from yesteryear.

This makes me often think what happens to all this digital media we collect over our lives. I’ve been on a push to re-organize everything and make sure its archived in multiple copies and media, but I’m sure a lot of other people have their life history on a single drive that’s merely a ticking time bomb.

Back in the day when people took photos with traditional cameras, there was a cost involved not only buying film but also developing it, so people often were very picky about what pictures they took, and took time to frame and align it to try to get the best shot in the first or only try. Now, with digital photos, its practically free or very low cost to take as many pictures or videos as you want, so many pics are often just garbage shots, with little regard to quality or setup. This also means the quantity of actual pics being stored is substantially higher than when people took traditional photos or even the old film videos.

I know very often I find tons of vintage and personal pics in junk shops, likely due to the lack of next of kin, or perhaps someone just not wanting or caring to go through them or store them anymore. What will happen to the vast hoards of digital photos, videos, and other media we’ve taken in our lifetime? Should we make sure we store them where others can find them? Are there pictures of importance, like important events, places, people, etc that may not be specific to a person or family? Should they be encrypted or protected somehow, less they end up on a 3.99 Hallmark card some day?

I recommend putting some thought into what you do with your pics, media, files, and other digital ephemera, and perhaps archiving them on multiple copies of long-term storage that could be passed down to further generations. Make sure that storage is both air-gapped (not online where a virus or malware can delete it), as well as environmentally sound and not stored in a musty basement or hot attic. Label things very clearly with dates and names if you can, and something I’ve started to do, is even putting plain note.txt files in photo folders with information about the subject of the pics. Talk to your kids or loved ones about what you have, where it is and how it should be handled once you’re gone. I feel the next generation may be the ones to skip this step, only to find that our era of media is gone forever with the trash. They’ll learn and use their digital media differently than we do, and will likely have a lot more of it!

Lastly….while taking pics can be an interesting way to save memories for later in life, remember to live in the moment and put the camera down sometimes. Watching thousands of screens take the same video at a concert, the same pics at an event, and so on makes me wonder how many will regret living out these events through a screen the size of an index card.


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Welcome back to Junknet.net

Back from the dead just ta mess wit ya head…

Yeah…my long abandoned web site slowly makes it’s return. Briefly considered letting it go as I rarely use this page, but I had some good arcade how-tos and what not that I’d like to continue to provide. Nothing was lost but the old Joomla install had to go, and some hosting provider issues eventually took it out.

Things have interestingly come full circle…my old site had rants about how much I hated social media, only to have more or less full on switched over, and now, I’m slowly coming back around to find myself again 🙂 Thankfully I never let go of my little corner of the internet.

First priority will be to restore the arcade page to get those links fixed, then I’ll backfill with other fun stuff.