About it all
Well, maybe not. Certainly more than you need to know, and most likely more than you care about.
What is one.point.zero?
Good question. one.point.zero is my personal site. It has been in weblog form since 2000 after I realised the small mailing list of friends I was sending interesting links to had grown to include more people I didn't know than actual friends (some will say that's quite easy). This was the perfect excuse to setup one of these newfangled blog things all the hip kids were building. I'd been thinking about launching one for the previous couple of years (yes, I really am that lazy) and I finally had an excuse.
The format was inspired by what John Barger, Cameron Barrett, Peter Merholz and several other like-minded people were doing in those days.
Blogger hadn't been around very long, Greymatter was just showing up, Movable Type was but a twinkle in Ben and Mena's eyes and I wanted posts I could assign categories to. So I built (read: hacked together) my own weblog engine based on the source to More Like This which Bill Humphries had graciously made available at the time. One year later, the guru in the woolly hat linked to me and my stats went through the roof...
What subjects are covered?
The range is quite large and eclectic, although it has been slowly shifting over time based on my constantly changing interests (A.D.D. anyone?). The size of posts has also increased from one-liners to larger dollops of opinionated rubbish. Somehow, through all of that, I still have reader(s).
Do you talk about web design?
Very rarely. Even though I make my living from the web, I don't usually feel the need to add another tutorial on building a website for your cat using web standards and CSS. If I ever feel the urge, I won't hold it back.
Will you link to me?
No.
Can I use your design?
No. You will be publicly humiliated.
Who writes this?
My passport says "Colin O'Brien" and I've been trained to answer to that name, so you can use it too.
I was born in Ireland, a beautiful country that fills up each summer with German tourists in loud shorts, Americans seeking their heritage and French people making a beeline for "Les lacs du Connemara". Meanwhile, the natives can be found assembling computer parts or in the pub.
Right now I live in Brussels, Belgium. Land of eurocrats, chocolate, beer, taxes, more eurocrats and a political system so complex that little children gouge their own eyes out with HB pencils when they have to learn about it at school.
I like it here, the place is a schizoid as I am.
How did you end up where you are?
I started my online life in the BBS world, migrating to the internet and the fabulous world of Gopher, Usenet and IRC (yes kids, there was an internet before the web). Then Tim Berners Lee and Marc Andreesen conspired to seal my fate for many years to come. I am officially addicted to the web and have even managed to scrape a living from it since 1994. I should get a "I survived the dotcom bubble" t-shirt.
I can also sometimes be found pretending to have a real life by spinning music at clubs and parties under the moniker liquidx.
Will you do some work for me?
Sure, just contact me and we'll talk. If my workload ever slows down a bit, you'll find my portfolio on things.be/ too.
How was this all glued together?
This is version 2. It runs on Expression Engine, but I'll be dropping that soon as I'm busy moving the whole shebang onto a web 2.0 Ruby on Rails-based solution.
It usually validates as XHTML, blah blah blah, standards, CSS, Ajax... You've heard it all before.
No animals were harmed during construction. Copious amounts of caffeine were consumed. Traces of nuts may be found in the source and the author.