I have a confession to make.

I’m not proud of it. While it seemed appropriate at the time, I have learned a lot since then. I am not the same person I was in 2001. Edit. It looks like it was 2003!

But, with a heavy heart, here goes:

I built my first website in Microsoft Word.

I had the credentials to upload it to the server, which was, I think, a public_html dir under the user’s home dir.

But I didn’t know about terminal access, so I asked for a “normal” Windows account, so I could drag and drop the files from my memory stick.

And, thanks to Wayback Machine, here it is!

But you know what…?

I may have done it in the most arse-backwards way possible, but, late that evening, in a computer lab off Archers Road in Southampton, I published my first content on the web, and I was beyond delighted.

Not long after, someone explained to me how the web worked. From that moment on, I was hooked.

Studying law was (and still is) fun, but this was fascinating. Like a whole new world had opened up.

I had thought I wanted to practise family law, but the laws of networks, computers, the Internet, and connected services, suddenly opened themselves up to me.

RIPA was new.

The new telecoms framework was nascent.

The eCommerce directive was bedding in.

Around the same time, another friend introduced me to Linux, and I went from a nerdy law student to a nerdy law student who liked Linux.

All thanks to Microsoft Word and a new website for the juggling society.

I don’t still build websites in Microsoft Word.

Now, I use vim. Which is probably a confession for another day.

But I still have fond memories of that room with row upon row of beige boxes with zip drives, in Archers Road.