krzwierz'79
professional translator/linguist & enthusiast programmer
been messing around with computers since the '80s:
from ZX Spectrum+ and hex-editing savegames in the '90s,
through Linux networking and web development when it was all about HTML, JS, CSS and PHP in the '00s,
to Python for NLP, and Vue.js or React for web in the '10s.
It's time for something new.
I'm not sure at which point IT translations and teaching programmers English stopped being enough
Making websites for fun and English language learners.
When I first moved my nibylog website to Wordpress I decided making websites is so simple now, nobody needs any help. Indeed writing in English for SEO seemed much better business option. Every now and then, I would change some old PHP at a company I worked for or .zip() something in Python to make a quick translation memory or terminology reference.
Building a multi-apartment LAN and running a Linux server
Listening to the beeps of the modem was expensive, and getting a dedicated broad-band connection even more so. Luckily I lived in a block of flats where most people felt the same. Even more lucky, my parents' kitchen had an empty cupboard which could be adapted to house a rack with FreeSCO server. Several Linux books later I was in over my head building and later administering a building-wide LAN sharing an SDI (S originally meaning Speed, later changed to Stable) connection at 115,2 kb/s.
This is also when I earned my first money as a webdesigner. I've been putting together websites for fun, from role-playing games, through play-by-email, to fansites, when a local computer store decided they needed to upgrade their static HTML with some JS. In these pre jQuery days I remember my design looked pretty awesome to me, and useful enough to the client to pay for it. I just hoped he would not discover this new technology everyone was excited about, called Flash!
Because that one, I did not like...
Hacking savegames
The 90s was a time when I graduated from a loaned Spectrum and Amiga to my own pen-and-paper turtle cut-out from a book on Logo programming language followed by Commodore 64 but it wasn't until I got my hands on a PC when games got boring in one afternoon when I discovered the wonderful world of hex-editing my savegames.
Rewinding tapes at a loaned ZX Spectrum+
I only vaguely remember the quest of going to a local computer club, where a bespectaled, sweater-clad wizzard gave me the secret spell of LOAD "" that made the rolling tape do magic with the black box of Sinclair ZX Spectrum we had on loan for the two-week winter holiday, and put the wheels in motion for my computer adventure.
Much clearer is the memory of coding a dancing ASCII figure along with a listing from an 1986 issue of Bajtek magazine.
But mostly I remember playing games on Spectrum.
