My Webpages

Does anyone remember Prodigy? I had my first web page there back in early 1996. When it changed...sold or something, I started a webpage at AOL. AOL would not accept my nickname and I couldn't think of anything so picked dotcombs. Back then we needed a lot of patience to upload files and our time on the site each month was limited. Someone wrote me a strange email mentioning dotcombs and the similarity to dotcom. I didn't think too much about it at the time. I started another page at Netcom...they sold out to Mindspring and I really liked it there...Mindspring became Earthlink. I finally could buy my own domain name and I parked it at Earthlink. I had hoped to get dotcombs.com but someone had already taken it. Probably that strange person that wrote the email about dotcombs. I choose dotcombs.net for my domain name. Over the years I check dotcombs.com and for awhile there was nothing then odd sales sites. When it came up for renew the first time, I looked for it to be up for grabs, but it was renewed. Whatever.

For a few years I had a Geocities account too and kept my computer graphics there...I really enjoyed creating computer graphics. I had started making them before I ever knew what the internet was. I made cute clip art that could be added to envelopes and letters. I already had CorelDraw software...bought at Costco. I took a CorelDraw class.

I had taken a class in what was called back then...digital photography. Digital cameras were not available for anyone to buy...they were thousands of dollars expensive...our class had one to use and it took photos in black and white. I got to use it once and only in the classroom. In class we scanned photos in b/w and used software to change them. We worked in b/w. As a class project I scanned several old photos and made a printed album using the computer. I also took several art classes and in one of the classes we had a Mac with a computer paint program in color. I learned the difference between a computer drawing program like the CorelDraw, a computer paint program, and photo editing software. The instructor let me come in after our class time and work on that computer. My computer drawing was crude and took me forever. I did learn a lot though. Later I bought my own scanner...it scanned in color...and a color ink jet printer.

This is one of the first photo edits I did in color. I printed this as a 7x10" poster.

Original photo

The first photos I put up on the internet were my scanned rose photos. My scanner came with photo editing software. I registered it and when Adobe bought out Photostyler they sent me an offer to get Photoshop at an upgrade price. I have been upgrading PS ever since. All my early rose photos were edited. Graphics on the internet changed quickly. I made gif files with transparent backgrounds and animated gifs.

In late 2001 Hailey and I moved here to an area where the phone lines were old...no fast connections to the web so while I could keep my website at Earthlink I had to find another way to connect to the net. I went on cable. I shut down my pages at AOL too. Over the years I put a lot of stuff on my website. Lots of it forgotten. When Geocities shut down, I realized I hadn't updated my pages for several years. I bought another web site, dotcombs.org, and I started a board for Janee's Photoshop group. She had to give up her board and her Photoshop classes. We did OK for a couple of years and then our favorite member passed away and everything seemed to stop. Most of us moved on to Facebook to keep in touch. There are some nice places on the net to post photos. Webshots, Flickr, pbase, Picasa, are some of them and I have photos at all of them. I don't need the big web site anymore so am going to slowly check out what is there, what I want to save, and by the end of the month the site will be moved...if I keep it at all.