What a long, strange trip it's been. I never thought my little writing hobby would last this long or take me this far. This isn't to say I am any good or that I am worthy of your time, but I do thank each and every one of you who have taken the time to read anything written by me over the years.

My adventures into the written realm began way back in 1997. I decided I wanted to learn what this "HTML" thing was all about. I wanted to see if I could use it to share my thoughts on movies with the world or anyone who happened to stumble across my little corner of the web.

The first thing I did was open up a site at Geocities. I used their little push button page builder (early blog?) to make a home page. I then viewed that page in Notepad and copied it, altering bits and pieces to see what they would do. In this manner, I was able to get a handle on basic HTML skills.

I wasn't very good, nor did I really understand what the tags did, but I was able to put together a rudimentary site. To be honest, I don't remember what I had on that page and it's probably better that way.

From those early experiments, I picked up a book on HTML and was able to teach myself enough to be dangerous. I started a more ambitious site, using space provided by my ISP. I spent a lot of time building different sections of the site – quizzes, concepts, articles, and a separate section for reviews.

The biggest part of this were the reviews. I set up each page with some info on the film, writer, director, stars, length, rating – all that sort of stuff. I also started messing around with JavaScript, with which I set up an email form for people to comment and rate individual films (which only ever got one response).

With all of those elements in place, I set about populating the reviews section. This turned out to be an absolute train wreck. I had no experience writing reviews and was terribly unsure of my written expression. In short, I had no idea how to write (which may not be all that different now).

I ended up spending a lot of time on layout and navigation, trying to make it completely user-friendly. In a way, I was much more successful at that than I was at writing the content. That didn't translate into anyone who found the page actually sticking around. No reason to stay at a page with lousy content right?

The site fell into disrepair and was soon forgotten. Don't worry, I still have some of the content, which I may one day break out as examples of how not to write a review.