Hands-On tek Turns 13!

Dear readers,

Last year, I shared the story of how Hands-On Tek began, but this year, I want to take you even further back in time to 1999. This was the year I started to build my very first website, at the age of 12, at a time when the Internet in my hometown was almost science fiction.

The Dawn of a Digital Era

In 1999, the Internet was a mysterious and fascinating frontier to me. Although I had a computer at home, I didn't have Internet access. To surf the World Wide Web after school, I usually went to the public library, which had a 56kbps connection. I would save images and content that I found interesting onto a pink transparent floppy disk, then unload it at home, repeating the process the next day.

That same year, my Portuguese language teacher, José Jo?o Lucas, told me about a project the Portuguese government was implementing to bring Internet to schools. As part of this initiative, there was a contest to build a website that could be featured at the Expo 2000 in Hannover. The moment I heard "Internet", I was all in and eager to start exploring how to build my own website.

The First Steps

At school, we had a room full of computers that, looking back, seemed more like a museum. We had machines running MS-DOS 6.22, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and a single machine running Windows 98 connected to the Internet. This was the one we used to build and publish the website.

Together with my teacher and a few classmates, we assembled a team to build the website. The first awesome thing that came with this project was gaining access to the computer room, which was typically closed to students. There, we had a permanent RDIS 128kbps connection to use without limits. Armed with little knowledge and a lot of curiosity, we started building a website about Bu?aco, a mountain in our region that we could see from our school and which had a lot of history to share with the world.

While others did the investigation, I, being a mini Sheldon in 1999 ??, handled most of the technology-related tasks. My first task was to learn how to use Microsoft FrontPage 98, and this is how I began to build my first website.

Learning and Growing

To this day, I'm still fascinated with the marquee tag which I have used for the title of the website thinking it was the best thing in the world (it was the first and only time I used it!). Building this website taught me how to work with technology, and also gave me my first opportunity to work on a project with a team. Each one of us was typing, drawing, or simply reviewing (yes, we had QA back in 1999 ??) the content that was ready to be added to the portal.

Technically, it was challenging and slow, but we had a lot of fun. With a single machine connected to the Internet, shared with other members of the school, we had to use Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 to write the text and translations for the website using Microsoft Word. These were then copied using floppy disks to the Windows 98 computer and added to the pages in FrontPage.

The photos on the site were taken by us using a 35mm camera and were then digitized using a scanner connected to the computer teachers shared in the teachers' room. Scanning those images and trying to copy them to the Windows 98 computer using a floppy disk taught me how to compress images and reduce quality, a lesson that I had to apply multiple times to make sure the pages were fast to load. This is is something I still do today at Hands-On tek to optimize your experience.

It took months to build, but finally on a Saturday morning in 2000 the site was published and added to the catalog of portals that were built to show Portugal to the world.

The First Website

My first website was simple by today's standards, but it was created with great care and dedication. Although the original URL is no longer active, you can view it in English through the Internet Archive. Please note that it was optimized for an 800x600 resolution. ??

The Impact

Building that first website taught me invaluable lessons about perseverance, creativity, and the power of technology. It ignited a passion that has driven me ever since. Today, Hands-On tek stands as a testament to those early days of exploration and discovery.

José Jo?o Lucas, the Portuguese language teacher responsible for all of this, had a greater impact on me than the website itself. I don't recall being a particularly good student in his class, but I will always remember that what he did and this project are among the reasons I work in IT today. He gave me the opportunity to work with a team, creating something bigger to be shared broadly with the world—a skill that would play a pivotal role in my professional career. Beyond the website, he also pushed me into public speaking. It was in one of the extracurricular activities he organized that I started making public presentations, a practice I have continued to this day.

A Heartfelt Thank You

As we celebrate this milestone together, I want to thank each and every one of you for being a part of this journey. Your support, feedback, and enthusiasm have been the driving force behind Hands-On tek. Here's to many more years of innovation, learning, and community.

Happy 13th Birthday, Hands-On tek!

?