![[Ryan Watkins - vamp@vamp.org]](images/rlw.gif)
So, this page used to be my requisite "This is me, and I've got a homepage page", with the basic set of links and a couple lines of how I worked as a student sysadmin in college, went out to lots of clubs and generally fucked around. Now I've been thru three jobs since then, helped found a successful startup and sold it, and my soul to work for Microsoft, moved to Manhattan and DC, and lived the life of leisure for a few years. I'm currently in Brooklyn. A lot has changed. More required now than just adding a new sentence on to the old paragraph of what I do.
I used to call myself a Webmaster, which became a valid Occupation option when you fill out those forms. Twelve years ago nobody got it. A billboard that just reads "http://www.bankofamerica.com/" is no longer a novelty. Its certainly been a wild ride.
So what did I do?
Long ago (well, over 11 years ago, but thats like 107 'Web-Years'), I worked at Academic Computing Services (ACS) at Cal State Long Beach, spent a good portion of my time surfing the net, reading usenet, exploring the WWW, and playing with Unix stuff, unless of course, I was sleeping or out at a club. I installed MacMosaic 1.0 in the student labs, ran NCSA http on my NeXT cube which eventually turned into ...
... a job as Sysadmin and HTML hack at On Ramp, Inc. where I learned to cash in on this web mania. I watched Oak turn into Java, and built commercial sites. Most, if not all of those projects listed below are dead and gone. Part of the web graveyard. On March 15, 1995 I left On Ramp for greener pastures - along with most of the talented technical staff (meaning I no longer work for Madam Furry). This turned into a position as ...
... local HTML Hacker at Dimension X. I spent a good amount of my time writing sites in 3 days ("but its gotta be a killer site .."), dealing with ad agencies that just didn't get it, running the network and the like. Much changed, I got the title of "Director of Web Technology" and did lots of webmaster work. That's all dead now too. Scott's gone, and Chris no longer sleeps curled up to a RAID drive under his desk. We grew from 7 people in a couple corner offices to just over 50 when we were acquired by Microsoft. Then ...
... I went to work for bill. I did development for the MS web team on the DirectX and Java sites, evangelism for Chromeffects, demo production for DirectX Media, and finally did work for MSN doing HTML/Javascript application UI development on MSN Explorer. Dimension X has been relegated to a minor footnote in history - both Liquid Motion, and the product it begat, Vizact are axed, and the couple remaining developers are doing work in the Office group. Karl went off to another startup, and then another startup, and even took a couple old DimX'ers w/ him. Now ...
... I've took a year long 'Leave of Absence' and moved to New York. After that year I now spending my time studing photography, involved in personal projects, enjoying the city, visiting museums, traveling and generally slacking without a full time job. Its good work if you can get it.
![[Business Card]](images/card-new-sm.gif)
In my spare time I spend waaaaay to much time just playing with my computers. I have a Linux machine set up at home, so I've got an OS I can spend endless hours tweaking and upgrading. Literally. Particulary when youre attempting to make it run as a reliable media server. Also have a WindowsXP machine so I can run the necessary apps that allow me to interoperate with the rest of the known world (each month, slowly sucking me further over to the dark side), all networked with a couple NeXT cubes (beautiful, uber cool objects d'art), a couple WindowsXP laptops, a Mac OS X Ti Powerbook and an iPaq. Way too many computers for a single apartment.
I have a guest book (who didnt in '96? maybe I need a web ring link too ..), a bunch of random images on the net, and some of my favorite quotes, like the one below....
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. "Hasan B. Mutlu" in flames on rec.food.cooking. I watched Time turning to Mass in the dark near the McElwaine Gate. All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to log out."
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My personal playground that includes, among other things, The Gothic Home Page (formerly) at gothic, the Siouxsie And The Banshees Home Page, and various other things. Named Catch of the Day for June 21st, 1995, as well as
"Worthy" site by the Seeress of the web. The Gothic Home Page was selected for Hotwired NetSurf column, a
"From the Depths of the Web" site, as well as being featured Internet World (some time ago, and again Nov. '95), .NET (Jul. '95), Swing magazine (Apr. '95), and rated among the top 5% of all sites on the Internet by Point Survey. The Gothic Image Database was selected as an Infoseek Select site. I'm so cool. |
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I used to work as a System Admin at CSU Long Beach, and I built the initial campus server and content. It looks nothing like it used to, but some of the old material lingers around here and there. |
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I was the original curator for The Digital Collage virtual gallery, a gallery of work produced by students and faculty in the labs on campus at Cal State Long Beach. This project was left in the capable hands of Aaron Remick, who learned and moved on to work at UB and has since moved on a couple more times to a developer position at other interesting companies... |
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I created and installed Flat Field Records online presence, by creating a WWW space and an automated mailing list. This is some of my first commercial web work. |
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I was Webmaster at Dimension X 'till its acquistion, and I built and
maintain the company site. Went thru numerous redesigns and new logos
and thoguh, its not as cool as the old black X site, it was fun. Oh
well. Rated among the top 5% of all sites by Point Survey, and PC Mag's
"Site of the Week" |
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Created for FOX Broadcasting for The Simpsons. "Oh, just a couple
pages, that should be easy. (pause) But it has to be a killer
site... blow them away.." You don't even want to know how quickly the
initial couple pages were created. Picked as
Tabatha's
Groovy Site of the Day,
The Internet
Advertising Site of the Day,
Hotwired's NetSurf
on June 24th, rated by
Point
Communications as one of the top 5% of the sites on the net and
their Hall of Fame, TVNET's
"Top of The Ratings",
Dynamite Site of the Nite
on July 25th, Starting Point's
'Featured Hotsite' on August 7th,
Seeress Vision
for August 8th,
a Laporte Web Pick of the Week for August 5th, c|net's
"Best of the Web", a
GNN
Best Of The Net 1995 Nominee, and tagged by
Yahoo with a [*], which indicates
they think the site has good presentation/content for the respective
topic area. Woosh! 'nuf awards for ya? | |
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Now dead. AT & T's ImagiNation Network with info on the network,
and links to download the software. Cute graphics. Ever done a web
site with an ad agency? This one was done with Foote, Cone and
Belding, and is now maintained by AT&T. |
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I don't know why I'm bothering to list this one. Someone at Sun
stripped out almost every image, got some wrong when re-arranging it
(note the wrong size HEIGHT AND WIDTH attributes),
and removed the Java applets in the pages that did way cool zoom
animations. Apparently unclear on the concept. But I did write the
basic HTML. Actually wrote the HTML "blind" ... but that's yet
another horrible story. |
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Now dead. Dan Stevens did most of the work, and I helped clean it up, added a
few images and helped a bit on some of the layout. This site is now
maintained and run by a fan. |
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| Pain.
Agony. REALLY long hours on little sleep. But it turned out
pretty good. Scott did a Java based http game server from scratch,
and the guys from Wild Brain did a good bit of the art and MCA
provided gobs of material. I'm much happier now that the server push
from the main screen is gone. Its even a pretty cool site if you don't
like Meat Loaf, and its nice and dark like I like 'em. Went up
literally at the 11th hour. Picked for the
Seeress Vision
for September 20th.
Now dead as well. The web content is just so temporary. | |
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Getting into the habit of cranking out sites rather quickly. There is a
good bit of material here in the catalog and there should be news updates
and such coming a lot. Looks pretty cool, though we're working on a
redesign. This one disappeared when they decided they didn't want to pay their bill. | |
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Bright and happy, but actually turned out to be a rather decent
looking site. Nitpicked over the details forever, but finally got it
out there. The animations in the game are way cool, now all we need
is a java version of the game. Also rated among the top 5% of all
sites by Point Survey. | |
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Kind cool to work on Disney material, and there was plenty of it. The
schedule seemed to continually slip, and while I was convinced it
simply wasn't going to get done in time, we actually made it and it
looks better than I thought. Plenty of help from Joshua Bell and most
of the DNX crew on this one. |
| I built the first incarnation of this site, which has since been redone and is no longer hosted by On Ramp. Its one of my favorite creations, and it was named "NCSA's Pick of the Week" for March 13, 1995, and declared one of the top Arts/Entertainment web sites by Point Communications. I think its a good commercial use of the net that doesn't just attempt to sell you something on glitz, hype and advertising. Its a great site to learn about classical music for both beginners and experts. Much of the credit also goes to Robert Bourne for the vision, the time and making this all happen. | |
| A couple pages of product information on the RISCstation 2000 by NEC whipped up in an afternoon. This machine screams, but it also has to run MS Windows NT. *sigh* Now removed. | |
| The homepage for Fox's show, Models Inc. Includes an daily gossip on upcoming episodes, reviews, character bios, photo gallery, and bulletin board. Pretty chicks get lots of hits. The show was later "not renewed" and neither was the site. | |
| um.... its not my fault... really. Ever try to do a site in a foreign language you don't know? | |
| My first project at On Ramp, when I sold out and started using Net$cape specific tags. Long dead I presume, though OnRamp seems to limp along ... | |
| My second major project for On Ramp, the creation of a web site for the Sony band, Oasis. Kinda like the Beatles, part II, or so someone at Sony thinks. Also interesting to note that they took the time to strip out all the comments that indicate I authored the pages. Thanks guys. | |
| I worked on the Exosquad pages, and created most of the Monster Force, Problem Child and Beethoven areas. Looks like its been removed and taken back by Universal. | |
| I created a few of the pages and graphics, as well as the crude search engine to plow thru the nomination database. Another transient site. |
