HTML-ove Affair?

Posted February 11, 2019 by Katie Carlson

This week in LIS 488, we learned the basics of HTML. As my last post shows, I was really quaking in my boots for this course! This week went really well, as we worked through a Code Academy tutorial, and coded a simple HTML site about bears!

My (very minimal) experience with HTML stems from a tumblr blog I’ve been updating since I was 14. I remember the excitement of selecting my first theme, and writing my first little bio. With the help of the Wayback Machine of www.wayback.com, introduced to me by Danielle Pollock, I don’t have to just fondly remember my blog in 2011: I can see it! And now, on display, my greatest pride and greatest shame, all rolled into one. 

Check out this screenshot of my blog from November 6th, 2011. My first background was a wicked cool purple and black flannel. I “hated people,” and loved tea.

I remember sitting in a newly funded computer lab in 3rd grade, and wondering why I was being forced to complete my report on platypi on this stupid machine when my school library had perfectly good physical books. (Sidenote: It took a whole office effort to track down the title of these books I’d convinced myself were a fever dream.)

Flash forward to middle school. I remember being in awe of my teachers who could operate e-Boards. When I discovered the blogosphere, I was even more impressed with the people who could design web pages with multiple colors, with flashing pictures and bold lettering!  I went through high school, then on to college, and learned to love melding physical and digital research together. Times and tech changed, but my blog was always a constant. When it came time to design and redesign my own blog, I scoured the web for the perfect format to properly showcase my teen angst! As these screen grabs from April 30th, 2014 and May 27th, 2017 indicate, I had a penchant for lace, and talented friends willing to doodle avatars for me!

I think it’s funny how I’ve come full circle! Now I’m learning the very HTML that allowed me to express myself throughout my teen years, and I love it! To me, there’s something so calming about reading in a “different language,” and the way the code changes color in the ATOM software for HTML writing I’ve downloaded on my computer. It’s been a fun trip down memory lane to see what I wrote, selected, and pseudo-designed at different stages in my life. Now it’s even more fun to think about what type of code was written to make my blog look and act the way it did! I think when I’m done this course, my blog circa 2019 might need a face lift!