First day of formal web design class today and I was royally bored for the sole reason that I had to endure four hours of basic html/xhtml— stuff that I learned on my own when I was 12. Almost over ten freakin’ years ago.
The youngest in our small class of five is this 13-year old dude who just graduated grade school. He said he’ll be moving to the US for high school and he’s taking up web design so he could earn money during the wait (or something like that. The moment he said he was 13, I lost all interest). Several times, I heard him exclaim “I’m just a kid!” when we were made to work on an exercise). I kept thinking: “how lucky is this kid?” When I was 12 and had just discovered gURLpages and the wonderful world of HTML, it never hit me that I could make a career out of making and designing websites. There were no schools that offered courses or classes on it back then (hell, the school I’m attending now was founded only 7 years ago). I was just a kid fooling around with WYSIWYG editors, outlining her layouts and content on notebooks, and doing her best to make sense out of strings of code and tags.
I was young and stupid, though. Not realizing my full potential (naks!) at an early age and not taking seriously the fact that I knew how to code (during a time when all my peers did was chat on mIRC and ICQ and host their photos on face-pic.com), I merely dicked around the innurnets and went down the blogging path. Ten years later and I’m still dicking around. All I have to show is a good grasp of HTML and CSS and some knowledge on PHP. I am SO left behind. I don’t even know Flash! I only have Photoshop CS2! I just recently started using the pen tool for cutouts and I still prefer the lasso tool! I still code using Notepad!
Anyways, finally, I have a goal (one that isn’t amoral and doesn’t entail anything illegal): to be the first student to ever get a certificate of excellence from my school. The final project is to create a fully functional website and it’s quite alarming, how easy and simple it is. Did I just waste my mother’s money? To make up for the expense, I’m seriously tempted to make a porn site.
My new favoritest thing in the world: Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme milk drink. I was STAAAARVING the whole day because I forgot to eat the whole Sunday and I didn’t have time to ingest anything but coffee this morning, so I was super glad to come home to this (yeah, I’m shallow and easy to please like that):
Yummers.
Hi, my name's Helga Weber and welcome to my personal site. I'm 23. My first socio-political scandal will happen at the age of 35 and will include men, sushi, an African country, and lots of money. My lover is the greatest. 
Oh damn. I started with gURLpages too. Has it been that long?!?!
I have plans of making this whole thing a career too the problem is just that I’m not l33t enough. I would love to be, but I’m scared to explore my geek side. I might rub off as a weirdo.
Good luck with that website! Nawh you’re not wasting your parents money at all :D you’re putting it to the best use ever. :P haha.
gURLpages, FTW. Everyone was on angelfire and those long ass geocities URL. I had my gurlpages.com/sicfairy :D
Yess!! I abhored angelfire and geocities. I was on gurlpages then tripod. Haha.
haha, people are starting everything younger these days. I stared when I was 12 myself! Never seen that Hershey’s drink before, I must be out of date -.-
Or I must be from the Third World :P
Oh wow… 13 years of age!!! I was about that age when I started exploring the coding world as well… and like you said… I never thought of making money with that. Well, I did… my friend and I were going to start up a server and web designing company, but it never left the drawing board. ^_^ Anyways, best of luck with that, and may you succeed!! ^-^
Omigosh.. GURLPAGES!! Hahaha I totally remember that! Those were good times.
I wish I knew that I could’ve made a career out of web design when I was 13 too. I kind of regret taking graphic design and wish I went into web development instead plus you make more money. The thing is that I’m done school now and there’s no way I want to go back anytime soon.
you look 13 in the pics. lol
Ahh so many girls in the blog scene remember gURLpages!!!
I have about the same skills as you - Code in Notepad, don’t know Flash. I try to advertise myself and make money at web design but I’m scared soon I’ll be obsolete with my outdated skill set. But I need that income if I’m ever going to make it to school for this.
Your new favoritist thing in the world is
Cookies and Creamanimations.What the hell are you people talking about? I started HTML-ing when I was 18! Now, THAT’s old.
Helga, you have to point me to a point tool tutorial. Lulz. :p
Don’t you have any classmates who may or not be of legal age who like to dress in short skirts and are blessed with a lot of boobage? Because I’d like to hear about them.
Well, there’s this one dude…
I used to love gURLpages too :) Goodluck to your new chosen career path. Apply ka sa amin when you’re ready :)
My first attempt at coding was when I started blogging in 2005. Whatta behind this fritz.
gaah like fritz I started late, I dicked around friendster codes I even freaked out lately when they switched to CSS I had no idea how to tweak my template. I wanna learn more too!!
man, I can’t even change the wallpaper on my myspace…
I started with gurlpages too. Down na pala yun, na-didirect ako sa gurl.com
Anyway, lol pacute ka sa pics! haha.
I started playing with HTML when I was fourteen. Sounds reasonable.
Anyway, what’s gURLpage? Lol.
I’m lactose-intolerant so I didn’t have the passion to drink anything with milk. :(
Passion, lulz.
i had envy.nu haha. i had angelfire and geocities too, sadly. but after that, i applied to be hosted on people’s domains. then i got my own domain. then people started dicking me with the personal shit i was writing so i went to livejournal and locked my shit up.
Hey! What a coinkidink! I started with gURLpages too!
So there was this one chick I met…