Look what I have found… This is my very first shredzone, as it was online from 1998 to 2003. First it was hosted by my internet provider. Then, on April 15th 2000, I registered my own domain – shredzone.de – and moved my site to a professional hoster.
The site did not use a fancy content mangagement system, but consisted only of static HTML pages. It was built on my Amiga using a preprocessor called HSC, an acronym for HTML Sucks Completely. 😜 Some parts like the gallery or the download area were generated by accompanying ARexx scripts. It was incredibly easy to add content to the site. Basically it was just adding or changing a file, and then invoking smake to rebuild the affected parts of the site within seconds, including the navigation. It was a big advantage that I was going to miss badly later.
At that time I did not use CVS yet, so sadly all the past versions and changes have been lost. The only version I still have is the final one on my Amiga harddisk. I have found the project today, by a rather lucky accident. It was only the source code though, the final compiled version has got lost over the years. There is a Linux port of HSC, so basically I could rebuild the site on my Linux machine. But the ARexx parts require an Amiga environment, and porting them to Linux would have consumed too much time.
So I started an Amiga emulator and, thanks to the good shape of the project that the past Amiga me has left the present Linux me, I actually only needed to run smake to rebuild the entire homepage in just 3 minutes.
The requirement to run on an Amiga, was what later broke the neck of this homepage. When the Amiga platform died, I moved on to Linux, but I could not move my homepage with me. So, in 2003, I replaced it with a self-made content management system that was written in PHP and was called Akiko. It had some nice features, but on the other hand it was rather tedious to add new content. Because of that, I badly neglected my homepage in those years.
In 2010, Akiko was replaced by a self-made blog system that is written in Java and is named Cilla. Even after a major redesign in 2018, it is still in use today. 🙂
After a GDPR hiatus, the shredzone is back!
I used the time for a total redesign and a cleanup. The design is now responsive, so you can enjoy the articles on the big screen as well as on your smartphone. I have removed all the unnecessary stuff that were modern in blogs 10 years ago, but actually just cluttered the screen (like the calendar and the tag cloud).
There are a few bugs left and some features missing. I will take care of them in the next couple of weeks.
Anyhow, I hope you like the new design!
By the way: The shredzone turns 20 this year. Congratulations! 🎂
I have decided to remove the comments section and delete all comments. The reason for this is the GDPR, which comes into effect on 25 May 2018.
Shredzone uses no cookies and no tracking, displays no adverts and does not load any images or scripts from external servers. I have no interest in snooping on my readers, and have therefore designed everything to use as little data as possible.
The only problem was the comments section. Naturally, personal data is collected there, which in turn entails a mountain of requirements and obligations. For a hobby blog that doesn’t earn me a single penny, the effort is simply too great.
I have always really enjoyed your comments. Please feel free to continue sending me your remarks, praise and criticism by email or as a Tweet.
I spent the weekend sorting the photo negatives that had accumulated since 1996 as a relic from my analogue film era. While doing so, I noticed that negative strips are taped together in the laboratory, presumably so they can be pulled through the machine as one long film. After developing, the negatives are then divided into short sections and put into sleeves. The end of the film, however, is not cut at the sticky tape, but just before it. So you always find a few millimetres of the neighbouring film strip in your negative sleeve.
In itself, this isn’t an issue, if it weren’t for some cameras that squeeze a 37th picture onto a 36-exposure film. Usually, this goes well, and you actually find 37 prints in the photo wallet. Sometimes, however, the film is abruptly taped to the next film right at picture 37, and just like that, a few millimetres of that picture end up in a stranger’s negative sleeve.
These are the pictures I found in this way:
A large part of the picture is hidden by the sticky tape. If you could remove the adhesive without leaving any residue, you could see significantly more.
10 years ago the time had come: shredzone.de went online! Today I am proud that I managed to put my new blog online just in time for the anniversary.
The blog software is called Cilla and is my own development, into which quite a few long evenings of work have already gone. I didn’t manage to finish some of the things I had planned in time. That is why the Shredzone currently wears the (by now almost mandatory for Web 2.0) beta badge. 😉 I will release the source code for Cilla on my development site as soon as I’m no longer making too many changes to it.
The content of my old homepage - especially the photo gallery - will gradually move over to my new site.
Have fun on the new Shredzone!
PS: Until the Captcha system is finished, I will be moderating all new comments for now. Please be a little patient until your comment is approved.