bioneural.net

How bioneural.net came to be and the hardware that was and is.

The First Age: Entering the cyberspace matrix

My first computer was a first-generation PowerBook, the entry-level "100", which came online May 1 1992. It had 2 MB RAM (later upgraded to 4 MB), a 20 MB hard disk, and a 16 MHz 68000 processor. It shipped with System 6.0.8 and possessed a 640x400 pixel black-and-white passive matrix screen and an external floppy drive. I used a 2400 bps external modem to dial into a text-based bulletin board system in New Zealand, and subsequently a GUI client called FirstClass in both NZ and the UK. The FirstClass systems included an Internet e-mail gateway and access to some newsgroup messages. I later purchased an external 14.4 Kbps external modem and signed up for limited Internet access from CompuServe during 1993-94:

The Second Age: Angels and demons

My second Mac, an LC630, came online September 13 1994, two months before I started writing the first edition of Medicine and the Internet. It had 12 MB RAM, a 250 MB hard disk, and a 33 MHz 68040 processor. It shipped with Mac OS System 7.1.2 and had an internal floppy drive and an internal 2x CD-ROM drive. I paired this Mac initially with an Apple Audiovision 14 Display (640x480 resolution), and then a 15" Sony Trinitron when the former died (the Mac supported 832x624 pixels on this display). I upgraded to a 28.8 Kbps external modem:

Tasman, the family cat of 17 years (RIP 8 Sep 1993), provided the "Tas", to be resurrected in cyberspace—the contemporary romanticized term for what we now refer to simply as the "Net". Hence, the "cybertas" in my new Demon Internet domain (1994). Demon Internet were one of the pioneers at providing UK dial-up users with "full" Internet access, meaning you could access the Web and use other Internet services directly on your own computer (no more e-mail and news gateways!). At this time I discovered BBEdit, a text-based HTML editor I have stuck with since despite having tried several "WYSIWYG" alternatives. Here is the Cybert@s website as it appeared in early 1998:

[Wayback Machine for cybertas.demon.co.uk, 1996-98]

The Third Age: The bioneural.net domain

My third Mac was a first-generation "Bondi" iMac, which came online September 5 1998. It had 96 MB RAM, a 4 GB hard drive, and a 233 MHz G3 processor. It had no floppy drive, a 24x CD-ROM drive, and an integral 1024x768 display and 56 Kbps modem:

I changed from Demon to Freeserve as my Internet service Provider. The bioneural.net domain was registered on September 24 2000. Internet access was upgraded to 512 Kbps via an ADSL modem in March 2001 (an Ethernet/ WLAN router was added later). The first rendition of bioneural.net used a frame-based design and validated as HTML 3.2. It used minimal JavaScript and a basic CSS stylesheet:

[Wayback Machine for bioneural.net, 2001-]

My fourth Mac, a Power Mac G4 "Quicksilver", came online August 31 2001. It had 128 MB RAM (upgraded to 768 MB), 60 GB hard drive (upgraded with a second, 120 MB hard drive), a 867 MHz G4 processor, and a CD-RW/ DVD-RW drive. I paired this Mac with a 17" Apple Studio Display (resolution 1280x1024 pixels):

The second rendition of bioneural.net validated as HTML 4.01:

The third rendition of bioneural.net abandoned frames and validated as XHTML 1.0 Transitional:

The fourth rendition of bioneural.net validated as XHTML 1.1 (except for the homepage, which was XHTML 1.0 to preserve the imagemap). It made much more extensive use of JavaScript and CSS stylesheets, although basic layout was based on nested tables:

My first weblog, bioneural.blog, was created using iBlog and .Mac, and was integrated into bioneural.net on October 3 2003, purporting to be XHTML 1.0 (iBlog had some validation issues). I published an RSS feed for content syndication. By the end of its life bioneural.blog made very extensive use of JavaScript and CSS stylesheets, and integrated several third-party services (e.g. search, stats, Bloglines, del.icio.us):

Also created using iBlog, bioneural.shop went "live" on July 23 2004. It represented my first attempt (and failure) at integrating an e-commerce facility (PayPal) and included commission-funded advertising in partnership with Google, Amazon.co.uk, and Apple UK:

The Fourth Age: Crossing the lines

My fifth Mac, an Intel-based Mac mini (1.66 GHz Core Duo), came online March 22 2006 with 2 GB RAM and 100 GB hard drive. It shipped with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and incorporated a CDRW/DVD+/-RW drive, WiFi and Bluetooth radios. I continue using my faithful Apple Studio Display via an expensive Apple DVI to ADC Adapter and boot into Windows XP on the same machine:

Update Mar 2007: My 17" ASD died; I now use a 23" ACD (widescreen is great).

I moved from static web pages/ .Mac hosting to the bells-and-whistles of DreamHost (for several months before migrating to Media Temple) on March 8 2006. I converted my blog to WordPress, backed by MySQL and began tickering with PHP, flicking the "live" switch on March 16 2006 after several months of development on a localhost MAMP server:

Update Jun 2009: Mac mini replaced with a 15" MacBook Pro (2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD).