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Life Story About How I Got Into Tech!

So my name is Shawn, and I’m just your average 18 year old kid. Well, sort of. I do a lot of things I suppose you wouldn’t say are normal for my age. I’ve been a little different my whole life, but only in a couple of ways. I’m extremely computer orientated and I’m pretty damn good at it too.

I’ve been using computers (Apple Computers to be exact) since I was two. I’ve been doing everything I can on a computer platform and I try and learn as much as possible. I like to do many things on the computer, a couple namely being photo editing, blogging, playing games, and developmental opportunities. I like to make websites, code in Linux/Unix, and I’m learning how to code for iOS platforms like the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Website Building

As far as my website skills and adventures, I’ve been building websites since I was at least 11 years old. I first made a website when I used to play a game called Warcraft III. I owned a “clan” called Clan ELSP (EternaL SheeP). Don’t ask on the name as that’s a story for another time. Anyways, I was “Chieftain” of Clan ELSP for 5 years before it closed from inactivity on my part. I wanted to learn how to make a website for ELSP, and so that’s when I looked into it. I found a website called W3Schools, which taught me my first coding experience ever for HTML. From what I learned in basic HTML, I made my first website (Clan ELSP). I then thought I knew everything and wanted to host websites for friends (Who for 98% of the time had no clue what I was even talking about). I began coding (very obscure websites) for friends and family. My first website host I could find that was free was 110mb.com. They did me well for awhile as they had free databases and everything. A couple years later, they took away the databases and made them premium features. That discouraged me as it broke a lot of my website software like community forums for ELSP, blogs for family, etc.

I began my search for a new host. It was a lot of searching until I made a private World of Warcraft (WoW) server called Illidan1337.net (Dead link). I made friends with a guy who knew some about website building as well. We made a semi-successful WoW server for people to play on. Another player by the name of Brendan, who also knew a bit about coding in HTML. The three of us did a lot of work here and there. Brendan then decided to host his own server and I followed. We had a nice website for a while. I eventually asked him whom he hosted with. He pointed me to a website called Project DoD. Project DoD is a non-profit censorship-resistant webhost. Before I signed up with them, Brendan gave me an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account and my own subdomain of shawn.dod.net. I built a new website on there for a bit. Anything I did was mostly experimental.

Unix/Linux Experimentation

I came across the use of the Mac application titled Terminal. Terminal is an application devoted to accessing the Mac’s unix core operating system. Anything is possible when it comes to Terminal. Rewinding briefly for the mention of the private WoW servers; We [Brendan and myself] wanted to have some sort of communication method for our players. As we looked further into it, we came across the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) protocol for such a task. Brendan and I spent a couple hours learning how to install an IRC server on our site. We knew we needed to ssh (Secure SHell) into our webhost. SSH is simply a remote login command in unix/linux. After trial and error, we had our own running IRC server for all of our players to connect and chat on. After a couple of weeks, the CEO/Founder of DoD by the name of Chris Mooney logs onto our IRC server and talks to me specifically about sharing the IRC server between our site and DoD. I abliged as I was amazed he even decided to chat with me. After transferring everything and creating a bond with Chris, he offered me an Intern position with DoD. Chris saw (And still sees) potential in me to be a very successful computer user, whether it be a Web Designer, Network Security Specialist, or even a System Administrator.

Some time has passed and now I’ve been with DoD for quite some time. I help Chris with MANY projects dealing with DoD, whether it be managing and maintaining out IRC server or messing with the code of their homepage. Chris has been there not only as my Boss, but he’s a friend, a mentor, and somewhat of a father figure. He’s even gone as far as giving me a server out in Sweden that DoD pays for as an entire server all to myself to use as a sandbox environment. This is where I test a lot of things I’ve learned from Chris, and the internet.

My thirst for more computer projects stems to my next section which happens to be iOS development.

iOS Development!

I started my interest in iOS development from a friend of Chris’ who had originally planned to send me a free MacBook to use to develop, a book to learn from by the Apress publisher, and a laptop carrying case. This friend had everything set up, ready to start business, and then last minute he cancels everything right as another people developing back-stabbed him stealing everything. I found that to be sad and unfortunate but I still wanted to do development! I went ahead and bought the Apress book myself on development for iOS and started reading. Now I’m not going to lie, I haven’t read as much into it as I would like. I’ve had my time consumed by other things, but another issue is that I don’t quite have any idea of what I want to develop.
More to come!

Last updated July 26^th at 4:05AM