Here is my assignment due December, 14th. It gives me a reason for updating this blog. =)

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As far as I remember, I likely was 11 years old or so when my father came home with this strange and interesting “box”. Not that I didn’t know what a computer was, as a matter of fact, my best friend had one and I can’t count how many times I went to his home to see what it could do. That being said, when my father brought one into my house, I clearly was thrilled.

“Our” family computer (and I insist on the “Our”) arrived and I knew it was a big step into my actual life. My father used it to improve some photos he took (he’s always been passionate about cameras and he’s a really good photographer), my mother used it to type down some of their reports, and my brother, my sister and me mainly used it for school assignments.

You have to remember, back then, there wasn’t any internet and everything was local and stayed that way. Then came, my older friends (particularly Axel – aka Nkeeza aka Nkz -) who taught me the joy of “trying to master” his computer. I do say “trying to” because at the first attempt, I installed a new anti-virus software without even bothering what the old anti-virus still present would say: it didn’t like its new companion and blocked the entire computer, forcing us to give it to a son’s friend of a friend of my parents who knew his way with computer.

My parents weren’t so pleased with me installing new software programs after that incident. That’s why I found a way to format the hard-drive disk in case this type-of problem would happen again.
My friend told me, you just have to be in DOS Mode and type “format c:”, then confirm and no more data remaining.
That’s what I did, deleting with that the folders of my brother. I wasn’t stupid I knew that right after formatting I would have to reinstall a new OS, and my friend nicely lent me his CD of windows (it was Windows 98 I reckon). This could have had a happy ending whether my friend told me I would need the drivers for the multiple cards (sound, graphic)… He didn’t and this new freshly installed computer was unusable, the graphic were in 6bits of color, there was no sound and I just had realized what mistake I made.

Once again, my parents sent it to the son’s friend and I started to realize that everything you do has consequences, even to a computer. I calmed down and started to discover video games on computer and I remember that was amazingly attracting (as much as time-consuming, my grades from this time could tell you about that).

Then Internet came by the big door, bringing with it a 56k modem and an –extraordinary- expensive subscription. Contrary to my brother who went online to be entertained, I thought I could do much better with this support.

My friend (him again) told me about programming languages and that I should try it. I started with Visual Basic, I didn’t understand what I was doing but the simple fact to teach a computer to do things you want just amazed me.

The rest is just succession of random events that occurred in my life. I brought a computer on my 13, put it in my bedroom and never messed with the “family” computer ever again. I also bought computer magazines to see what this new unfamiliar universe was made of. I really liked this “machine” and everything hidden inside it.

I was 15 (give or take) when, in the beginning of July, Internet went off for several days. I was in a hurry to write my thoughts on something, not a physical diary, not a “sky-blog” (It’s a popular blogging platform related to a French radio Skyrock) because I didn’t want anything so personal being shared with everybody and most of all, I always hated that radio and the kind of people affiliated with it. In French, childish teenagers are called “des kikoo-lol” or “des kevins” and skyblog is their internet’s lair. So I decided to make my own blogging system, something that would be the way I want it to be. I coded my project in php and luckily for me, I’m what people would call a self-made man.

My project is now 5 years old and is called “We.Blog System” (www.weblog-system.org is rented under my name), I have my own French blog (blog.dotbosam.info) and an English version as well (thetube.dotbosam.info). My system is used by a couple of friends of mine and is soon to be released for the public. Without a project like that, I wouldn’t have uncovered things that are needed for what I want to become in the future: an entrepreneur. My project is almost complete and another one is on track, although this one is secret and the foundation of my future “company”, I know I couldn’t have become myself if it wasn’t for that computer 10 years ago.