The view from my back yard in Fountain Hill's Arizona. Each day starts with a beautiful sunrise over Four Peaks Mountain. When I tire of working on this Web site and in my computer lab, I go for a hike in McDowell Mountain Park, which borders on my back yard.
I have been a computer hobbyist since about 1981. My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20. The first computer that I built myself was an IBM XT clone. The operating system I used was DOS version 2. I have built many PC's since then. I have built and rebuilt these computers, frequently moving hardware and software between systems.
My first online experience was with Prodigy in 1985. Prodigy was owned by Sears, and you accessed it by dialing in with a 1200 baud modem. Prodigy wasn't actually an Internet service, the Internet had not been released to the public yet, you could only access content on Prodigy's computer. Prodigy created graphics by downloading a set of primitive shapes to your computer and the graphics was constructed like a puzzle using those shapes.
My first mouse
I received a bachelor degree in computer science from Roosevelt University in Chicago. I worked for several companies in the Chicago area as an Electronics Engineer. Ultimately, becoming the manager of an Electronics Engineering department.
I was slow to realize that the science and engineering part of my job that I loved had been replaced by involuntary embroilment in corporate politics. My wife and I moved to Arizona in 1994 where I now focus my efforts on this Web site. Who needs another Web site?
The Internet is an almost infinite blob of mindless chatter. We have email, chat, forums, blogs, and instant messaging. Many people are brain dead from spending too much time on facebook and twitter. There is almost no useful information in all this mindless chatter.
Most people think search engines are so golly-geewiz wonderful. If that's so, then why, when I search for the answer to a technical question, do the results return 200 people asking the same question, and 200 people who don't know the answer wasting everybody's time by posting their mindless comments? When you do find some real information it's bloated with convoluted complexity that nobody can understand.
My goal is to provide useful, practical information in plain simple English. I take the complex and make it simple. I show you how to design a Web site with dynamic html, cascading style sheets, and Java Script. I don't use bloated, over-complicated, over-priced WYSIWYG web design applications. I show you how to do everything with a simple ASCII text editor like Windows Notepad. In fact this entire Web site was developed with nothing more than Windows Notepad.
This Web site provides you free downloadable and cut-and-paste code that is intended for people with little or no programming experience. The code is for educational purposes, so it must be minimal and clean with clear formatting. I don't complicate and crowd the code with features that some programmers might feel are essential, like commenting, provisions for error handling, or browser detection.
The code is designed to provide you with immediate results, so you can see something happening right away. I spare you boring explanations of every detail of the code. I don't expect you to be an expert programmer after you finish the article. They are designed to let you cut and paste the code and follow the pattern to modify it for your own use.
As you browse through the various sections of this Web site, you'll find articles that teach you how to build, maintain, and troubleshoot your computer and use it to design a Web site and make money on the Web. Every article on this Web site is based on the principle of making the complex simple and providing useful, practical information in plain simple English.
Another principle behind this Web site is that everyone can't afford to burn thousand dollar bills like cigars. I show you how to do powerful things without paying for bloated, over-complicated, over-priced applications like Front Page and Photoshop. And you'll find lots of free code, clip art, graphics, ebooks, software and other free stuff on this Web site.
If you have any comments, suggestions, or criticisms about this Web site, feel free to contact me through the Contact Form on this Web site. I hope that you enjoy this Web site and find it useful. Please support this Web site by clicking on a sponsors link or banner if you see an offer that you find interesting.
Thank you, Stephen Bucaro