How did this whole idea begin?
January 14th, 2007
Okay, it is about 2:00pm and the idea strikes me. Why not create a tribute site to the guys who do things with technology that do not get recognized. Not the highly publicized things that everybody knows about, but the lesser known things like "The guy who created Intellisense" or "The guy who came up with the Bold key combination". I thought that it was a funny idea. As with most of my ideas, I assumed that I would be the only person to find it funny. So I chatted Wally McClure and he "got it" immediately. I threw over a couple of ideas of mine and he returned back with some that were so funny that they had me in tears. Literally. These are the initial set that he came up with:
- Today we salute you, Mr. "select * from table" example writer guy.
- Today we salute you, Mr. "you can build your own version of asp.net better than Microsoft." guy.
- Today we salute you, Mr. "we don't need no stinking indexes, foreign keys, or indexes" guy.
- Today we salute you, Mr. "don't read the manual just figure it out from intellisense"
guy.
- Today we salute you, Mr. "don't tell us what you want, but bitch because you didn't get what you wanted" guy.
Wally even sent over some prototypes. Naturally these ProtoTypes are simply audio
versions of the above, but they are a start.
Good Job, Wally!!! Keep
in mind, this whole conversation took place in a manner of 20 minutes (idea, examples,
prototypes...everything)
January 16th, 2007
I started chatting with Steve Smith of ASPAlliance about the idea to get his thoughts.
He is a tremendous success story and I am working with him on some other websites
of mine. He loved the idea. Better yet, he just rattled off a ton of great
ideas and things to add to the site for v1.0. He even came up with on of the absolutely
funniest ones so far... "Mr. Ruby Can do anything faster than .NET". Unfortunately,
I am leaving for amsterdam in a day or two, so I will have to put things on hold
for a few days until I return.
January 23rd, 2007
The building of te site continues. I run a couple of other sites,
so I can't dedicate full time to just building this one, regardles of how cool it
is. The day job gets in the way too sometimes. It still looks pretty
ugly, but I thought that I would record a few prototypes of my two favorites, "Mr.
Select * from table examples" guy and "Mr. I can create my own version of asp.net
better than Microsoft" guy. Of course, I don't have any recording software,
so with a little bit of googling, I found audacity. It is on SourceForge and
works very nicely. I just installed it, ran it and I was good to go.
I recorded the first two and the quality was bad, but they are really funny IMHO.
I am just cracking up as I listen to them.
January 24th, 2007
I decided to at least attempt to make the site look less pathetic, but I did not
want to hire a fancy-schmancy designer considering that my budget is $0 for this
website. I really want just a basic 2.0 look and feel. Nothing too fancy,
so I Googled "CSS web2.0" and found the Web20Generator.com website written by Jon
Paul Davies which was perfect. Nicely done Jon! In just a few minutes,
I had my new look.
January 26th, 2007
I am now adding functionality to the site. This page, for one.... I
am aiming to finish a bunch of the easy pages like the "Email a Hero", "Nominate
Somebody" and others. The idea behind this site and the others that I will
be developing this year is that they must all be self-sustainable. The fun
should still go on, whether I am there or not.
March 14th, 2007
I have finished adding the features that will be in the initial version of the site.
The most important features of the site are finished and people can now add their own
heroes, nominate others and submit lyrics. This is done just in time for the MVP Summit
where the site will be officially announced. I am also having a contest where the two
best heroes submitted win a USB Missile launcher and a flying alarm clock.
March 18th, 2007
The first two recordings have been added and they came out really great. I started with
my favorite two heroes: "Mr. I can write my own version of ASP.NET better than Microsoft" Guy
and Mr. "Select * from Tablename Examples" guy. Scott Fletcher did the recordings overnight
(literally) and I could not be happier.
March 27th, 2007
I changed the design a bit and employed AJAX to give a slightly better display of the content. The
original content was a bit hard to follow. By adding a tab control where you can see the hero, narrations
and audio I think make it a bit easier to follow.
March 28th, 2007
I just started a CafePress store so that folks can get Coffee Mugs, T-Shirts and even a thong :). This was
the first time that I have used CafePress and I must say that I am very impressed. The site was super-easy to
use and you can build a store in no time.
April 3rd, 2007
I just added a section and information about the famous Bud Light commercials, which were the inspiration for this
site and have produced some of the absolutely funniest commercials ever produced. I included some of those videos
on the Real Men of Technology page. As I find more videos, I will include them here.
More to come. If you know anybody with a good announcer
voice, let me know. Email me at DavidSilverlight@gmail.com
|