It’s hard to believe I didn’t have a home of my own on the web, once.
I have been posting here at ChipinHead.com since 2013, and having my own site and blog has been an incredible creative outlet. It also provides essential visibility security for me. Especially the last few years, when post FOSTA-SESTA platform censorship means creatives can lose their entire internet footprint in seconds, I’m so glad to have my own space. I might never have had it if not for the guy shown above, Tim Howarth!
My last tech marketing job was at a small web design company in Albany, CA called T324.
I worked half-time, noon to four, with a disability accommodation for my DSPS, and it was a good place to be. I liked all my colleagues a lot, and I found the work interesting. I started blogging on tech news and online marketing tips for the company’s website in 2012, because at that time having a blog on your business site made a significant difference in your site indexing.
So as the marketing person, it was my job to make a blog. I learned how to use WordPress, a little HTML, about email newsletter templates, a little Illustrator, and a little Photoshop at that job. All the skills I had been avoiding learning for a decade or more. I’m grateful as hell to my boss David Daniels for the opportunity to learn and use those tools.
I wrote about things like how Google search works (at that particular moment) and was Pinterest a worthwhile time investment for marketing (still no answer on that one!) I cast an eye jaundiced from the late 90’s and the Dot Bust over the current internet trends like Uber and Lyft. It was interesting, it was fun to write again after the end of my previous tech marketing job, and absolutely no-one ever read anything I wrote.
Not even my colleagues, who were busy working for clients!
This is Alex Gonzalez.
Such a good guy! A Burner, musician and all-round creative.
This is Brian Nowell, manager and good guy!
He was pretty much working his ass off at all times, so he rarely had a minute to spare. I liked him and enjoyed working with him, though. When he did have a minute, he taught me so much!
Tim was the person who had the most spare brain cycles, and so the person I interrupted with my help questions most often.
And when I mentioned that I didn’t want to share my blog posts on social because the company’s site needed updating so badly (the cobbler’s children etc), he walked me through how to build my own over a single afternoon. Alex joined in, adding tips and tricks; we gathered around Tim’s computer and laughed about the internet.
Tim showed me how to run the domain search, register the domain, set up the site using wordpress.org and arrange hosting, all neat and quick and easy.
We chose BlueHost because at the time it was popular, affordable and working; in 2019 with the advent of FOSTA-SESTA it seemed essential to get my digital footprint out of the US and my heroic husband moved my domain registrations and hosting to Europe.
When we registered chipinhead.com in 2013, I had been using Flickr since 2005, and livejournal before that. I’d had domains and a website since 2005, but I couldn’t do anything with them myself, because the website was uneditable, unsearchable images!
ChipinHead was my first home of my own that I could update and maintain.
I made this drawing of Tim in Sept 2013. “Titanic” came out in 1997, and I had drawn approximately 1000 portraits in the time since then. But Tim was the very first person who ever said, “Draw me like one of your French girls”! I found it hilarious.
Tim and Alex were excellent co-workers, and funny and good dudes, and I am so grateful to them for that afternoon of building my home online.
These drawings were scanned for the T324 website, but I never published them myself, and I have absolutely no idea where the original drawings are – maybe the guys each have them?
I am so grateful to my Patrons on Patreon, whose monthly financial support makes it possible for me to take time to document my art archives.
