The Doctor

The humble beginnings for a virgin blogger......

So, here I am popping my virgin blogging cork, but what to say? It feels a bit like a first date, you’ve had it on your mind the last few days knowing the moment would arrive soon enough, you’re desperate to come up with something witty and entertaining, but just end-up lost for words.

Too be honest, I didn’t get a lot of sleep again last night, as it was a struggle to switch off the brain thinking about the technical development of the Doctor WatsOn site. It doesn’t help that I’ve chosen this point in my life to give-up smoking too, as nicotine withdrawal tends to interfere with sleep patterns.

It’s four weeks ago today the new site was launched and there was me thinking a software upgrade and adding a few bells and whistles to the site was going to be something easy.

I have a habit of thinking that when it comes to anything computer related, I seriously should have learnt by now that when you know bugger all about how to do what you are planning it isn’t going to be easy.

I should have learnt from 15 years ago when I was living in Somerset and decided to set-up a monthly what’s on magazine, because Windows ’95 had just been launched and therefore it was now going to be easy to use a computer by just clicking on icons and dragging things around the screen.

It was that stupidity that resulted me splashing out £6,500 on my first computer system, including all the software and associated bits and bods, and what a powerful beast that machine was at the time, although the netbook I am now typing on outstrips its power by a country mile!

So, the system arrives and is installed, the guy shows me how to switch it on, explains a few things that went right over my head and left me with a stack of manuals that may just as well been written in Chinese for the use they were to me.

My only ‘computer experience’ up to that point was a little bit of data inputting into a very basic database programme running in D.O.S., and here I was surrounded by £6,500 worth of kit and a host of programmes to learn, from the office functions of word processing, spreadsheets, databases to the desk-top publishing functions and basic graphic design – all this with a deadline of just two months until the first magazine was due to hit the press.

It was at this point that the penny dropped and it dawned on me that no amount of clicking on icons or dragging things around the screen was actually going to help me with achieving what I had set out to do.

I suddenly remembered having seen a book called the ‘Dummies Guide to Computers’ and realised that was exactly what I needed and off to Office World I went, returning later with 7 or 8 different ‘Dummies Guides’ to the various programmes and settled into some very late nights of learning.

Of course, it wasn’t just learning to use the computer system I had to do in those two short months, but the small matter of sourcing editorial, photographs, selling advertising and finding outlets for the magazine too.

Still, two months later, with just minutes to spare to the print-slot deadline and I was stood in front of a massive newspaper press and allowed to press the button to start the print-run of 25,000 copies as the press-hall manager cracked open the champagne to celebrate – a very proud moment indeed.

I slept properly that night for the first time in weeks and promised myself that I would never make the mistake of under estimating the learning-curve involved in taking on new computer-based challenges again.

Oops, oh bugger, I forgot that promise to myself!

But, this time the software is so specialist that there is no ‘Dummies Guide’ to help and so new that the developers haven’t even complied and published a manual for it yet. Oh, and did I mention the fact that I have no website building nor HTML coding experience?

Well that’s the background to the story behind how this site came into being, but I think that’s enough for this first blog-post, I am sure I’ve bored you enough for now, if you’re some sort of masochist pop back soon to read some more of my inane rumblings, and in the meantime feel free to leave comment.

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