Rick Coleman

That's me, the creator of this website and about 70 other websites in well over 10 years of helping people out with this Internet thing, specifically publishing content and making it look good and work well. I began building websites in HTML using Notepad, and believe me that was well, well before Google became a verb.

So when the big 'G' came along and folks wanted to be on top (before you could buy your way into the side margins, and then the top bit, and underneath... then on websites you visit...) before all that, you had to get to the top organically. I can safely assert I was really good at it. I helped many people to the top on more occasions than not.

But alas 'G' grew up, became a corporation, removed the 'Don't be evil' from the mission statement, and became an enormous tax dodging advertising agency. Ya gotta give the shareholders what they want stupid!

Whatever, I've moved on slightly from Notepad as a primary tool, as you could imagine, but it's still pure HTML, CSS and some Javascript tossed in for sparkle sometimes. Primarily the garden variety jQuery these days.

What's the point of this website?

Simple. It's a tool for me to play with HTML5 and responsive website design (RWD).

Because once Google attained global domination of the internet they set about changing the rules to suit themselves. "The world is going mobile! Look at the numbers!" Yeah right, they were saying that when I had cold hard factual statistics (yeah I know... lies, damn lies, and statistics) that most of my websites were getting only perhaps 5-10% mobile traffic. Yes it's inevitable and yes its growing but I was being pushed into it kicking ans screaming, and that sucks. With one foul swoop all my many years of work becoming potentially obsolete. Ten years of table based layouts, all those W3.org standards compliant and lightning fast loading images with height and width tag attributes, now penalised, needed to be changed to comply. It all seemed so unfair.

The only constant in life is change.

My main beef with the world going mobile assertion was that I use phones and tablets to access the internet too and neither of those tools give me any satisfaction. As an active contributor for more than a decade, a touch screen typing interface left me cold, paths and links are obscured, 'sharing' is done through third parties like Facebook and Twitter and whatever the new data gathering machine is. They are devices for consuming not contributing, monitoring communications not facilitating them.

So then in March or April or some time early 2015 The Big 'G' ruined my life to a large degree. They changed the rules of the game in that they openly stated that from that date, 'G' would favour mobile content in organic search results.

Tragically for me this all happened about the same time the worlds other richest tech provider forced me to change my computer operating system so they could spy on me better too. Not only that, but understand my frustrations when just as the folks at 'G' were telling me to change the way I've been doing stuff for over a decade, I would also have to get my tired old brain around a new operating system, AND THEN some of the programmes I've been using since day one would no longer work on the new operating system. WTF!

So I was stuffed really, I wanted to dig ditches for a living instead of constantly chasing the ever moving goal posts provided by Moore's Law that made a few people very rich while providing Big Brother with the surveillance tools to keep the heaving masses in line. I was angry with the whole enterprise. Full stop.

But alas it soon became apparent to me that I was pissing in the wind. Few people have the advantages I have when it comes to experience and knowledge of HTML and CSS so I had an outstanding head start. I found assistence and was well armed with www.w3schools.com. So like the great Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1866, I screamed "Obbedisco!" ("I obey!")

Giuseppe Garibaldi, Caprera island, Sardinia

And here is where I can safely play in my new sandpit.

But Italian Kiwi? Perché?

Because I'm a fifth generation New Zealander ('Kiwi') who met the lovely Stefania ('Italian') while we both holidayed in the Royal Kingdom of Tonga many years back. We now have two small children, Frida and Dylan and we all now live in Comano Terme, Trentino Italy.

I register domain names and build websites for clients worldwide, so when the .kiwi top level domain suddenly appeared I thought, "that's us!".

This is very much a work in progress. It contains experiments in using the free w3.css to create responsive website designs. Things that work will end up in paid for projects for clients. It means as always that clients come first, updating my own websites is always last on the list ;-)

I take heaps of photos so they are a base source of content, I used to be a journalist and a published travel writer. Finding the time can be a struggle, so hopefully this new site will inspire me to write more. As the saying goes, 'if you want to be a writer, all you have to do is write.'