(Pedro’s Hot Re-run: This column first appeared in the Benicia Herald on July 29, 2011)

Way back in 1995, I was NOT interested in having e-mail…my former assistant from Bechtel/SF, Viki Kristensen came to our home for dinner one weekend and brought with her, her AOL software on a CD…She asked about my then new System 9 Power Mac upstairs and when I showed it to her, she pulled out her AOL CD, and slammed the disk into my hard drive… “You’re gonna need this,” she said, and I did…Years later, I was NOT interested in a cell phone…Man, “who needs constant communication?” Wife Janice was an early advocate, and sooner or later, yes I too am toting a 24/7 cellphone (called a SmartPhone in 2018 with GPS and an excellent camera!), except when I power it down and leave it on the table during the night shift, it’s OFF!…And I refuse to disconnect our landline at home…(but I’m having 2018 second thoughts).
So it wasn’t surprising back in 2001 that I finally acquiesced to learning my next plateau of NEW technology and took digital classes at Los Medanos Community College in Pittsburgh, California: Web Design and PhotoShop…Booga-Booga! They were awesome!
I did my first website there in 2001 with DreamWeaver software, and opened a Yahoo account and uploaded my first website..it’s still up and running 17 years later at www.peterbray.org.
But time wears on and when I acquired my new MacBook Pro laptop two years ago (2013) to replace the old System 9 barnacles of former Mac stuff, I made sure it had iWeb software so I could unleash a few new websites, which I did. Wife Janice got one called www.jannysglassfusionandbeads.com and so did I: www.handymanservicespeterbray.com. Also being a member of the Benicia First Tuesday Poets which meets every First Tuesday of the month at the City Library, I agreed to build them a new website and do their graphics. It’s definitely up and running and smoking with activity (See a 2018-updated version at www.Beniciafirsttuesdaypoets.com .Why the long name? You definitely want search engines to find you under Keywords: Benicia, Poetry, First Tuesday, etc…)(2018 note: I also did Benicia Literary Arts’ website and graphics for 3 years, 2014-2017, check them out at www.Benicialiteraryarts.org, all photos on those two sites were shot on my Smart phone, Samsung Galaxy 6 and color, focus, etc corrected in Mac’s Pages software). Having this much fun I decided to treat myself and upgrade my aging 10 year-old site also. See it’s newer version at www.peterbray.org/pedro. Watch out for the suffixes in general: org, com, and net, they make all the difference in the world and computers only go (or find you) where you tell them to go.
The beauty of iWeb’s software is that you work from templates. No, you don’t have to know or use HTML language, and I don’t, nor do I want to. I’m not saying that it’s not an asset, but I’m NOT creating banknote transactions, security-imposing high-tech jazz, sales-oriented card security, or the multiplicities that high-tech wizards NEED HTML language for…What I don’t know thus far is OK by me…but things could change. You have to make sure you’ve got PhotoShop or its equivalent  (Mac’s Pages software in 2018 is excellent) to convert all your photos to jpegs, reduce them in size, adjust for contrast and brightness, watch out for extraneous characters in their names or titles and…just be alert in general…Follow the Menu/work tool bars and study the tutorial videos – and have a few seasoned website friends in Internet space you can bug with your questions, you will have questions…Oh, yeah, Yahoo Dial-In Help in Oregon and Nebraska are excellent, talking to Yahoo in India was like for Zippety-Doodah – without the Zippety or the Doodah, Yahoo, take notice! (2018 Notice: Ben Lit and Benicia First Tuesday Poets’ websites were created with GoDaddy Templates…even easier publishing for non-techies.)

Peter Bray lives, works, and writes in Benicia
and has been writing this column since 2008.

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