Chuck Kollars`
Personal Home Page

This website was originally my way to experiment with new web technologies and to keep in touch with how people used the web. I experimented with many new web technologies: Java, animated GIF images, clickable parts of images, JavaScript, publishing the same content via multiple sites, separate style information (i.e. Cascading Style Sheets or CSS), search engine tweaking (i.e. robots.txt), sitemaps, image search entry, web server tweaking (i.e. .htaccess), cookies, and thorough accommodation of small/handheld/mobile devices. Although I've now largely abandoned most of these technologies, bits of them remain, giving this site an "antique" feel.

The web has long since moved on without me, leaving this website with little raison d'être. Nowadays websites are usually either commercial ventures, or have large significant additional software layered over top of the basic web technology, or both. (The nearly universal additional layers of software [layout tools, content management tools, databases, etc.] generally make it no longer possible for anyone other than the website's original creator to modify a website.) Personal communication has largely moved from individual websites to "blogs" and "social networking sites". Nevertheless I continue to publish this website and to make very occasional changes to it - mainly for nostalgic reasons, and also because it's nice to have my own sandbox I can play in at any time I wish.

The Internet as we know it may be coming to an end anyway. Something called "SOPA" is an ill-thought-out technically-poor national legislative proposal that at first seems to be concerned with Stopping Online Piracy. It will actually do very little about online piracy; its real net effect will be to kill off the non-commercial aspects of the Internet. Here's an excerpt from Google's full summary of what the act would actually do (despite its name).

SOPA is disguised as an anti-piracy bill. Any first year CS student knows better. The bill is, in actuality, designed to obliterate free speech on the internet and allow media publishing companies to commercialize everything.

SOPA explicitly states that companies will be liable for everything their users post. Sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Wikipedia, or any sites that allow user generated content CANNOT exist under these laws.

(The full details -not repeated here- are quite disturbing, and should be read by anyone with more than a passing interest in the technical aspects of the Internet. They include not only a full analysis of what the proposal actually does, but also some portrayals of just how technically clueless government officers are and how they could support something so absurd.)

Recently there has been a great deal of upset over initial support for SOPA by the Internet company "GoDaddy". The reason for their initial support was hard to understand; the accusation that they themselves would be "exempt" from SOPA turns out to not be entirely clear. What is clear is that -even before any law is passed- they've been acting in a SOPA-like manner, sometimes cavalierly shutting down normal website access without due process for what turns out to be nothing more than commercial efforts to eliminate competition. To protest both their variable and menacing support for the proposed SOPA law, and their punishment of users without allowing for due process, my domain name registration has been transferred to a different company.

It seems to me that national legislation that's technically absurd or that really does something quite different than what its name suggests (sometimes even the exact opposite) has become par for the course, and SOPA is just one more example. But while at my age I can shrug off most legislation by simply not thinking about it, I cannot ignore this particular proposed change to something I care as much about as the Internet.

My first and major career was as a professional in computer high tech centering on data communications and emphasizing troubleshooting. About the time I turned fifty, I left high tech (or it left me:-) and attempted to embark on a second career in bookkeeping/accounting. When an opportunity to live frugally and pay all the bills without holding a permanent job arose in 2004, as employment had been such a big problem for me for so long, I grabbed it. I'm now semi-retired from the labor force, occasionally volunteering to do a little bit of computer software or data analysis or bookkeeping.

Of course having been a computer type, I can't avoid being attracted to the world wide web. Hence the pages on this site -which is now over fifteen years old- were created manually, without even any sort of HTML editor (no FrontPage nor DreamWeaver nor even HotDog nor HoTMetaL/XMetaL) and with only simplistic image editors (no PhotoShop). (As consistent maintenance grew to be a significant chore, I did though implement my own system of shared common include files, using only simplistic automation tools [BATch files, the *nix tool sed, and especially the *nix tool ex which is an automation-friendly version of the old *nix text editor vi].)

I haven't completely forgotten my past life and sometimes get involved in things like creating and distributing a freeware program to create images of email addresses, helping to administer computers at the local school (including setting up a Win-XP default user and networking XP Home). And of course having been a computer type, my humor tends toward computing jokes.

My life so far falls into relatively separate phases:

• Childhood and Teenager
• College
• Single Young Adult
• Middle Age Integrating Family
• Middle Age Split Family
• Semi-Retired ...Semi-Retired II

I grew up in the time when movies were the preeminent cultural expression, and that absorbed interest in seeing movies is still there. But finding the opportunity to see foreign, uncommon, old, and arty movies has been a bit of a problem. Boston and environs present quite a few opportunities to see something other than blockbusters, but traveling into town is too far and too difficult for me. So I've found other ways to see unusual movies.

Fortunately all that experience with computer hardware and software transfers readily to other things with lots of wires and buttons. So I found it fairly easy (even though it's not the most common usage) to set up a new DVD player so that it shares my existing PC flatscreen quality monitor.

Besides watching movies, my favorite pastime is sitting with a cup of tea and a good book in my rocking chair.

I'm intrigued by the intersection of the public sphere and the private sphere.

I'm attracted to the idea that America became successful because of a good social contract with all its citizens. That social contract has been greatly strained recently. To me it's important to address our widening inequality. I want leaders that recognize "we're all in this together," so for example I supported the candidacy of Robert Reich for governor of Massachusetts, and I supported the candidacy of Dennis Kucinich for the Democratic contender for president. Here are the three simple planks of the USA's social contract:

1. as companies do better their workers should as well
2. everyone participates in our social insurance against being impoverished through illness or bad luck
3. everyone should be given an opportunity for a good education

I try to think and act very locally where I have some sense of control over what happens. Even so, I have opinions on a wide range of social, political, and policy issues, including particular ideas for improving our government to make it even better.

I wonder if our government fell for a conspiracy theory. Laurie Mylroie in her books hypothesizes a single mastermind behind both the earlier and the final attacks on the World Trade Center, the Anthrax attacks, and more. And according to her hypotheses that mastermind was Saddam Hussein. Although it's easy to dismiss her ideas as the ravings of a crackpot, many in our government apparently fully subscribed to and even acted on them. The context of this unsubstantiated fringe theory makes things like Vice President Cheney's long disappearance to an "undisclosed location", the quick and easy conflation of 9/11 with Iraq, and the very strong reaction to the Anthrax attacks easier to understand.

I'm amused by the same sorts of jokes that amuse a lot of computer types.

Daughter Jennie.

Son Caleb.

Back when they lived in Ipswich, they attended Ipswich public schools, and my concerns included both school funding (informed by for example contributions by the Feoffees from the Little Neck summer colony to Ipswich Public Schools and other background information about the Feoffees trust) and the emphasis on high stakes testing (evidenced at the state level by the MCAS graduation requirement and at the federal level by the No Child Left Behind program).

Their mom Kaye is a professor of psychology at Gordon College in Wenham MA.

Although it seems I've moved a long way away, I'm still connected to my family of origin. Also I'm aware of some of my ancestors' history, via documents such as this Kollars family tree and Great-grandma Dover's Autobiography.

Both I and my ex-wife and kids are based in very small town of Ipswich Massachusetts. It's the town where Crane Beach is, north of Boston. As a "townie" I get almost-free access to the beach. I can cut around the lines at the entrance booth and go to our own parking area. A current issue in the Town of Ipswich is how to prevent further damaging flooding in the downtown area.

Ipswich is far enough from Boston to to have its own identity rather than just being a suburb or a bedroom community. One wag recently commented Ipswich is a bit like Mayberry RFD. Many of our merchants have a presence on the commercial website for the town, and the Town of Ipswich has an official website that contains a lot of information related to town government. I live on the main street of downtown, over Ye Olde Barber Shop, across from the fire station. My kids live in the same house I used to live in little over a mile away.