Profile
| Name | Lim Chee Aun |
|---|---|
| Nickname | cheeaun, formerly cheeaun01 |
| Location | Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia |
| Gender | Male (straight) |
| Birth date | 20 June 1985 |
| Birth place | Penang, Malaysia |
| Ethnicity | Chinese |
| Religion | Buddhist |
| Zodiac Sign | Gemini |
| Languages | Mandarin, English, Malay, Hokkien |
| Occupation | Student, Freelance designer |
| Schools | SK Seberang Jaya, SMK Taman Inderawasih, SMK Dato' Onn Butterworth |
| Interests | Listening to songs, Drawing, Web design, Graphics design, Internet stuff |
| Artiste | Jay Chou, Jolin Tsai, Cecilia Cheung, Charmaine Sheh, Shirley Yeung, Stephen Chow, Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, Jennifer Love Hewitt |
Babble
I was one of the unlucky people who are not exposed to the world of technology at a young age. Most of my friends already got a computer when they were 10 years old. I got my first computer when I was 15, on November 2000. That was when the adventure begins.
Crash, crash, crash. Yes, I've crashed my computer three times in the first month using it. I wonder if that's a record that I should be proud of. Somehow, I found out that the more the computer crashes, the more I learn how to take care of it. I've learnt all those techie stuff such as double-clicking, hard disk partitioning, BSOD and of course, the three-finger salute. After four months of using the so-called Windows 98 Second Edition, I got myself an Internet account from my local ISP. I have the chance to get involved in the World Wide Web. Wow. The first site I've visited was The Star, the local newspaper web site. I didn't have much places to visit since my bookmarks or so-called “Favorites” are empty. Fortunately, I'm a curious guy, and my bookmarks accumulated as I surf more sites, thanks to Google. I've learnt how to use e-mail. I've discovered the ingenuity of emoticons or smilies, such as :-) . It's pretty odd that I need to tilt my head just to understand what it means. At first, I thought my friends accidentally typed it out as they are trying to type the full stop character.
As I was learning more and more about computer hardware, software and nettiques, I found Lockergnome. This newsletter helped me a lot, taught me a lot of things, and almost made me a computer geek. My process of learning seems to have sped up by few Ghz thanks to it. And then, Langalist came along, followed by SFNL. Not forgetting Axcel216, this site provides a lot of computing tips and tricks! All free, that's nice. It's good that I can learn computing stuff without buying books, eventhough I did buy some stupid ones.
By around the year 2001, I start to learn web design. Microsoft Frontpage was the tool of my choice. My first web site is not about me, but about my school project. It was pretty much an amateur work, being hosted by Yahoo! Geocities. I supposed it's still there, but I'm not going to link it from here. It's pretty embarassing. But then, if I were not to create my first site, I wouldn't have know so much about code validity, site maintenance, site navigation and et cetera. With much anticipation, I've learnt HTML and CSS, and switched to using Allaire HomeSite (now known as Macromedia HomeSite) as my web editor. One of the first reference I read is the WilRose HTML Tutorial, later followed by W3schools, Glish, Tantek and more. Tags, attributes, classes, id's, properties, elements, and hyperlinks are all the bits of my mind vocabulary. Guess no one actually knows why I like coding so much. It's interesting. Very interesting. Hand-coding has become a passion for me.
Early 2002, my first ever personal home page was born, hosted by BlueHyppo, a local hosting site, powered by my ISP. Now it's not there anymore, due to some dramatic changes here and there. I don't care. It's quite embarassing too, I think. I've realised that guestbook is a no-no! HTML frames is a no-no! Browser-proprietary coding is a no-no! Bad web host is a no-no! Sigh, sounds like pretty bad experience for a beginner? Fortunately, things got better when I have a chance to develop a site called Freeware World Team. Jan Langholm is the nice guy behind it, giving me the opportunity to redesign the site. The process of redesign makes my brain to download few more tech terms such as PHP (server-side scripting), MySQL databases, CVS, SEO, Javascript (client-side scripting), browser compatibility, site administration and server maintenance. The terms overloaded my memory capacity and almost explode. Immediately, I took a rest by August 2002, just after few months launching the redesigned FWT site.
Weblogs, blogs or online journals has been pretty new to me. The first time I heard it was around mid-year 2002. I thought it means web statistics. I thought it's a waste of time to blog. That's why I read blogs instead, which seems more beneficial to me. I have a list of weblogs as my bookmarks, since I don't use any RSS aggregators, not until I start to use Bloglines. Most of my collected weblog sites are related to web design and technology. Few nice ones are Dive Into Mark, 1976 Design, Hixie's Natural Log, mpt and Simon Willison's Weblog. I really appreciate their work to provide quality readings for everyone. I'm not sure if I can do as much as they did.
Things changed a bit when I read a specific weblog post from Blogzilla one day. It's about Phoenix. Not a legendary bird but a web browser. First time I read it, I thought “it must be one of those bloated browsers from the Mozilla organisation”. Yes, bloated. I admit saying that. It's not that I hate Mozilla. I like Mozilla. Specifically, as a web designer, I like Gecko, one of the best browser rendering engine I've ever seen. But, I really hate the bloated interface and the file size of Mozilla. It took me nearly hours just to download Mozilla 1.0, with my slow 56K modem dial-up connection. That applies the same to Phoenix 0.1 too, which is around 8Mb (for Windows). Eventually, this software marks the beginning of my involvement in a new technological field called icons design.
Phoenix got better. I like it more than ever. I create icons for it. I create a theme for it, called Phoenity. From one theme, I expand it to few more themes. Phoenix went through hard times and has been renamed twice; Firebird then Firefox. At the same time, my Phoenity spreads to other software, such as Opera and MyIE2 (now known as Maxthon). By early 2003, the Phoenity web site was launched, thanks to Scott Jarkoff of deviantArt. As a result, I got more busy than ever. Very, very busy. Not only that I need to create icons from time to time, I also need to maintain the site, not to mention my real life. Developing the site has taught me about web accessibility, site organisation, web usability and most importantly valid XHTML. Developing themes for Mozilla Firefox taught me about user interface design, XBL and XUL. Whoa, I never thought I could learn so much.
Time flies pretty fast, as I babble through this page. I must realise that my adventure doesn't stop here. I still have a long way to go. A long way, indeed. Life sucks, you know. So, the babbling continues...
Contact
| cheeaun@gmail.com (personal), cheeaun@phoenity.com (work) | |
| MSN | cheeaun01@hotmail.com |
| Skype | limcheeaun |
| ICQ | 156047451 |
| EmailExpress | 156047451@pager.icq.com |
| Jabber | cheeaun@jabber.org |
| Mobile Phone | +60 (12) 5696628 |
Note: never ever hesitate to contact me.