PUBLISHED ON: March 14, 2014
Here’s some nostalgia for you.
Digging through some more of the totally defunct archives that usually get the term “morgue” because they are no longer available anywhere, and in fact maybe hard for me to even find because I’ve got computer files on 1.5″ floppies, cds, dvd discs, zips, flashes, portable backup discs, crashed hard-drives, and more than one working computer – I finally found the very first page that was the inception of www.tocc.tv. Pronounced “TOCC TV.”
The changeover from “Casey’s Chronicle” to “The O’Casey Chronicles” occurred on January 25, 1999 when I published a column critiquing then president Bill Clinton’s State of the Union Address. Soon after that I acquired my own registered domain. Obviously an echo of my name “OKC” had been on my mind as it related to the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh from the very beginning. Hence the acronym “TOCC.” It isn’t intended to be a pro or con statement either way on McVeigh, although I have a magazine length article published later devoted to the event itself. Instead, just literally the wow factor and the similarity in names are what inspired the choice.
These days I look at the name less as an acronym, but rather a mixed metaphor and in a more general context because much of what I publish is about the public discussion as it relates to politics, public policy, and including various acts of terrorism in general. There’s a lot to TOCC about these days. It seems like there’s even more to TOCC about now than when I first started publishing.
The very first page was published on October 22, 1997 and was about a city council meeting I had attended. Frankly, the column was not so much about making an editorial comment as it was about the discovery of the Internet and experimenting with some of the possibilities for design and html. In short, I was having fun with the wheel barrel and the dirt practically piled itself on. So, it may both appear and read a little sophomoric, and that’s OK. However, there really is a lot of information there that really does point to conspiracy.
Well shucks. I really loved that wheel barrel, and although the first page published wasn’t terribly intricate for a hand built html page, I still decided to present it in it’s original html form rather than convert it to a WordPress generated php. In fact, I kept building pages manually for a long time rather than make the switch because of the versatility, flexibility and lighter weight that you just don’t have using an auto generated page program. The old way produces much faster pages – not quite as important these days. But, the old way has it’s drawbacks especially when it comes to global editing, as anyone in the publishing business already knows. It’s virtually impossible to manage a site as large as mine has become, and it’ll be awhile if ever, before I convert and upload all of the old material.
[ The first published page of Casey’s Chronicle ]
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© 1997,2013 – Jim Casey
www.tocc.tv Red HOT Uploads
