John White - Yoingco

Name

Location

Age

Star Sign

John White

England, UK

40

Virgo

Computers

Programming

Colour Genie • ZX Spectrum 48K & 128K • Amiga A600 & A1200 • PC (200Mhz / 400Mhz) • Laptop (Toshiba Tecra & 1.8 HP Pavilion ZV6004EA) • Current Laptop: Fujitsu Siemens Amilo 2735

ZX Spectrum: BASIC and Machine Code • Amiga: AMOS BASIC, E and Machine Code • Windows PC: RapidQ BASIC, Liberty BASIC, LCC-Win32 C, HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, VBA and other languages

1983 - First Computer

In 1983 I was introduced to the Colour Genie, a now forgotten computer, that was around at the time of the ZX Spectrum 48k. I used this primarily to play Games on but would sometimes look behind the code of a game just to see if I could change something such as the names of the horses in a horse racing game. This only happened for a couple of months because computers in those days were for playing games on and not for programming. Too much programming and you were either looked upon as Weird or called a Whizz Kid. Being called a Whizz Kid was slightly cool but embarrassing at the same time!

1984 to July 1988 - No Computer

From 1984 until July 1988 I never went near a computer simply because I was still at school (Schools were not equipped with computers in those days) and after that (1985) I went on a couple of YTSs (Youth Training Schemes) before getting a "Proper Job" (1988).

August 1988 - BASIC Programming

It wasn't until August 1988 that I bought my first computer - a ZX Spectrum 128K with Floppy Disk Drive - which I was able to afford from my wages (Computers were very expensive back then). It was on this computer that I first started programming, in BASIC (The easiest of the main programming languages).

It took me about 6 months to learn BASIC due to the fact that I had to learn through a Pen-Pal. With no access to the Internet (because it had not been invented yet!) I was writing to my Pen-Pal 3 or 4 times a week. For example. I would write to him on Monday with up to 3 BASIC questions (it would of been a liberty to ask more) and he would reply the next day (the same day he received my letter). When I received his reply on Wednesday I would have 3 more questions ready for him. He did all of this for nothing - he never asked me for a penny. At that time I appreciated his help but now I am eternally grateful for his help.

From there on I started programming on my own. By then I had downgraded to a ZX Spectrum 48k because I wanted to sell my first project - a video titler called Tele-Titles - on a cassette tape. The cassette tape was more popular than the floppy disk, so it worked out cheaper to sell Tele-Titles on a cassette tape. Tele-Titles was written to cater for the new CamCorder market.

1992 to 2001 - C and Assembly/Machine Code

In 1992 I sold my ZX Spectrum and bought a Commodore Amiga A600 before going on to buy a Commodore Amiga A1200. On the Commodore Amiga A600 I learnt variations of C (the middle language) and Assembly/Machine Code (the most difficult language). With the Assembly/Machine Code I also had a PenPal to help me, just like I did when I was learning BASIC, but this time the PenPal was a computer PenPal and not a letter PenPal. Some of my Amiga assembly/machine codes are below:

Speak To Me - Amiga Speech Replacement Program.

Speak To Me

Amiga RKM (Rom Kernel Manuals) - Assembly Translations.

RKM Resources RKM Resources

LanguageGUI - A Language Learning Program supplied with Tagalog and German.

LanguageGUI LGUI Tagalog LGUI German

2001 to 2003 - Lessons Learnt

In 2001 I visited an Internet Cafe for the first time and was blown away by the power of Microsoft Windows 98SE. I thought the Commodore Amiga A600 and A1200 were fantastic computers but when I saw the PC with Windows 98SE I wondered, for a brief moment only, what I had been doing all those years on the Commodore Amiga. Then I remembered....Programming!. Without a doubt I can never say those years were wasted.....

A few months after visiting the internet cafe I was able to buy a second 200Mhz (slowish) DELL PC. Although it was slow I was happy with it and intended to use it for programming purposes only, as well as use it to get to know how the PC and Windows 98SE worked together. However. One day my Windows 98SE computer became corrupted due to me being a bit too curios of Windows 98SE's inner workings and I had to spend quite a lot of money getting it repaired. A lesson learnt!!

From that point on I decided to learn more about the PC and Windows 98SE. I took the plunge and purposely started breaking certain parts of Windows 98SE. For example. I started by uninstalling the printer to see how uninstalling worked. Then I tried to reinstall the printer. On another occasion I purposely unplugged the printer while it was printing so that its driver files would become corrupt. After that I started doing the same kind of tests on Windows 98SE itself. Purposely deleting files I should not delete.....just to see what would happen and if possible how I could fix Windows 98SE. Eventually I came to the point where Windows 98SE would not start at all. So installing from scratch, from the Windows 98SE Installation CD, was now the only option.

As time went on I got myself a job in an Internet Cafe that also sold computers as well as repaired them. The ideal place for me to learn, under the supervision of my boss. A year or so later I began offering my services to the general public by setting up my own Computer Home Services - Hardware & Software Installation. At first it was Trial & Error, even when armed with my Internet Cafe experiences, because the general public tended to give me computer problems that I could not solve even if I had gone to college and got a Phd or something. You see, the general public don't have one computer problem and then call-out the computer engineer. Oh no!! They wait until 10 problems have occurred. Or put another way. They do not realise they have problems until the computer starts to really slow down simply because they do not necessarily understand what a Virus is or does for example. Therefore, they tend to ignore problems 1 to 9 until problem 10 has done serious damage to their computer.

2003 to 2005

In early 2003 I moved on from programming in BASIC, C and Assembly/Machine Code and started learning VBA / MACRO programming with Microsoft Office, but in 2004 I stopped programming to concentrate on my Computer Home Services. Now I was fully prepared for most problems that came my way. With access to free Broadband 24/7, through building up a relationship with the local internet cafes (I fix their computers and get free broadband in return), I was truly in Business! I could research difficult problems, download and test software and so on. It wasn't until late 2004 that I began learning HTML (website) programming. One year after that I was learning JavaScript, PHP and CSS where I then went on to create websites for customers.

Here are three sample websites I have created. Cemon Music is the earliest and most amateur-ish! The owner went onto to change its wording because I no longer had the time to make any further changes. He therefore slightly misaligned some of the template because he did not follow the limitations of my amateur-ish coding!.....I created his website at a very fair price though! Beverage Heaven 24/7 is a recent website that I made from the owners initial paper design and Connaissance-Biblique is my latest creation that shows off .PNG and Transparency - Internet Explorer 6 cannot handle transparency properly but with this creation I was not bothered as IE6 should phase out soon, especially with its lack of security.

August 3rd 2005 to The Present

On August 3rd 2005 I created this Yoingco (pronounced: Yo Ing Co) website. It was originally made for Windows XP and had Windows XP lessons on it for a year or so before Windows Vista came along. This meant having to recreate/translate the Windows XP lessons into Windows Vista lessons, which I did and have since added more Windows Vista lessons.

Is John A Boring Computer Nerd?!!

NO!! In my time I have travelled to France, Spain, USA, Hong Kong and The Philippines. Learnt about other cultures by mixing with people who have a different nationality from mine and in some cases by visiting their country. I like almost all types of music genre and artists. Love classic b/w films as well as modern films. Used to drink and smoke and be very outgoing. Basically done this and that and have the t-shirt!!