kokogiak's profile (website)

Info

Name: alan taylor
Joined: September 20, 2000

Contributions

MeFi: 61 posts RSS feed of posts by kokogiak, 815 comments
MetaTalk: 3 posts RSS feed of posts by kokogiak, 60 comments
Ask MeFi: 11 questions RSS feed of posts by kokogiak, 150 answers
Music: 0 songs RSS feed of music posts by kokogiak, 0 comments, 0 playlists
Projects: 1 post
Jobs: 0 posts

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Favorites: 5
Favorited by others: 10

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Links to: 14 users
Linked by: 16 users
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About

What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

Okay, the deal with the nickname - Well, Kokogiak is an anglicization (sp?) of an Alaskan Native word ("Qupqugiaq"). The Inupiaqs have a legend of the Qupqugiaq, a giant ten-legged white bear that lives on the ice packs. Tales from Greenland to Siberia vary, and the Qupqugiaq is either benevolent, scary, or just another creature. It's also the name I chose for my business, (print publishing, web work). The logo on my site is a image of the Kokogiak.

I got started on all this through playing around with BBS's in the early 90's, then reading (in Wired I think) about this thing called Mosaic and how cool the WWW was. It took me ages to find, download install and use Trumpet Winsock, and then Navigator, but when I did, it felt so cool.

It was 1994, so there wasn't much to be seen, but I do remember the day I viewed the page source for the first time and how the light bulb went off - "wow, that doesn't look so difficult". Thus began my long crazy journey (newspaper webmaster - small webdev house - MSNBC.com - drugstore.com - amazon.com, monster.com, and most recently boston.com)