About

March 7th, 2010

My name is Larry Monte. I’m a freelance web contractor living in Canada.

The main purpose of this blog is to provide myself with some kind of direction. Even though I’ve been around the Internet for almost 12 years to this point, I haven’t really created anything for myself. All my work has been for clients and other people. I’ve donated my time more than I’ve worked in the past while.

I’ve burnt myself out working on other people’s projects. It’s time I created something for myself. I’m hoping that in doing so I can regain the passion I once had for design.

For now Torn Elements is about the pains of setting up a new blog. I’ll be covering themes, must have plugins, promotion and other startup tasks.

Down the road I’ll be yapping about everything from template coding to blogging itself.

I’m not 100% sure where we’ll end up, but that’s half the fun. :)

History

Computers have interested me since I first used one in 1979. A Digital PDP-11. I remember programming this 6-foot monster with punch cards and saving my work to an 8 inch floppy disk.

Since then I’ve:

  • Programmed in BASIC
  • Programmed in Machine Language (c64)
  • Programmed in C++ (briefly)
  • Ran several BBS’s (Bulletin Board System)
  • Price Coordinator (Point of Sale systems)
  • Programmed in MEX (More about that here: Maximus!)
  • Web Design (HTML, CSS, PHP)
  • Forum Management and Administration (Fancy words meaning Spam Hunter)
    Update March 2010
    Instead of redoing my About Page I thought I would just add updates to it. Sort of a log of what I’ve been doing.
    Things have changed a bit since writing this page. Namely I’m now a full time Web Developer and Web Marketer. This took place in November of 2009 after my place of employment closed its doors after 15 years.
    The theme of this blog is about to change slightly. It is no longer about regaining my passion for design. I’ve given up on that. (For now)
    Instead, I plan to talk more about Web Things which irritate me, shortcuts and hacks I’ve discovered using Joomla and Wordpress, among other Web Related topics.

Online Info

  • Pre-Web (BBS) alias: Ka Spel, StarLab
  • DarkStar V3.1 BBS info: SkyLab BBS in the 416 area code (Toronto, Ontario) from 1987 to 1989.
  • DarkStar’88 BBS info: SkyLab BBS in the 403 area code (Calgary, Alberta) from 1989 to 1991 (Western Canada distributor for DarkStar’88)
  • Maximus CBCS (DOS) info: StarLab BBS in the 705 area code (Lindsay, Ontario) from 1996 to 1998 (FidoNet Hub for 705)
  • Known as ‘StarLab’ in most forums.

If you know me from somewhere, drop me a line. :)

This page will be updated whenever interesting things happen.

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