29 years ago today my life took a turn

Galaxie 500 - Subterania - 1990-06-27

So… at, I’d guess about 22:30 on 27th June 1990 this happened which pretty much changed the course of my life … as follows:

1990: I was working in the film stores at the BBC - not a great job but the pay wasn’t too bad (with some overtime) and enabled me to get out and see gigs

22:30 1990-06-27 - Galaxie 500 returned to the stage for an encore after a brilliant main set - they were joined by Kramer and played Ceremony, followed by Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste. I was mesmerised.

1994: I’d been messing around with the internet from pretty early on and towards the end of 1994 I acquired some free web space. But what to do? So I built a Galaxie 500 page. Because I still remembered that feeling from four years before.

1999: I’d managed to get a job working on a European digitisation project, I shared an office with BBC I&A’s first media mmanagers who were asked to help work on developing an intranet site - Research Central - I found myself roped in as the only person who had any experience developing for the web (becuase of Galaxie 500). I ended up doing quite a lot of the work on it.

Research Gateway in 2005

Research Central changed over the years, it became research.gateway, and then Research Gateway - the job changed, the site changed - as people learned the web they needed less help and more tools - we gave them that.

200?: Actually I’m not sure of when they decided that my skills (because of Galaxie 500) would be put to better use not as part of the archives but as part of the wider BBC intranet. Unfortunately over the following few years a variety of managers came and went and none of them had a clue what to do with us

2013: After too many years of doing nothing and not getting anywhere I decicded to look for another job. I applied for, and got, the job of webmaster at The National Archives because of, you know… Galaxie 500.