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+++ title = 'Between Homeschooling And Web Design - nostalgic memories of seventh grade' date = 2025-11-03T17:55:26+01:00 draft = false toc = true cover = 'cover.png' +++
Times are changing
No one really knows one way or the other - it's an unprecedented situation. And yet, somehow, we have to deal with it. A virus is spreading, and suddenly the whole world is barricading itself behind its windows and front doors. Clearly, we are talking about the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying lockdown(s). Schools in Germany were also closed for a long time during this period, with homeschooling replacing face-to-face teaching. For some, the internet was still new territory (”Neuland”, as some famous female german chancellor once said), while for others, this new reality created unexpected opportunities (including in terms of free time). I was one of the latter - at the time in seventh grade at a Bavarian high school.
The Project
In the subject “NuT”, which combines physics and computer science, there was an extensive assignment: after studying graphs and the Internet as a huge network that can be represented as a giant graph, it was time to put theory into practice. The goal: to build a website using HTML (and CSS) in order to better understand how the World Wide Web (WWW) works as a whole - the name was quite telling: “Project WWW”.
“Great! Finally, I get to do something at school that I'm really interested in anyway,” - or something like that - I thought at the time. In any case, I immediately got to work with a classmate (I don't remember exactly how immediately), we thought about the structure, wrote poems, collected pictures, and looked up definitions. I was mainly responsible for the technical stuff, while he was more responsible for the content and supervision.
Why all this?
Anyone who has read this far may be asking themselves this question. Well, first of all, it's autumn holidays, which means it's time to take my mind off things for a bit (for example, finally studying a little for a potential amateur radio exam) and reminisce. That's how I found the project in the depths of my computer's file system - and was once again amazed at what we had achieved back then and thought to myself that I could upload it to my more personal blog.
It might also be interesting and certainly a bit nostalgic for readers to think about everything they've accomplished in the past. Often, you'll be amazed at what you discover.
The result
In brevitas veritas (or something like that), someone once said: so here are the results for interactively clicking through — because it's a website — as an iFrame! And if you prefer something a little bigger, you can view it here without any iFrames.
{{< iframe src="/specials/2025/11/03_-_nostalgic_memories/" style="aspect-ratio: 16/20" >}}
The graph showing the connections between the pages can be accessed here.
It worked according to the web standards of the time, but apparently no longer does today - that's how I explain some of the artifacts and strange displays to me. In any case, there are some funny facts here — some of them made up — as well as the usual cute cat pictures found on the internet and some more technical information.
Oh yes, I almost forgot — it was a school project! To this day, I still don't know what grade I got for it. Nor do I know if it was ever graded at all.