I saw the chart above showing the progression of HTML over the years and, at the same moment, saw my adult life flash before my eyes. Back there in 1992-93 was when I got the gig at the Institute for Scientific Computation as I was finishing my degree at Texas A&M -- my job was to help document a 3D modeling tool (used for oil exploration, I believe) using a new-fangled markup language called HTML. Supposedly the stuff I was working on was one of the first 50 or so websites to go live... who knows.

It must have been 1994 or so when David Filbey and I got in trouble for going behind our bosses backs in the Advertising Department at CompUSA and building a mock-up of a website for the company. In my pitch when we revealed the plan, I made the bold claim that "one day, this website would do as much in sales as any single store in the CompUSA chain." Wow. What a visionary.

But it's a trip down memory lane that also tells me something about myself -- particularly since a former me is the author of HTML By Example and HTML 6-in-1 -- I need to get back on the horse and figure something out about HTML 5! Looks like that train is pulling out of the station.