It's been an exciting ten years to have a web site dedicated to The Pogues. It's seen the release of Pogue Mahone. It's seen the "mothballing" of The Pogues. It's seen the Internet go from a toy for geeks to a tool used by over half of the world's population. It's seen the rise and fall of Netscape and of browsers that (finally) don't suck. It's seen the rise of dynamic and interactive content, several other very good web sites dedicated to The Pogues and Shane MacGowan, bickering between them and really great cooperation too. I'm delighted to have been a part of it all.
If you're curious how the site has changed over the years (or hasn't changed in some very key respects) here's a little trip down memory lane for me:
Early 1994
It occurs to me that this "World Wide Web" might have information about when this band I like, "The Pogues," might release their next album. I use whatever tools existed to find the only site out there (which, sadly, I can't remember the URL of - I think it was at Stanford). I was horrified to see the text on the bottom of the page: "Shane is dead. Miss him, miss him, miss him." Some searching through traditional media showed me that this was not in fact correct. In a fit of disgust I declare "Somebody should do something about this. There should be a web site that has accurate information about what The Pogues are doing. Damn it."
June 5, 1995
Medusa is launched. Its look is very different than what you see today, but the basic structure is in place. The site resides on my desktop computer, a PowerMac 660 with 16MB RAM. It has no DNS address and is instead directly accessible by its IP address: 140.249.8.212 (this was the days before most companies had Internet connections let alone firewalls).
June, 1996
Medusa is significantly redesigned into more-or-less what you see today. It continues to run on my desktop machine. The lyrics pages now include 30-60 second clips of the songs in low-resolution WAV format.
Archive
February, 1996
The pogues.com domain name is registered and comes online. Chris C. runs the site and domain as a "jumping off point for information about The Pogues."
Archive
Mid (July?) 1996
I work a trade show ("The International Association of Chiefs of Police" - I looked ridiculous in a double-breasted suit and a braid of hair) sharing a booth with the company Lexus-Nexus. Much free press research is performed in the name of "demonstrating the search engine of media and public access meterial." (It's amazing what's out there about each and every one of you.) The Press archive of Medusa is then born of the data gathered (some day I'll get around to posting the other 300+ articles that I have archived away).
August, 1996
The Pogues are "mothballed" at the conclusion of their Pogue Mahone tour.
June, 1997
Medusa's server goes off-line for several months after I switch employers. The site is eventually brought back online as a co-located Mac LCIII with 32MB RAM.
Archive
Not a whole lot happened for a while after this (for Medusa, at any rate).
1999
The server is exchanged for a Pentium III box running Red Hat Linux 6.X and the web server that my employer at the time produces, Netscape Enterprise Server (I still work on this product, FYI). At this point Medusa started being tracked in a version control system as well, allowing me to quickly and easily recreate the site at various times in history. This has led to great gains in productivity and portability of the authoring environment.
March, 2001
Medusa makes a small move from dzm.com/pogues to pogues.dzm.com. This is a short-lived move. Just after the move I noticed that pogues.com was simply redirecting requests from Chris C.'s server to my own. A quick conversation with Chris ended up with transfer of the technical control of the domain to me for use with Medusa while Chris C. maintained administrative ownership. Chris C. is awesome. Thanks Chris C.!
September, 2002
The server computer is upgraded to a Pentium 4 machine with 512MB RAM and lots (at the time) of storage space.
December, 2001
The Pogues did a small set of Christmas shows. At the same time a re-release of a "legal" bootleg was made available, Streams of Whiskey. The Pogues asked me to make a message available indicating their displeasure with the release and their plans to make an official live release within the year (strangely this ended up taking nearly four years to come to fruition).
2003 (I think)
After sporadic contact between various band members and various web sites Philip Chevron begins actively participating with the on-line community of fans through the forum at http://www.shanemacgowan.com . Much joy is had bad all.
November, 2003
The first significant feature update (the other updates over the years had been incremental updates to content and design, but nothing "big") to the site in many, many years involved the addition of a group of fora allowing users to register, discuss, etc. This mostly replaced the largely defunct newsgroup alt.music.pogues, and helped to consolidate some of the disparate other fora.
Late 2004
The task of managing the Medusa fora becomes too much for a single person. Elections are held and three Puppet Masters are anointed (Pull ze strings! PULL ZE STRINGS!). Huge thanks go to Zuzana, MacRua, and Kufen for their help since then.
Late 2004/Early 2005
I get frustrated with the aging look of Medusa and perform some basic cosmetic changes. The most visited pages are updated; the rest scheduled to come "real soon now." Philip Chevron, James Fearnley and Spider Stacey begin using the fora on Medusa to directly talk with fans. More joy is had by all. Also of note is that the URL, http://www.pogues.com , starts appearing in official Warner marketing and packaging for The Pogues' releases. That's kind of cool.
It occurs to me that this "World Wide Web" might have information about when this band I like, "The Pogues," might release their next album. I use whatever tools existed to find the only site out there (which, sadly, I can't remember the URL of - I think it was at Stanford). I was horrified to see the text on the bottom of the page: "Shane is dead. Miss him, miss him, miss him." Some searching through traditional media showed me that this was not in fact correct. In a fit of disgust I declare "Somebody should do something about this. There should be a web site that has accurate information about what The Pogues are doing. Damn it."
June 5, 1995
Medusa is launched. Its look is very different than what you see today, but the basic structure is in place. The site resides on my desktop computer, a PowerMac 660 with 16MB RAM. It has no DNS address and is instead directly accessible by its IP address: 140.249.8.212 (this was the days before most companies had Internet connections let alone firewalls).
June, 1996
Medusa is significantly redesigned into more-or-less what you see today. It continues to run on my desktop machine. The lyrics pages now include 30-60 second clips of the songs in low-resolution WAV format.
Archive
February, 1996
The pogues.com domain name is registered and comes online. Chris C. runs the site and domain as a "jumping off point for information about The Pogues."
Archive
Mid (July?) 1996
I work a trade show ("The International Association of Chiefs of Police" - I looked ridiculous in a double-breasted suit and a braid of hair) sharing a booth with the company Lexus-Nexus. Much free press research is performed in the name of "demonstrating the search engine of media and public access meterial." (It's amazing what's out there about each and every one of you.) The Press archive of Medusa is then born of the data gathered (some day I'll get around to posting the other 300+ articles that I have archived away).
August, 1996
The Pogues are "mothballed" at the conclusion of their Pogue Mahone tour.
June, 1997
Medusa's server goes off-line for several months after I switch employers. The site is eventually brought back online as a co-located Mac LCIII with 32MB RAM.
Archive
Not a whole lot happened for a while after this (for Medusa, at any rate).
1999
The server is exchanged for a Pentium III box running Red Hat Linux 6.X and the web server that my employer at the time produces, Netscape Enterprise Server (I still work on this product, FYI). At this point Medusa started being tracked in a version control system as well, allowing me to quickly and easily recreate the site at various times in history. This has led to great gains in productivity and portability of the authoring environment.
March, 2001
Medusa makes a small move from dzm.com/pogues to pogues.dzm.com. This is a short-lived move. Just after the move I noticed that pogues.com was simply redirecting requests from Chris C.'s server to my own. A quick conversation with Chris ended up with transfer of the technical control of the domain to me for use with Medusa while Chris C. maintained administrative ownership. Chris C. is awesome. Thanks Chris C.!
September, 2002
The server computer is upgraded to a Pentium 4 machine with 512MB RAM and lots (at the time) of storage space.
December, 2001
The Pogues did a small set of Christmas shows. At the same time a re-release of a "legal" bootleg was made available, Streams of Whiskey. The Pogues asked me to make a message available indicating their displeasure with the release and their plans to make an official live release within the year (strangely this ended up taking nearly four years to come to fruition).
2003 (I think)
After sporadic contact between various band members and various web sites Philip Chevron begins actively participating with the on-line community of fans through the forum at http://www.shanemacgowan.com . Much joy is had bad all.
November, 2003
The first significant feature update (the other updates over the years had been incremental updates to content and design, but nothing "big") to the site in many, many years involved the addition of a group of fora allowing users to register, discuss, etc. This mostly replaced the largely defunct newsgroup alt.music.pogues, and helped to consolidate some of the disparate other fora.
Late 2004
The task of managing the Medusa fora becomes too much for a single person. Elections are held and three Puppet Masters are anointed (Pull ze strings! PULL ZE STRINGS!). Huge thanks go to Zuzana, MacRua, and Kufen for their help since then.
Late 2004/Early 2005
I get frustrated with the aging look of Medusa and perform some basic cosmetic changes. The most visited pages are updated; the rest scheduled to come "real soon now." Philip Chevron, James Fearnley and Spider Stacey begin using the fora on Medusa to directly talk with fans. More joy is had by all. Also of note is that the URL, http://www.pogues.com , starts appearing in official Warner marketing and packaging for The Pogues' releases. That's kind of cool.
There we are. It's been a fun ride full of joy, disappointment, habit, arguments, and kudos. I'm sure there'll be more of all these things in the future, as well as significant updates and changes to Medusa herself. It's been a great experience that I wouldn't change. Thank you, all of you, for being a part of it so far. I'm looking forward to more great experiences in the future.
Cheers -
DzM
PS: Minor editorial note - This was originally written very jet-lagged (why does traveling East over the International Date Line screw me up so bad?), then edited after three pints of gin-and-tonic. Expect the number of edits count (below this text) to keep growing.
All the best to Mudusa and all who have been keeping it alive!
