Origin story

February 05, 2019 — 4 min read or so

Alright. I think this is the 4th time in 6 years that I'm starting a new blog. But this time, this is it. This time I'll be serious about blogging. I took several days for learning Gatsby, for designing and for coding this blog. I bought this kickass nayed.blog domain name. I already have several posts idea for this blog. Yep, everything is set for me to finally blog. For real.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Nayed Saïd Ali and I'll be talking about tech stuff and other non-related tech stuff.

But what I like to start as a first post is my story. Here it is.

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I was born February 6, 1992, in a little archipelago between Africa and Madagascar called Comoros. Born in Moroni the capital city of Comoros. But actually I did not lived there, you see Comoros are made of 4 islands and I lived the first 8 years of my life on the island of Mayotte.

I lived a quiet and peaceful life there, without knowing the cold, the pollution or other #FirstWorldProblem /s.
I had a fantastic childhood there. I remember playing outside with friends and playing at home hours and hours of Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Tekken and other 90s games on the PlayStation. Yep, a very basic childhood in the 90's. When I was playing the Ps1, I remember asking my parents and other relatives HOW video games were made. It was so fascinating it seemed almost magical. And I think it's at that time that I begun my interest in computers. There was an Internet café that openned across the street and I was mesmerized by those little bright interactive tv-box-thing...

Then in late 2000 we moved to France (not my first time there, we travelled quite a lot in my childhood) in Marseille. We did not stay there very long, less than a year.

And then we moved to the city I consider it to be my hometown, my spot, my hills, my heaven, my hood: Lyon. (Yes I'm a very proud lyonnais).
I stayed there from 9 to 26 years-old. Those 17 years were incredible. It's the end of my childhood, all of my teenagehood and the beginning of my adulthood.

And this is were one of my big passion has its roots. From elementary school to high school I saw the football team of my city, l'Olympique Lyonnais win 7 successive domestic titles (a record in France.. and maybe in Europe?). I remember every big wins and wins and losses. I saw them beating some of the best european teams like Manchester United or Bayern Munich and humiliating Real Madrid for years and years (3-0, 2-0, 1-0, and in round of 16). It was so good. And I was angry and sad when they lost the most important games in the Champions League. Well you probably get the idea. This is my favorite football team.

In the meantime, I had my first computer at 11 years old in 2003. An awesome Packard Bell that lasted 8 years, which for today electronic device seems like an eternity. With it, oh boy, I have so many hours of play-time. I don't play a lot of different games, but when I choose a game it's for 1000's hours. Mostly on this bad boy, I played Rappelz (a korean MMORPG), Trackmania, Civilization, GTA San Andreas and you can already guess my favorite game: FIFA.

Like every teens of my generation, the internet was my playground. We stayed hours chatting on MSN, laughing at memes and watching funny and dumb videos on Dailymotion and later Youtube. Everyone of us had a Skyblog (a kind of french tumblr) or a MySpace (I did not have one, and never 'got it'). And all of a sudden, Facebook was THE thing to have (funny to see how less and less of my friends are using it now..).

Alright let's go back in time a little bit. We are somewhere between 2005 and 2006. Maybe sooner maybe later I don't recall. At that time I encoutered a website that will change my life and is one of the main reason why I have chosen to be a web developer.

You know how people says that Apple revolutionized the smartphone industry right? So who revolutionized the web industry? Do you remember how websites looked like in 2000-2010? Basically, it was kind of like looking at.. documents? And you were scrolling pages til the end unless there was a link to click on to open that will redirect you to an another document to scroll etc. So how were we able to move from that era to interactive website, live-streaming content and 360° videos?

For me, there is this website that blew my mind (and honestly I will not be surprised to hear if that was also the case for the web industry). This website is.. Google Earth.

Remember, I mean remember! Almost all of the websites looked like documents with some colors, pictures and links. And then there was Google Earth. YO THIS SHIT WAS LIT 🔥🔥🔥 (and still is). You could see the Earth, rotate it, zoom to some random area in the world and just, play around. It was as interactive as.. as a video game in a web browser! This was my second HOW did they made it???
That's it. This. Right there. I wanna make some awesome cool stuff on the web when I'll be an adult. This was my calling to become a web developer. Definitely.

And here I am, after years of programming at school and several internships, I moved from Lyon to Paris, to be closer to companies that influences the internet and to fulfill my dream.

So welcome to my blog. My name is Nayed Saïd Ali and I'll be talking about tech stuff and other non-related tech stuff.