Yose Cormier
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Sep 01/03) - Andrew Tapak was in southern Ontario taking native and northern studies at Trent university in the mid-1990's when he met some geeks.

Those are his words, and he says that's when his life took a different turn.

He started designing Web pages.

"When I went to school I met up with computer geeks. We used to compete on making Web pages. That's where my technique," said Tapak, now in his 30s.

Tapak is the webmaster for the government of Nunavut Web site.

"I coordinate with all nine departments and upload all their information on the government of Nunavut Web site," said Tapak, who's originally from Resolute Bay.

A resident of Iqaluit since 1983, Tapak admits he never thought he'd get paid for doing a hobby.

"The first Web site I designed and got paid for was a native studies site. I got paid $100 for the whole year," he said.

That was in 1997 and things have changed for him.

He's been with the territorial government since 2000 and loves his job.

"Anything that has to do with building a web page, I'm happy with that. The excitement is seeing it go on the internet and having people saying this is nice or even any comments positive or negative," he said.

Tapak has gotten a bit philosophical through his work with computers. He has his own theory about life.

"One thing I noticed in school was that everything was always boxed. You lived in a box house, drove a box car, you worked in a box, you watched your box TV, everything seemed so closed,"

He said when he came back North, there were none of those boundaries. He wasn't in a box any more.

"It's the reason why I like the Internet too. You can build stuff and anybody can see it and you can see how your proceeding along. There are no boundaries," he said.

The first step to building a web page, said Tapak is to visualize the layout.

"Then you code it all in a language that the Web browser will understand," he said.

Tapak uses the Notepad program found on all Windows browsers. He said it allows him to do things his way.

"Using Web design software limits what I can do," he said. Tapak said anybody can learn how to design Web pages.

"It's like a new language to learn. Every day I learn something new about the Web page or about making them. The amount of information is just so massive. Everything that you can learn can't be learned in a week's worth of reading or study.

Everything just comes in bits and pieces. The more you work at it the more you learn," he said.