Why This Page is Here

The History of My Site

This web site started out many moons ago as an exercise in learning HTML. It then grew into a distribution site for my software products, photo scans and DOOM ][ levels. It's still all those things but has now grown into an exercise/project in online publishing. In a way it's kind of a crawling horror now - there's a lot of stuff in here.

I must admit I'm not terribly proud of my pages. Most of them don't meet my own standards for useful online content. However, I feel they're a good start and are improving. I feel proud to have co-published the Magik Timeline here, and I followed through on my desire to write a FAQ or two by writing the Techno-Organic FAQ for the rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks newsgroup. I'm also excited about compiling a list of artists who have sampled Kraftwerk, but that's a long-term project that is forever far from completion.

The page also gives me a chance to debug myself by analyzing my own writing. I used to be very introverted and didn't strongly express my opinions, and I don't talk about myself much with anyone other than close friends. Here, the unique nature of online publication allows me to spew as much as I want without worrying about boring or insulting people because I know that they don't have to read it if they don't want to (Still here?). I think that writing for this web site and in Usenet has helped make me a little more confident in expressing myself and has helped me shore up my writing skills.

My Web Design Philosophy

The Web is a wonderful forum for distribution of visual, textual and electronic works. That is: pictures, music, books and articles, and software. It's also awfully clogged with low-content, pretty much useless sites. Many people complain about having to wade through acres of junk pages to find the worthwhile data.

It's partly for this reason that I don't "enhance" my pages with trendy stuff like frames, layers, dynamic HTML, VRML, Java or JavaScript. Also, I believe that the web should be accessible by everyone and I therefore refuse to publish content that is not accessible using text-only browsers. Sure, my page has some pictures which aren't viewable with text-only browsers, but I've made sure that all the important non-textual files are downloadable so that they can be viewed offline.

People sometimes ask me what tools I use to make my web page. The answer is: EMACS and The Gimp, for the most part. I write the HTML directly using EMACS, because it's the most ass-kicking text editor there is, and because all the dedicated HTML editors I've tried produce terrible output. I do all my image processing with The Gimp (because it also kicks ass), except for scanning in originals. For the time being, I do my scanning on my Windows box using the software that came with my scanner, but that's only because I'm too cheap to buy the SCSI adaptor necessary to scan from my Linux box.

What You'll Find Here

The highlights of my web site are:

Stuff about me. The "personal" section of my site reveals as much about my identity as I am willing to give away to the general public. Most of the heavy vanity stuff is here, including such things as my geek codes, course grades, personal history, likes and dislikes and so on.

Professional data. My resume and formal and informal discussion of my skills and experience are here for the benefit of prospective employers. Also available are some of the larger projects I have worked on at school.

Creative output. This section contains most of my positive contribution to the web community. Here you'll find my writing, photographs, and my customizations for various computer games.

Site Map

Here is the hierarchical structure of my website. This shows only the main sections.

Change Log

1996-ish:
First version. Used client-side image map for the main index.
1998-ish:
Added lots of content. Replaced image map with table of images. Changed index title image.
Summer 2000:
Eliminated table layout. Restructured entire site. Redesigned all graphics. Redesigned navigation aids. Changed index title image again. Added personal artwork section. Eliminated reviews section.
April 2001:
Converted most layout to CSS. Improved visual consistency throughout. Restructured and updated Kraftwerk section.
May 2001:
Added more photos. Nerds love photos. Also ditched the Top Ten page. It added little value to my site and required too much updating. Added section for non-rant writings.
September 16, 2001:
Added an article about my urge to travel.
January 12, 2002:
Added more photos, updated many sections, combined rants into regular writings section. Added a couple more new articles.
January 29, 2002:
Added article about home computers and moved the collections stuff into subdirectories.
March 15, 2002:
Added article about immortality, restructured CSS system, other minor changes, moved DrySketch project documentation over from my SFU page.
March 16, 2002:
Added MSSmartTagsPreventParsing meta tag to all HTML after spotting it while stealing markup ideas from Phloem.
April 1, 2002:
Added an article about my balls.
April 18, 2002:
Added a discussion of photo equipment and getting started to my photography page.
April 21, 2002:
Added complete listing of my comic book collection to my collections page. Cleaned out dead stuff from my links pages. Misc other minor updates.
April 22, 2002:
Merged latest reader contributions into my Kraftwerk pages, and added an experimental new ongoing article, The Spam Can, added a passel of new links.
May 9, 2002:
Added a rant about stores with a "leave your bags at the door" policy.
June and July, 2002:
Reformatted all my existing sorted bookmarks to reflect my thought that if something is really worth bookmarking, I should be able to make a comment or two about it to help me remember why it's bookmarked. This still leaves the more recent, unsorted links to be sorted and commented though.
Early October, 2002:
Performed a cleanup pass on all pages. Updated and rephrased some text. Eliminated the artwork section as I didn't expect to be adding much to it in the near future, and was kind of uncomfortable about it. Added an article about 9/11 and also this article. Added a navigation bar to the Kraftwerk Influence.
December, 2002:
Moved the Atari 2600 collection out to a seperate page and converted the tabular text format to an HTML table. Miscellaneous other small updates.
May 10, 2003:
There haven't been many updates lately because I've been busy at school. I updated my resume and added some stuff under the Professional section, and cleared out some Kraftwerk updates from my inbox.
July 11, 2003:
I recently took over nerdhive.org from a friend, I've moved the Nerd Hive stuff there and will soon be moving my photo gallery there. I've deleted some of my older and less well-written rants because I think I can do them better or because they no longer accurately represent my views.
September 7, 2003:
Misc minor updates. Added some photos of a few of my Lego projects. Rewrote the equipment section of the Photo section.
September 14, 2003:
Renamed General Products to Foo.
October 3, 2003:
Added a study of telephoto fields of view to my photography page.
October 13, 2003:
Moved the ASI Exchange, DrySketch and Fast Blobs pages from my Professional section to my new offsite portfolio.
October 21, 2003:
Opened the long-planned articles section of my programming pages with a short article about the Windows autorun.inf system.
October 22, 2003:
Added a programming article (written over a year ago) about structure type checking and an introduction. Started a list of recently read books.
November 16, 2003:
Added an article about cryonics.
November 22, 2003:
Added pictures of a new Lego robot arm design. Removed the rant about Calgary drivers because it was getting old and drivers are bad everywhere. Some updates to the Kraftwerk samplers page.
January 20, 2004:
Wrote a couple of New Year's lists for 2004.
July 4, 2004:
Added pictures of a new Lego project. I had actually taken the pictures back in January but didn't get around to making up the web page until now.
Added fresh material to the Name That Tune contest.
July 15, 2004:
Added photos of the construction of the wonderful Imperial Star Destroyer Lego set.
December 19, 2004:
Reviewed my success rate on this year's resolutions.
December 31, 2004:
Made up a new todo list for 2005.
April 17, 2005:
Finally wrote up a long-planned essay on why we need to concentrate on spreading and preserving mind.
May 2005:
Was amazed and enthralled with Google Maps' satellite mode. Decided to make up a list of satellite photos of the places I've lived.
May 22, 2005:
Updated the Barlowe page with some great news.
December 30, 2005:
Significant updates to the Kraftwerk Influence project - basically everything that was suggested by readers since late 2003.
January 8, 2006:
Commented on my 2005 resolutions and added resolutions for 2006. Also removed the old rummage sale page since it wasn't getting any interest.
July, 2006:
Updated my reading list. Also there have been numerous ongoing updates to my various collections.
April, 2007:
More collection updates, some updates to my photography page, removed the image precaching page since it's pretty much no longer needed. Some new appearances added to the Magik and T-O comics pages. Resume updated.
January, 2008:
Added a game mods page for Team Fortress 2, including a mapping tutorial.

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Copyright (c),© 1996-2008 by Soleil Lapierre.
Last updated January 20, 2008.