Well, the improbable has finally come to pass. After several years of on-and-off creating, tinkering, retooling, Photoshopping, and being a victim of cybersquatters, I’ve finished my new website. Completely. One hundred percent. No broken links. No missing sections. No ideas half-realized. Done.
It’s a strange feeling…it’s extremely fulfilling, but at the same time it leaves me a little empty. The design of the site has been an ongoing project for so long, I’m not sure what to do with all the energy I used to expend in the creation of gratuitous theme graphics. The answer, I realize, is that I now have no excuse not to actually write for it. It’s a major turning point, and if it leaves you a little teary-eyed, well, me too.
A few will note that the domain of this site was once tatnall.com, and that said domain is now the broken home of a silly generic search page. Unfortunately, a few years back I made the mistake of failing to renew my ownership of it within 6 hours of its expiration, and some Korean guy pounced on it like an eight-week-old kitten on anything that moves. The words “For Sale” have appeared on the top of the site from day one…gee, I guess he changed his mind about wanting to use it for some actual purpose mere minutes after he registered it. And I guess he’s had a brief change of heart each year for the past two years just scant weeks before his own registration is due to expire, only to realize immediately afterwards that, no, actually, he does still want to sell it. Yeah. That first year I inquired about purchasing it back from him, and he wanted $1500. When I gave him the counter-offer of $25.17, he wrote me a very gracious reply explaining that he had consulted with his associates and that unfortunately they would be unable to accept my offer. Uh huh. So that domain’s not coming back, although I wish them all the luck in the world trying to unload a domain based on a surname that no one else has ever heard of.
I do have a few acknowledgements to hand out. The posting system for this part of the site comes courtesy of Greymatter, whose software is so easy to use even I could figure it out, even though editing all those templates individually was kind of a pain in the ass. You may also notice that I of all people have a fully functional forum now, which just goes to show how easy it is to install phpBB. Also, the nifty dark/bright headlight effects on the link graphics for the front page come courtesy of some code provided by my friend Jen.
I hope you like the nighttime highway motif I’ve adopted for the site. One friend once said it was creepy, but I really think it’s striking and unique.
Well, I guess that’s really it. All that’s left to do is actually update the damn thing on a regular basis. I’ll do my best, and with any luck I’ll manage to conjure up some stuff that’s worth reading from time to time. Hope you enjoy!
A.
