While I have found Netscape Navigator Gold to be a relatively good html editing tool, it has its limitations, so I began using SimpleText to make the minor tag changes that Navigator Gold couldn't.
Some of the images were taken with an Apple Quicktake digital camera and downloaded to the PowerBook via serial cable, then converted from PICT format to JPGs. Others were taken with a Sony Mavica HD91 digital camera, which stores its images as JPGs on a disk. The rest of the images are photos that were scanned via Apple ColorOne scanner and an HP ScanJet 5200C. In both cases, the photos were edited and converted to JPG format with Adobe Photodelux.
You will notice some new panorama images in my South/West Tour page. I experimented with a number of methods and image stitching applications for patching images together before I came across PanaVue Image Assembler, which I found to be far and away the best program available for assembling panorama images.
My latest major addtion to this page is my
My web directory currently takes up 323 MB.
I published the first pages via a 128 kbps Ricochet wireless modem which, up until recently, was my method of accessing the internet. Ricochet was a wireless internet service provider located in San Jose, CA that operated in scattered markets throughout the United States using wireless pole-top radios mounted on street lamp posts.
This wireless freedom had amazing advantages. I have literally sent and received e-mail from my car in the middle of a parking lot, netsurfed on the beach, and updated this web page while sitting in a tree in the country side. Unfortunately, Metricom recently succumbed to its financial difficulties and ceased operations on August of 2001. The Ricochet network has since been acquired by another company, but only operates in a few cities, now.
I now publish via a 1.5 Mbs/128 Kbps DSL Extreme connection at my house, which is distributed to the machines in my house by a Linksys wireless gateway.
Over the years, this page has had numerous updates and major renovations. During my time working at UCSC, I started my UCSC page for work related purpuses, although it is now hosted on lothlorien
As I mentioned earlier, my website grew to enormous proportions. It grew so complex that it became necessary to restructure its directories to make it more hierarchial. Editing thousands of links and image source tags across hundreds of pages seemed like a daunting task until I found a nifty little shareware program called, "Actual Search & Replace," which has the ability to make replacements across multiple files, which drastically sped up this process.
In January of 2003, this website was given its own domain name, ajnordley.com. The primary reason for this change was so that I could more easily track where people had obtained my email address(s) from and control their use. With my own domane name, it is now possible to develope single purpose email addresses for such applications as making on-line purchases. If, say, abcbooks.com wants a valid email address for me in order for me to make a purchase from them, I can give them abcbooks@ajnordley.com as my email address. If they spam me, I can simply log into my shell account and deactivate that address. Furthermore, if someone else starts spamming me at that address, I know where they got it from.
This site has become one of my favorite pastimes and continues to grow, almost like a tree house.
Back to main page