I'm a sucker for history, if not a good student of it, so when I get a chance, I indulge a little in the background of a subject. And that's what the rest of this page is about--some self-indulgence; in particular, a historical account of my meager niche on the web. So if you're interested such things, keep on reading along, otherwise, I'm certain there's something much cooler to look at on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHjFxJVeCQs">YouTube</a>.

Spin up the wayback machine and set the dial for June, 1995. I had seen someone show off a web page or two back in the fall of '94, but hadn't been too impressed by the concept of hyperlinks. Nevertheless, at a college reunion, my friends, <a href="http://digitalathene.com">Steve Luminati</a> and <a href="http://www.joki.com/">Tom Pixley</a>, insisted this technology was pretty cool and guided me through the construction my own web page.

"To create a paragraph," said Steve, "use the less-than sign, followed by the letter 'p', followed by the greater-than sign. Then follow it with whatever you want to show up on the screen."

"Really? That's all there is to it?" A few moments later: "Wow. There it is."

"Next I'll show you how to embed an image."

"A graphic? Cool!"

And a web addict was born.

Not long later, I created my first web page and called it "Biggles 2000: The Gateway to the Next Generation", the nickname and tag line I had given my desktop PC. It resided on the web server of the <a title="Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue U" href="http://www.bio.purdue.edu/" target="_blank">Department of Biological Sciences</a> at <a title="Purdue University" href="http://www.purdue.edu" target="_blank">Purdue University</a>, a single, static page among another <a title="WWW Growth" href="http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/#Growth" target="_blank">23,500 or so web sites in the world</a>. I don't recall too much about it other than it had a Photoshopped logo, probably some info about me, and probably some links.
<p style="text-align: center;">

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="407" caption="The original Biggles 2000 logo. It greeted folks to my single, static home page during the latter half of 1995."]<img title="Biggles 2000: The Gateway to the Next Generation" src="http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/about/biggs2k.gif" alt="The original Biggles 2000 logo" width="407" height="230" />[/caption]

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There it resides for a few months before I scrapped it in favor of another design, one I entitled "Mind 'Scapes", which focused on my interest in science. This incarnation's life was as brief as its predecessor--I decided I wanted something more personal and reflective of my many interests. Thus was born the second generation of "Biggles 2000".

Within th