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.
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[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]

Upon the web my creation resided 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 and sported snazzier graphics. Alas, this incarnation's life was as brief as its predecessor--I ultimately decided my web site should truly be more personal than a bunch of links about science: It should be a bunch of links about other things I liked. And I also decided it ought to demonstrate my talents of a web developer by incorporating the two latest trend in browser technologies: JavaScript and Frames.

Thus was born the second generation of the "Biggles 2000", which divided my web site into several areas of personal interested. But despite rave reviews from fellow web smiths who applauded my artistic abilities, I abhorred my latest creation for at least two reasons:
<ol>
	<li>It was just a bunch of links.</li>
	<li>It was dependent on JavaScript and Frames.</li>
</ol>