It’s nearly EOY (end of calendar year) in corporate lingo, and thus it is time to prepare the last reports and try to meet some deadlines set by top management for political reasons.
Corporate thinking is in my bones so I need to apply this approach to my personal Website Resurrection Project.
I registered three personal domains – for the reason of avoiding a website that is all over the place (as this blog is now).
I have offline-ed most of the existing pages in spring 2012, and I am gradually taking them online again, adding more content, and replacing 1px by 2px or #CCCCCC by #BBBBBB. This is my virtual Zen garden. It does not mean that my websites are particularly professional or sleek.
I am was[*] bold enough to utilize Gravatar’s / WordPress’s snapshot service here to create preview images. Note that some weeks ago these preview images had been replaced by what I called spammy images.
[*] Comment from the future – 2019: Removed those as I consolidated all my sites in 2015, and the preview of “different” sites does not make sense anymore. But for completeness, here is the link for generating such screenshots:
https://s-ssl.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/http%3A%2F%2Fradices.net?w=180
My sites are going to be merged with this blog here and with all out other sites soon.
Personal Website
I had setup my first small business website in 1997, and this website – e-stangl.at – morphed into a private one in 2001.
It’s like a blog updated half a year maximum. It is this site that held enigmatic hints by the end of 2010 – at the time when I decided (yet unaware of having decided) to leave the world of IT and global corporations, but when I was still not ready to state Dear customers, due to personal reasons I have decided….
I still like the colors despite or because of the solemnity and the proto-twitter stream at the top. As per today, most of the pages have been resurrected and most recent updates has been added.
Weird Website
In 2000 I attended a management training. I learned about www.cluetrain.com – not all so called business books are written in Dilbertesque jargon. I made Hyperlinks Subvert Hierarchy my favorite quote. My take on Cluetrain in retrospect is here.
These were the days when I became The Subversive Element, which morphed into The Subversive Elkement later. To my utmost delight the valuable domain subversiv.at was still available. It become host to any weird and bizarre stuff that came into my mind.
Currently I have resurrected less than 50% of the website, and I added some new content. I indulge in linking to the blog or following-up on the blog – for the fun of creating strange self-referential loops. I have also crafted a hand-made XML feed.
Science Website
radices.net has been registered shortly after the other ones. The name indicated my desire to re-connect with my roots as a scientist. Yes, I have come a long way. The content is rather similar to my blog posts on physics here.
Ironically, the Latin word radices (roots) is also used by sites inclined to esotericism, but one of the main drivers to start this site was my (skeptical physicist’s) fascination of fringe science. I have tried to explain my position earlier.
I have resurrected more than 50%, added new content, and a hand-crafted XML feed. And fixed a CSS bug.
This is all not too exciting probably, but project reports never are.
However, there is a particular website that resists all attempts of resurrection, amendment and updates. It is an artefact. It is monolithic. Think of monolithic as in monoliths – such as the ones in 2001 A Space Odyssey .
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Imagine to listen to Thus Spake Zarathustra.
This is it:
It is a weird website that emerged from nothing in 2005 due to the joint efforts of four exceptional individuals.
We had an org chart and job titles, of course. The Element was in charge of:
Subversive Non-Coordination & Chief Desperate Dreamer.
This might be tomb, but an impressive one.
And to this day you may find snippets of the El(k)ement’s writing associated with artistic or refined websites or some other pages of EPSIs.