A few days ago Mr. Zeldman celebrated ten years in website design and production. This landmark isn't far off from where I first actually got online in the first place. While the exact date has long been lost to me, I do know that my family took the plunge into the wider world of the Internet at the same time we installed Windows 95. After all, we figured, why bother trying to figure out how everything worked under Windows 3.1 only have to re-learn everything under 95? I was a huge 95 booster anyway, having read every article I could find in the trade magazines about this upcoming uber-marvel. The fifteen year old me just couldn't get enough of this dream of better computing, going so far as buying great big books on "Inside Chicago," learning all about what protected memory was and how preemptive multitasking would change the world.

When I first installed Windows 95, the first thing I did was play two AVI files at the same time. It blew my mind.

Anyway, as you can guess, getting dial-up access working on revision one of Windows 95 in the summer of 1995, with even the ISP unsure of how things worked, was no fun whatsoever. Ah Dial-Up Networking, how I will curse you on my deathbed. I'm still haunted by memories of dialing into the original "Microsoft Network", a glorified BBS which worked through the Windows Explorer interface, searching for dialers. However, I did finally get online. While this wasn't my first exposure to the internet, it was the first time I was able to truly explore at my leisure. Oh, the possibilities.

Who here has read Ender's Game? Shame on the rest of you. Anyway, remember that secret life the other two Wiggin kids ran, anonymous authors, pundits, and political revolutionaries on the internet of the future? They were my role models.

Heady days.

The internet didn't turn me into a geek, that damage was long-since done. From the early nineties on, barring external stimuli, I would have been perfectly content to sit in a closed room hooked up to an IV, playing Civilization and Master of Orion until I died. The 'net, though, gave me access to a larger, broader world of geekery. And just look where we are now.

Wait, where was I? Boy, I've gotten off-topic. Anyway, Zeldman was just reminiscing back to those same times, and reminding me of a great feature he used to have on his site, the Ad Graveyard. Page after page of ads that never saw the light of day, and all probably for good reason. Think the ads you see on TV are distasteful? Go have a look at what us designers want to show you.

In the same vein, other things you ought to check out include this amazing flash music video to Radiohead's "Creep", done by Monkeehub. Monkeehub is also responsible for this equally awesome animated music video to the song "JCB" by Nizlopi as well as the Low Morale series of animated shorts.

And as long as I'm posting links to things from long ago, check out Ralph McQuarrie's website. He did a lot of the original concept art for the first Star Wars trilogy, which you can see (at small size) on his gallery. While the art for Empire and Jedi look pretty much as you'd expect, it's the art from the original film which is really interesting. As the basic tenets of the universe weren't nailed down yet, you get to see things like lightsaber-wielding stormtroopers, a unified Solo-Skywalker character, and C-3P0 looking exactly like the robot from Metropolis.

To bring things back to a more contemporary note, David LaChapelle (the photographer, not the AWOL comic), creator of some of the best photographic portraits of the modern age and worshiper of plastic-chic, is coming out with a movie. I'll see it.

And now I'll leave you with a few parting words from everyone's favorite psychopath, The Joker. Take it away, Joker!

Thank you, and good night!