"Simulant - something that doesn't exist but pretends to"
Stanisław Lem, The Futurological Congress
"Simulant - something that doesn't exist but pretends to"
Stanisław Lem, The Futurological Congress
Yarrrgh, here be the website for all the millions of things I've wanted to have a website for over the past five years. Yarrrgh. You'll find all kinds of goodies to do with history, science fiction, and possibly the odd emo or two. They are all here, collected for the enjoyment of the masses! Feast your sockets on their wonder, and then wonder at their wonder, and then explode from their wonder in a manner that obviates me of legal responsibility.
No doubt your peepers have proclaimed my site to be quite spartan. This is because I believe there's a lot that can be done with just plain text and some simple formatting. I don't want to sit there for ten minutes waiting for bloaty flash to load, and I wouldn't inflict that torture on anyone. Flash seems to have become a by-word for style, when it is really just a by-word for ugly. It can be done well, but that's like saying being a ninja can be done well: you need to be a master to pull it off. You, I and the other 99.999% of webmasters out there are not master designers, and anyone who spends more time on appearance than on content is a wanker. And if you value appearance over content, you too are a wanker. So here it is, the website of my dreams! A clean, simple site with actual content instead of filler.
This site is constantly growing, like some evil plant from Doctor Who wot kills you at an ironic moment. And I intend that comparison to be truer than you think. All kinds of bits and pieces will grow from this site as time goes on, and be warned that you could well find yourself lost in a place you never wanted to be. Also, there will be new articles! Yes! And programs and music! And puppies! Lots of puppies for everyone!
My blog, in which I post all manner of illuminated ruminations. Some of these have made their way into the articles section of this page.
1 January 2009: I have a swag of new material accumulated over the past year or two, and some more on the way. I have added the short stories Harold Holted, The Land of Little Cats and Anti Septic and the Case of the Salty Cake. I have removed the redundant Publications section until I have something real to put there. I have also begun updating the HTML code on this website, bringing it from the 1990s into the 2000s. Bad table code is being replaced by divs and CSS, but the whole process may take a little time to complete.
8 February 2008: This has been a long time coming, but I finally uploaded two of my novels, The Life-Giving Waters of the Nazi Handkerchief and Jimmy and the Magical Pants Lord. They've available from both the Fiction and Publications sections in PDF format, free for all. Revel in it. Revel, I say.
4 February 2008: I've added the Egyptian text, transliteration and translation of The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor. I have also made some minor edits to The Prophecy of Neferty, the only other Egyptian text on this site. I've been working on two others, The Teaching of Amenemhet and The Dream Book, which I hope to digitise before too long.
18 November 2007: There have been some extensive updates to the site, including huge additions to the genealogy pages. Nicholas Pappas has very generously translated, corrected and annotated the Kastelorizo cemetery transcription, and I have added several articles to the Durham genealogy section. There are also new articles of my own under the Fiction and Articles section, and I hope to post some better stories there soon.
6 August 2007: Gord bless, we're finally on the air. It's taken its sweet time, but this website has finally started to turn into something slightly better than nothing. There's only a few articles and whatnot up at the moment, but what's there is quite substantial and took a long time to prepare. Of course more will come as time wears down the resistance and standards of us all.