March 13, 2003
Internet Service Providers
After about 13 months on Alink, Davison Online moved to Slip.Net, which was a terrific Internet Service Provider until they were bought out by First World Communications whereupon they went to hell in a handbasket. Davison Online is currently hosted by SiteRev.com. For a short period, my Internet connectivity was handled by the excellent Portland, Oregon-based Internet Arena. Unfortunately, their reach didn't extend to Salem, so I switched to Earthlink. Earthlink, though, did not offer DSL service to my area so to fulfill my desire for high speed broadband access, I joined AtHome. Their cable modem service was flakey for a couple of months, but they eventually got a DS3 line connected for my area, and speeds went zooming. AtHome eventually discovered that they had no business sense, and all customers in my neck of the woods were transferred to AT&T Broadband. More recently AT&T Broadband discovered that it's better to make money than to lose it and sold their broadband service to Comcast. I expect Comcast to jack the prices any day now.
The Counter
The counter on the main page is courtesy of FastCounter. It started registering hits on May 18, 1998. Additionally, the site had over 1,000 hits between August 9, 1997 to March 11, 1998.
Local Search Engine
Powered by Atomz.com, the Davison Online search engine is indexed weekly and contains every electronic scrap of information anyone could want to find. If I wrote it, you can find it via the search box at the top of every page. The site is automatically indexed every Thursday night.
Internet Search Engines
Davison Online is registered with all the major search engines, but as of July 29, 1998 only InfoSeek, HotBot, and AOL NetFind provided the correct answer on a search for "Davison Online" (without quotes). More recently Google has been doing an excellent job of listing my pages for various searches. Davison Online is an "officially sanctioned link" at Joshua Allen's Fireland.
E-Mail
If you would like to send me e-mail, please feel free to do so. My address is [email protected]. For both our sakes, please, no spam and no flames.
How To Contact Me When I'm Online
America On-line, who I generally despise, offers a free Instant Messenger program which they have improved dramatically since their crash-happy earlier versions. To get started using AIM, download the software. (Although it would probably work, I would advise against downloading the beta version.) Once installed, you can add me to your Buddy List by doing a Find by Name/Address. Search for first name of "Ty" and last name of "Davison" and leave all other fields blank. That should return my screen name of "TyDavison" and you'll be off and running.
Then, if I'm online with AIM active and you're online with AIM active, the program will notify you, and we can hold a chat session. I'll be hoping to type at you soon!
Production Equipment—Hardware
This web site was produced on three computers:
1. Henry
The site was first created on an Apple Macintosh IIci ("Henry") with 20 megabytes of RAM and a 100 meg hard drive. Henry is connected to an Apple 13" RGB monitor.
2. Zeke
The site underwent most of its significant growth and revision on an Apple Power Macintosh 7500/100 with a PowerLogix 275/275/1 G3 accelerator ("Zeke"). Zeke has 208 megabytes of RAM, a 9.1 GB hard drive, a 1 GB hard drive and a 4x CD-ROM. Zeke runs a dual display setup via an ATI Rage Orion video card plus 17" VGA and 16" RGB monitors. Both Zeke and Henry used to upload files to the web server via a SupraFAX 28.8 modem (flash upgraded to 33.6k).
3. Trinity
The site is now updated and maintained on a PowerBook G3 (FireWire) 500-MHz portable named "Trinity." Trin has 384 MB of RAM, a 30 gig hard drive, and a high degree of portability and connectivity. More often than not Trinity runs a dual display with its own 14.1" LCD display and a Princeton EO90 19" CRT monitor. Trin has an Adaptec PowerDomain SlimSCSI 1480 Cardbus interface which allows it to hook up to a UMAX S-6E 4800 dpi (interpolated) color scanner and a 1 GB removable cartridge Iomega Jaz drive. Trinity uses a Motorola 4200 cable modem connected to Comcast's high speed service.
An increasing number of images in the Photo Gallery were taken with a Canon S300 PowerShot digital camera. It rocks.
Production Equipment—Software
Software originally used in the creation and implementation of this web site includes: Adobe PageMill 3, GoLive CyberStudio 3.11, Adobe Photoshop 3.0.5, Kai's PowerTools 2.1, Alien Skin Software's EyeCandy 3.0, ExaChess Lite 1.2, Ambrosia Software's Snapz Pro, Fetch 3.03, Netscape Navigator 4.04, MacBench 4.0, UMAX VistaScan 2.3, and Aladdin Software's StuffIt Deluxe 4.5.
Software used in the creation and implementation of the current incarnation of this web site includes: Adobe ImageReady 2, Kai's PowerTools 3.0, Alien Skin Software's EyeCandy 3.0, ExaChess Lite 2.1, Ambrosia Software's Snapz Pro, Fetch 4, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2, Reunion 8, and Adobe GoLive 6.
Banners & Headlines
Banners are 60 point Techno (except for the Main page banner which is 60 point Textile Regular) with -20 spacing. Applied effects are custom red and custom blue textures from KPT's Texture Effects 3.0 followed by Alien Skin Eye Candy 3.0's Glow with a soft yellow. Regular headlines are 42 point Garamond Light.
Text
Adobe GoLive 6 fully supports the HTML <font> tag, so all main text is set in Palatino with alternates of Times and Times New Roman. The sub-heads are set in Arial with alternates of Helvetica and Geneva. If you're on a system which doesn't have any of these fonts installed (a PC perchance?), you'll simply see everything in your browser's default font.
Pop-up Text
Many of the links on the site contain additional commentary which can be viewed by hovering your cursor over the link. The effect is similar to what you see with VH1's Pop-Up videos, but it only works if you're using Internet Explorer. Netscape 4.x and ealier ignore the HTML code necessary to make the trick work. If you hold your cursor over the VH1 link, for example, after a few seconds you should see pop-up text that begins "If you can read this...."
Color
Site color are Black (#000000), Dark Red (#8B0000), Royal Blue (#4169E1), Pale Goldenrod (#EEE8AA), White (#ffffff), and Silver (#C0C0C0). All colors are "web safe" and should display correctly regardless of platform or browser or video card (assuming you have at least 256 colors available). PC users note that because your gamma is wacky, colors will appear darker than intended. (This is true of much of the web as well.)
Cookies
The intro/splash page to Davison Online sends the user a couple cookies which track the user's last visit date and time, the number of visits, and whether or not the user has the taste and refinement to be using the Mac OS. A user can choose to reject these cookies and the rest of the site remains fully functional. [Note that cookies are current disabled.]
Platform & Browser
This web site is optimized for the Mac OS. It works best with Netscape 6 or 7 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x. Apple's Safari web browser is passable but not perfect. On a PC, the site looks best on Netscape 6 or 7. Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x and 6 both have a CSS bug which cuts the drop caps I use in half. Otherwise everything seems to display fine.
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