All the things you never wanted to know about this web site

Why have you got your email address in a gif?
A: Because I want to reduce the amount of spam I get delivered to my genuine address. I will increase the complexity of my procmail filters when I get a chance to learn them more, and I may change this. The direct link addresses work too, but get filtered to a box which I read maybe once a day.
A: Because my email address is too important to obscure by supporting the very valid cause of the Portable Network Graphics format. When all browsers support PNG, I'll switch over.
Why does this website exist?

A: This website was started in June 1997, as a way for me to learn the basic principles of HTML. Since then, it's gone through two major redesigns, and now represents my hopefully if not minimalistic, clear and easy on the eye style. It contains things that reflect my personality and interests, and to tell people about how my life is. I hope it interests all the people who visit it in some way.
Where does this website exist?
A: As of April 2004, my web site lives on a collocated machine in Maidenhead (it lived in London until 2007), owned and operated by myself and others.
Before that, from January 2000, the site was graciously hosted by the Magdalen College JCR UNIX team on shadowlands. I set up that server then, and have been helping to run it since.
Before that, from 1997-2000, the site existed on www.netcomuk.co.uk.
Why does this site look rubbish in $browser?

A: Whilst I have always taken effort to make my sites look good in any browsers, it's sometimes really difficult with the current crop (Netscape 4.x, IE5, and Opera 4). I currently do most of my design in mozilla for Linux, and hence my site looks best in that. IE is mostly okay, but Opera (as of version 5)unfortunately is rendering the spacing of the main table differently, so it overlaps the border. I haven't so far been able to find a solution to this. (Update: as of early 2003, I've been reliably informed that Opera 7 renders it in the way I intended.) I will at some point overhaul the HTML into XHTML, and better use of CSS, and this should hopefully improve the situation.

The site should look fine on all text browsers (although I recommend using something other than lynx because of its bad table support). If it doesn't, let me know.