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Webdesign & contents
by ClaireWorks.
Copyright 2000-2001
Beverly Claire L. Fangonon.
All rights reserved.
All graphics & photographs
by ClaireWorks,
unless otherwise indicated.
About this Website
Claireworks.net: What, Why, When, Where & How 06 April 2001
"What's this?" you're asking. "What is she up to this time?"
Welcome to claireworks.net! Lots of new things have happened and are happening in my life, in fact, so many new things that the newness of it all demands a total renovation of my personal website. I'm coming up with tons of new material so I decided that it was time to move on and update everything in my old site. No, actually, that site I can't help but look at with great fondness, because it served as my first venue for practicing hand-coded HTML and other basic web stuff. Thus, in the end I decided to leave it untouched and build a separate, new website instead. So here you are. :-)
The first thing you'll notice is the new logo, ClaireWorks. You'll notice it whether you like it or not because it's right up front on every page. =) One has to put the ubiquitous "Copyright such and such year by such and such person. All rights reserved" thingy at the bottom of each web page created, and I was looking for some name to put in the such and such person part. ClaireWorks comes from one of my first names plus "Works", the combo actually inspired by the Mac wordprocessing app ClarisWorks. Yes, there was a time in my life when I was actually a Mac user!
The second thing is the inevitable fact that I am, uh, maturing (read: aging). I thought that my personal website should reflect this, uh, inevitable senescence (read: aging). Becoming just a little bit wiser also means becoming more net-wise, which means becoming more considerate of slow net connections and busy people in general. Now that I'm experiencing what it's like to be killed in the workplace, I myself can't afford to sit and wait for web pages to download. I want it fast and I want it now. While I find it really difficult to get rid of the graphics-overkill tendency, I'm trying. =) Also, I'm now paying attention to better, more careful coding and scripting...I think. I dunno how it'll turn out at your end, though.
Third, as I mentioned earlier there's tons of new material here, thanks to a new philosophical transition --from Why think, when you can rage? [theme of The Nagoya Queen, my very first website] to Go ahead and rage, but don't let it kill you [theme of Chiyoryunami, the name inspired by Yokozuna Chiyonofuji, the greatest sumo dude to grace the face of the universe] to Why rage and kill yourself when you can rave and have a life?, theme of the Completely Claire Website, which, unfortunately, was stillborn. This all-new claireworks.net site, on the other hand, goes "At ClaireWorks, the nugatory takes precedence". Basically, this means that as I grow older, the more I start to appreciate the little things in life. Claireworks.net is a celebration of the little things. Being with friends. Eating good food. Running after sumo guys. Marveling at cherry blossoms on a warm spring day.
This website is a smorgasboard of sorts, half musings and half online diary, and, while it does contain some material taken from the old sites, they have been jazzed up, illustrated and improved. Also, hopefully this website will reflect a more positive attitude toward life in general and the state of humanity in particular. ;-)
Fourth, and perhaps most important in terms of artistic expression, all the graphics in this website have been designed and created by yours truly. Ditto for the photographs. I wanted a site that was bright and colorful and yet professional and space maximizing. My graphics & photos are not mind-blowing, not a site for sore eyes, but it was quite an enjoyable endeavor, the building of every little button from scratch, with only one's imagination to guide the mouse.
Still, I decided to keep the old site, Chiyoryunami: The Dragon Wave Website, because despite the fact that I abandoned it a long time ago it still gets visitors who go as far as signing the guestbook (Thank you!) and emailing me (Thank you!). Also, the Completely Claire Website is still where it is, abandoned by its creator (me) but allowed to exist, poor thing. Thank goodness our skills improve as the years go by! I would like to believe that my website transition from Nagoya Queen to Chiyoryunami to Completely Claire to, finally, claireworks.net shows some major upgrading.
I hope you have as much fun surfing through this website as much as I had fun creating, designing and writing for it. It makes extensive use of JavaScript, so do surf with the latest major browsers, preferably Internet Explorer 5.5. Claireworks.net will be updated on a very regular basis so I hope you'll visit just as regularly. I would love to hear anything you have to say, so do make good use of the guestbook. Or email me at claire@claireworks.net.
