Skygawker? What's up with the name?

I earned the nickname "Skygawker" on a flight back from Japan in 1999. I spent almost all thirteen hours of the trip staring out of the window. (The stars over the Pacific Ocean are amazing! And it's so cool to see the tops of clouds from an airplane!) About seven hours into the flight a fellow Star Wars fan bestowed the nickname on me.

When I got this domain, I decided to use this name because it represents me very well: I'm the sort of person who has walked into people/trees/parked cars because I was too busy staring up at the clouds or stars. It also lends itself to some great layouts.

Who are you, anyway?

I've got a personal page. Take a look if you're curious.

How long has this site been on-line?

Skygawker.com was a high school graduation present; I registered the domain on June 9, 2000. Before that, I had a personal website and the Carlson Septuplets page on my ISP's space since July 11, 1996. I have been on-line since February, 1995. My dad's a computer programmer. I was using an Amiga 1000 when I was about 4. I don't remember ever not having a computer.

Got anything to say about the layout?

Of course! The person in the picture at your left happens to be me. I normally wouldn't imagine designing a layout around a photo of myself, but this was just too perfect for a Skygawker layout to pass up. It's also among my favorite pictures ever taken of me. (The photograph is by fellow Expo guide John Rogos. Thanks John!) And where is it, you might ask? This is near the top of Mt. Fuji, Japan, at about seven in the morning on August 27, 2005. This is the other side of a cloudy day!

I hope to have more pictures from our Mt. Fuji trip on-line soon. It shows what a geek I am that I was thinking "whoa...I gotta make a new Skygawker.com layout using these pictures" as we were still climbing the mountain. I also was wearing my Leaf of Lorien brooch, though unfortunately you can't see this in this shot. And I'm climbing a volcano. And it sure looked like Mordor at times, too. And I have a staff. And cool white gloves reminiscent of one young national alchemist. Heh.

Oh yes, I do like this picture.

As for the technical details of the layout, I've finally joined the rest of the world at 1024x768 resolution, so I designed this to that, but it should be functional at both higher and lower resolutions as well. If you have any trouble with this site due to the layout, please let me know. I am trying my best to make sure Skygawker.com's content is accessible to everyone who is interested in reading it.

One other thing: this layout made with Linux. Yay!

With which browser is this page best viewed?

All content on Skygawker.com should be accessible to all visitors, regardless of browser, resolution, or operating system. If you are having any trouble accessing any of Skygawker.com, please let me know. I will do my best to fix it. I support this campaign:

I have tested this layout with Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7, Mozilla 1.7, Konqueror 3.3, Epiphany 1.2, and Opera 7.54 on SuSE Linux 9.2, Netscape 7.2 on Windows 98, Internet Explorer on some unidentified variety of Windows that I found at a public computer, and Firefox and Safari for Mac OS X. Konqueror and Safari had some minor quirks involving the style sheets not registering properly within the tables, so if anyone knows any trick as to how I could fix that for those browsers, please do let me know. Still, that's only a minor cosmetic quirk; the overall layout and the content works in those browsers.

If you want to know why I have such a strong opinion on the subject of browser diversity, check out the editorials in Kaleidoscope. (Take a look especially if you are just using Internet Explorer just because it came with your computer.) Things have gotten a lot better since Firefox debuted, bringing us out of the Dark Ages of Internet Explorer when most people couldn't bothered to make a page that looked good in anything but IE, I'm happy to say. There's still a way to go, though, so I continue to support this campaign.

Wanna see old layouts?

'Cause I'm gonna show them to you.

2000-01: Version 1, which matches my bedroom decor. I was very proud at the time to figure out how to do that semi-transparent table without ever having seen it done before, and without asking anyone how to do it.

2001-02: Version 2, with Javascript sparkles, purpleness, and Japanese. It says sora ni mite, hoshi ga kagayaiteru yo or, "Look at the sky, the stars are sparkling."

2002-03: Version 3, a layout inspired by this very spiffy picture of Sonic and Tails doing some skygawking. I also really like the Netscape "Toy Factory" theme, but it clashes with most sites, so I didn't use it much. With this layout, though, it was a perfect compliment, don't you think?

June 13, 2002, through mid-July: Version 3a, a special celebration layout in honor of the Detroit Red Wings capturing their 10th Stanley Cup, and third in six years. Go Red Wings!

2003-04: Version 4, featuring orographic stratiform clouds over Antarctica. Links filled the fixed sky background with text, scrolling up from behind the mountains. I was really pleased with this layout, even though dumb ol' IE put a pointless ugly bar between the mountain and the sky. The date is my birthday.

2004-05: Version 5, featuring a slide of my dad's (whose firework pictures have won awards). I was pleased with this layout at 800x600, which I was using when made it. Unfortunately, it didn't look so good in 1024x768. I took the screencap with my old computer so you can see what it was supposed to look like. The Japanese says hanabi matsuri ("firework festival").

Do you have link banners?

Yes, I do! If you would like to link Skygawker.com, here are some banners you could use, in tiny, medium, and still-not-very-big sizes. Text links are, of course, equally appreciated. Thank you very, very much to everyone who links us. :)

   

I also have banners for each of my Internet Cartoons.

Where is your domain hosted?

DreamHost, and I can't say enough good things about them. I love them. I'm incredibly pleased with their service and prices and support and everything. If you're looking to get your own domain and want to know specifically what I think of the service, do talk to me about it. Oh, and if you go to sign up with them, tell them jessie19 sent you, won't you? It gets me reward points.

How often do you update these sites?

As often as I can. I love to write stories and work on my other projects, but I'm often forced against my will to neglect them. If there hasn't been an update for a few months, know at least that I am quite conscious of it and am certainly anxious to get something updated, because I love working on this site.

You can see a record of updates for the past year or so on the updates page.

Did you create everything on this domain?

Yeah, pretty much everything. I found a few MIDIs floating around the public domain, I have some gift artwork, the picture at the left is by John Rogos, and I didn't create the image from Ojamajo Doremi that is on my 404 error page. Otherwise, it's all my original work. Please don't be snatching anything off this page, okay? If you'd like to use something, though, please e-mail and ask permission before taking any stories/graphics/etc., and I'll most likely be flattered and let you use whatever you like.

Skygawker.com and all stories, characters, and images contained here are © 1996-2008 Jessie Mannisto, all rights reserved.

Are you done rambling now?

Yep! Go read the real content of Skygawker.com now. I hope you'll enjoy it.