How this homepage has been created

The story...

       A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... There was I. I surfed on the flows of the Internet and discovered many many homepages. With homepages I mean private homepages... of ordinary people, not of some big unnecessary companies (Microsoft). I always thought I don't need a page. What would it be for ???  In my opinion, personal homepages only take up space and slow the Internet down. You usually don't find out too much of new stuff about people on their homepages. All things other people need to know are told in chats (my way of getting to know new people) or in emails. If someone has a homepage, he should use it for telling things he can't in a chat. For example a picture of himself. Or stuff he made. Poems. Programs. MP3's. Doesn't matter. As long as it is interesting for other people. As I looked at all the other people's homepages...well, they were...erm...let's say not fulfilling my expectations. I criticised the pages a lot. People didn't like that too much. They said something comparable to 'Do you have a better one ?!?'. I explained that I don't want a page if people can find out everything they need to know about me just by talking to me. I didn't have stuff to put on it neither. And last but not least, time. If someone chats three hours a day, tries to download stuff and reply to mails, he kind of hardly finds time to create a quality homepage. As it seems, (not that I would be too happy about it,) I have a bit of time now. So I rethought my attitudes to personal homepages. I found out that I might have some interesting stuff to put on it. And I decided. I would try to make the best homepage relatively to the personal ones I've seen, so people can see it can be done better. I know, it won't happen overnight, it needs time. So I am working on it. You are now having the pleasure to see the most recent results.

Software used:

       People with very much computer knowledge and experience do know that you don't create much stuff on a computer without the proper software. Same way I had to use some programs so that this homepage could be conceived. Here they are.

• HomeSite - a great program for writing HTML. Many functions. It was used to create these pages.
• The HTML Reference Library - explanation of all the HTML tags, up to HTML 4.0, very detailed. With information about which browser what tag supports, from what version on and more. It was used to amaze my mind about how uselessly (so far) three and more tags do the same thing. And to learn more about them.
• Internet Explorer - was used to test the look-a-like of this homepage. Unfortunately, it took over the lead in the browser market. With Microsoft's marketing strategy (We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.), it's no wonder. It even begins to have more features than the good ol' Netscape Navigator (from now on just "Netscape"). Even I am using it more often. Yes. You are right. Shame on me.
• Netscape Navigator - the very greatest browser ever. And I have seen all of them. Netscape and Internet Explorer ;-) (from now on just "Explorer"). I used it to check if the pages look the same there as in Explorer. Unfortunately, Microsoft's strategy was successful and Netscape lost its major position among the browsers. :-(  Meet you in heaven, bro.
• Reptile - a very fine tool for creating background textures. I used it to create all of the backgrounds you can see on my pages. It's a bit complicated at the first look, but you get used to it after about five minutes of trying it out. There also are some presets already created for your pleasure, I especially praise the "Waves 3D" preset. It is really beautiful in my opinion. You won't find it on my homepage, though. I wanted to create this homepage from scratch, including no presets. :-)
• Paint Shop Pro - an image and graphics manipulation and editing program. It was used to resize the photos on my Photos page and to convert the pictures to PNGs and JPGs, because the good old SEA had a worse compression on PNGs. I wonder why.
• Pngcrush - a tool for making PNG images even smaller, without losing quality. When using the '-brute' switch pngcrush tries every possible PNG compression method to find the optimal one. I used it for all the PNG images on my homepage. Pngcrush doesn't have a homepage so the link here points to its newest version on an FTP server.
• Xara 3D - a program for making 3D text images and animations. I used it to create the intro pictures and the 'NEW' and 'UPDATED' animated images.

What's New

       First work on this homepage was done on Saturday, June 5^th 1999. I decided to do the whole thing in pure HTML writing. No WYSIWYG editing. Pure code. Just like real hackers do.

October 12^th 2003

I know, I know, I haven't written for too long, but I currently don't feel the need. However, I've been contacted by a company that says it owns the copyright for the 3D pictures, so I unfortunately had to remove them. Thanks to all the fans who liked them.
Also, my homepage is very probably going to move somewhere else, soon (this also means I'm going to have a new email address, too). I don't know where yet, though. In the meantime you can use the AngelFire mirror, or check Google or AllTheWeb for "Roman Korcek", my new page address might appear there after a while. You can also contact me on ICQ at 3795801. See you.

June 24^th 2002

Added three new thoughts, reorganized the structure a little bit - created a new page for the Recent update's thought only and my email address has changed from svskrm@ba.sknet.sk to thehacker@host.sk .

July 25^th 2001

I published two new thoughts. I didn't want to publish the first one too soon, since there are people who shouldn't know the things which I wrote about in it but now it's ok. I also have some new pics to add, so maybe someday you'll see new photos of me. That's about it.

January 15^th - 25^th 2001

I added Baptism By Fire. Had to reformat it, add the pictures, write the "Behind the scenes" info... Hope someone likes it.
Also some minor changes - removed the "Stuff concerning me" heading and replaced it with headings for each section, made HTML more 4.0 compliant... nothing special.

September 3^rd - 13^th 2000

Sorry it's been so long. I wrote a new thought (wow, how much) and published it. There should be more coming, but as this is my graduation school term (gonna graduate in May 2001) I don't have that much time.

May 3^rd - 7^th 2000

I wrote two new thoughts and changed the style sheet a little bit.

April 21^st - 22^nd 2000

I wrote a new thought and translated it. The previous thoughts are now oficially named 'Your love' and 'Nobody'.

April 10^th 2000

I removed the link to Kathy's homepage on the 'What Kathy Wrote' page and reversed the order of the thoughts on the Past Thoughts page, so that the newest thought comes first.

April 9^th 2000

I reduced the packed size of my public PGP key and the packed fonts, changed the Pngcrush link to point to the newest version on an FTP server, added SETI@Home to the Links page, created a prototype of the icon bar, removed the screen resolution stuff from the main page because everybody but one person ignored it and I added a link to the Start page making it possible to skip the Intro pages. And this took me the whole day...

January 29^th 2000

I optimized the 'NEW', 'UPDATED' and 'PGP Now !' images, changed the Paint Shop Pro link, added Xara 3D to Software used and changed the alt text for the intro images a bit.

January 24^th 2000

I finished adding a shorter description to each link.

January 21^st 2000

I translated both new thoughts to Slovak.

January 20^th 2000

I wrote the second thought, codename 'You II'. Also the align attribute of the 'updated' and and 'new' pictures was changed to be HTML 4.0 compliant.

January 8^th 2000

I wrote the first of the two new thoughts, codename 'You'.

November 6^th 1999 - January 7^th 2000

Much work was done. In the first weeks I worked on the Encoder Frontend, an add-on to an encryption program soon to be added onto my page. In the last two weeks I worked on adding the navigation bar to every page, changing the dedications and fonts download section - removed the Tahoma font, I changed the overall font from Tahoma to Arial, optimized the PNG images using pngcrush, checked the pages for HTML errors and tried to make them fully HTML 4.0 compliant, checked the pages for bold type font usage and usually converted it to italics (because the overall font is bold - therefore bold can't be used to emphasize text), checked for the <big> tag (didn't work with Netscape), rearranged this What's New section, wrote a new thought (well, more sort of story), added two links, programmed the scrres util, corrected some image positions, added pngcrush to the programs used to create this page, corrected the HTMLib and the Paint Shop Pro webpage addresses, and all of this in the Slovak version, too. Phew.

November 5^th 1999

I updated the link to my PGP public key on the Links page. It didn't work, because AngelFire doesn't accept files with the extension .asc, so I had to pack it by ZIP and now it should work.

August 25^th - November 2^nd 1999

I've been working on many new additions to the page, but all at once and my spare time has been dramatically reduced by school, so none has been published, until November 2^nd. A new thought about hackers was written and the Links page has been added. Also the text to the NedStat counter has been modified a bit. I am still working on many other things.

August 21^st-24^th 1999

I've translated the two thoughts into Slovak and added the 3D pictures, which were translated into Slovak, too. :-)  I also created the 'NEW' and 'NOVE' images, and did some small changes to the pages. Like changing the numbers from eg. 5320 to 5,320. And I put a link to the main page onto every significant subpage. I removed the AngelFire counter, because I accidentally deleted the visits-info on the server. The NedStat counter remains, as it has been reliable so far. The background music on the main page has been changed, too, to be a little bit more optimistic. :-)  I've also changed the dedications a bit. And the 'Welcome !' on the main page was moved a bit closer to the top of the page, too. I think that's about it.

August 20^th 1999

I finally finished the proccess of creating the 'UPDATED' rotating animated GIF. Man, until I found the right color, the right font and the right angle of view... two weeks ?  I also put it onto my page everywhere where something was changed since the last update. I'll do it this way: only the things updated on the date of the update mentioned on the beginning on the main page will have the GIF with them. Everything else won't.

August 3^rd 1999

I wrote the thought about growing up.

July 25^th 1999

I wrote the thought about wisdom.

July 19^th 1999

I added the intro pages to both the English and the Slovak version of the homepage.

July 17^th 1999

I optimized the animated gif-flags a little bit. They are a bit smaller now.

July 16^th 1999

Chronology was changed in Slovak version, too. I also added one pic, taken in summer '98.

July 14^th 1999

This chronology was rewritten into a date-sorted list. The photos were added to the Slovak version, too.

July 12^th-13^th 1999

I did some work with the pics described in the Experts' stuff section of my Photos page and put them online.

July 7^th 1999

I scanned in some photos.

July 6^th 1999

I wrote a new thought, about feeling alone.

June 20^th-21^st 1999

A monumental deed was done. Everything I have written so far I translated into Slovak. A hard piece of work. You might want to know why I didn't use diacritics. The reason is simple. There are only problems with it. First, the font I use does not support diacritics. Second, windows' codepages are a deadly thing. Better don't mess with it. It is better this way, trust me.

June 18^th 1999

I wrote a new thought, about suicide.

June 17^th 1999

I added the option to download the Lucida Handwriting, used on the page Kathy created for me.

June 16^th 1999

I wrote down a new thought, moved the previous one to my thoughts of the past page (I guess I will always do it like that) and added the page which Kathy once made for me. Thank you for creating it.

June 15^th 1999

It was the national day of Roman's second biggest pain and I expressed my thoughts on the index page in the section 'Recent update's thought...'. The world shall know how I felt.

June 14^th 1999

I cut off some border of the pictures showing how the correct fonts should look like.

June 13^th 1999

I added the dedications and 'download fonts' section.

June 12^th 1999

I finished the work on the pic and enhanced my unending knowledge of style sheets. I applied some great effects to Heading 2. To my regret I found out that Explorer is being better at style sheets than Netscape... :-(  I expressed my thoughts in the following work of art.

       Why ?  Why does Netscape not support things Explorer does ?  Why can you work half a day on style sheets to create a really fantastic look of your page just to find out Netscape does not support it ?  Why doesn't even 1 cm in Netscape equal 1 cm in Explorer ?  Man am I...let's say unsatisfied with Netscape. I hope that in the future the support will be better than it is now. Actually, how do I find out ?  Where is some documentation about the HTML implementation of those products ?  Can someone help me ?  If yes, please write me. I'd be very grateful.

June 11^th 1999

It was the day of adding the backgrounds. Actually only one, to this page. And the day of the style sheets. I learned how to use them and applied my unending knowledge to Heading 1. ;-)  After achieving this unreachable success I started to work on the first picture. It is the Office 2000 Borg Cubus one.

June 9^th 1999

I created some nice backgrounds with Reptile. Was hell of a work, because I first saved the background to GIF, but after saving them I found out that they look somehow strange, probably because of the only 256 colors suported by GIF. Therefore I tried JPG, happily saving one background after another, setting the quality to 100%. But the pics were kind of small for the quality, and didn't look too great... So I tried to press <Enter> after typing in the quality value... wow. It worked. So I had to do it from the beginning again, but I think it was worth it.

June 8^th 1999

Got Explorer 5 home (where I do all the work), PNGs finally worked. Tried HotDog 5.5 - a HTML editor - but found out that HomeSite fits my needs better. Added some stuff to this page and corrected some formal mistakes.

June 7^th 1999

First attempts to add PNG images.

June 5^th-6^th 1999

First work on this page.