About Sycraft.org

So what is Sycraft.org? Well, it's just my personal website for messing around with. Personal websites seem to be a real popular thing so I figure I might as well have one too. If nothing else it gives me a place to stick random thoughts and to try out some web design tricks I want to mess with. Actually I've had a site up in some form or another for years and years, but it's never really been complete. Most of the time it was just a homepage with an image on it that served as a placeholder, and then I'd post random things and link to them from other places.

At any rate, the graphics or this site were designed by a friend of mine who wishes not to be named because his boss is a dick and disapproves of indy work, even if non-profit. All the HTML code was done by me in a text editor. I've always been a purist and text editor guy when it comes to HTML. Originally it was because I was too cheap to buy an advanced editor, and the ones I tried sucked. Well these days there are some rockin' editors out there like Dreamweaver but I've been doing HTML in a text editor for like 6 years now and I just don't feel like learning something new, even if it would make my life easier.

Best viewed with?

I used to think that all the "best viewed with XXX browser" things were stupid, until I actually tried web design and realized that, despite the standards, everyone has their own way of doing things. I try really hard to make my code work with the widest possible range of browsers possible, but nonetheless there are still bound to be problems. That said here's a browser breakdown for the site:

This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer 5.5 or newer for Microsoft Windows. The reason being that I use some of the DirectX effects that only it supports. They can do nifty things like add shadows to text, do motion blur and so on and so forth. Well, being that it's MS stuff, and DirectX at that, it works only in IE and only for Windows.

Never fear though, the DX effects, while cool, are non-essential and do not hinder the site from rendering properly on other browsers and platforms. Sycraft.org also looks great in Mozilla 1.2 and Opera 6.05. If you have an older version and it is broken, get the new version there is no excuse for running old code. As for Netscape, I don't know, I won't run it on my system and really, neither should you. Get Mozilla, it's Netscape but without the suck.

As I said, I try to write good HTML code, but you just can't make all browsers happy. Some just have problems in general, and some have difficulties I didn't anticipate. If you find that Sycraft.org renders improperly in your browser, make sure you have the latest version before you contact me. I don't much care if you have problems with Netscape 4 or IE 3 or something. You ought to have upgraded. However if you have a current browser and it doesn't render right, please let me know and I'll see what I can do.

About the name Sycraft

I often get asked where I got the name Sycraft, as it's uncommon and not from any literature or anything like that. Well, back in 1996 when I first got on the Internet, one of the first things I wanted to do was play on a MUD called Realms of Despair. One of the requirements for this MUD was that you have a medieval sounding name for your character. Well, I didn't know what to use so my friend who introduced me to the game got a random name generator for this kind of thing. It asked for a letter to start with, I keyed in S and it spit out Sycraft.

Of course, MUDs aren't the only thing on the Internet that use pseudonyms, and I'm not very creative with names, so I used it when I got on IRC, when I played Quake, when I started a website and so on. It's what I've become known by on the web and I stick with it since I find it confusing when people change their online identities all the time.

There actually is one other Sycraft that I've come across, and that it Sycraft Software. They have owned sycraft.com on and off for about 4 years now. I don't know what they do, as their web page has always been in its current "under construction" state. I'm also not sure where they got their name, it is possible it was form me since they didn't come around until 1999 or so and I had owned sycraft.org for some time before that and been on the Internet as Sycraft since 1996. Be that as it may, they are the only other Sycraft I've ever seen. Sycraft.net also exists, but belongs to me as well for my internal network.