Colophon
Commercial web development projects rarely provide opportunities for the pedantic web-standards geek to code a site in the most rigorous, modular, and generally 'correct' way available. Often a rush to make deadlines compromises the pursuit of these worthy goals, making maintenance and expansion costly later. The emphasis of many clients on eye-candy web design, although it may be absolutely correct for marketing purposes, is another obstacle preventing the web developer from placing a greater value on function than form. However, a personal web site is another matter, and here I have been free to combine minimalist design, a reliance on standards-compliant technology, and a rigorous separation between content and presentation. If you spot any mistakes, don't hesitate to let me know - your efforts will be appreciated.
All of the pages on this site are written in XML, using emacs. There is no actual Document Type Declaration, but if there were, it would be one of my own creation, although the structure and element-names of my XML files owe a lot to DocBook. Conversion to the XHTML rendered by your browser is dictated by XSLT stylesheets and conducted by Sablotron - I simply convert the files and upload the resulting html to the site, along with the XML originals for reference. That upload is handled with a little perl script called bloader.pl, which maintains the files on the server as recent copies of the local files.
The site graphics - just the thumbnails and a couple of little things, like the line on the left there - were created in Photoshop or Gimp. I like to experiment with layouts in Adobe Illustrator, and usually do most of my graphics there, with some tweaking in the raster programs later.
Believing the site needed a title, like that of a book, instead of merely featuring my name across the masthead, I put my neglected titling skills to work. A Grasp-Exceeding Reach was the result. It is not in use now as I came to think it extravagantly pretentious, not at all in keeping with the everyday sort of pretension displayed here; therefore I use just my own name - a not entirely satisfying expedient. If enough people (alright, one will do!) email me to protest that A Grasp-Exceeding Reach is perfectly modest and not at all contrived or banal, I might put it back. It would at least give me the possibility of referring to the site with the acronym AGER!