Halftime Show

Random bits, bytes and links to other stuff

I'm doing a new thing now.

Remember When? A History of The Kreft Net

Every once in a while, it's fun to take a look back into the past to see where it is we've come from. Just when you think you haven't gotten anywhere, something you see that you did a while ago changes your mind.

Remember when my website was called Kollege Sucks? This was what the home page originally looked like back in the fall of 1995 (actually the original site used frames which, as I found out later after trying to maintain a framed and frameless version of the same site, was a pain in the butt. I haven't used frames since). Later, I changed the Beavis and Butt-Head images to reflect the arrival of warmer weather.

After college, I grew wery of the Beavis and Butt-Head look and decided it was time for a change. At the time that I released kreft.net as Tales of Ribaldry and Wanton Destruction, I was in a creative slump and didn't know what on earth to call a site full of basketball stories and childhood screw-ups, but I figured that ToRaWD was better than "Kollege Sucks." I was also a rather unhappy person at the time, which explains the "Disgruntled Postal Workers" and numerous bullet holes.

But this new look didn't extend into a theme for the entire site--it only applied to a very small collection of childhood stories (see below) and just felt like a square peg in a round hole. I wanted a "happier" look, as the black background was just too "dark" for me on too many different levels. Unfortunately, my creative slump was worse than ever, and I wound up throwing together this horrible mess. Fortunately, I regained my sanity in time to discontinue pursuing that design and just let the black-background, bullet-hole site sit until I thought of something better. I still can't believe I sank so low. *shudder*

Flash forward to the Spring of 1997 after I had moved from Chicago back to my parents' house in Florida. My knee was still very, very sore from surgery not long before, so I spent a lot of time just sitting in front of the computer looking for something to do. As I crawled into bed at about 1:30am after a marathon IRC time-wasting session I, in my semi-conscious state, began to free-associate in my head:

"www.kreft.net. Hrmm. What can I do with that? I really hate my current design.

Kreft.net. Hrmmm......Well, what's the bulk of my content about, and how do people know who I am?

Basketball. [ Slipping under the covers and getting settled in. ]

What is there about basketball that I can use? I need something catchy.

Bench? That's where I spend all my time....no that won't do.

Ball? Too generic--anyone can do that.

Rim? No.

Hrmmm...the rim has a net on it.....Hrmmm...this might be something. My website is on the InterNET, basketball has a NET, and....HEY! My domain name is "kreft.NET!!!!" [I once had aspirations of starting my own ISP until the market was thoroughly saturated with them and I thus chose ".net" rather than ".com" or ".org."] That's it! "The Kreft Net!!!" YES!

With this, I shot out of bed like a bolt of lightning, ran into the den and sat before my PowerMac 7100/66. I began searching for photos of basketball rims until I found one about an hour later of a coach cutting one down after a big victory. I wasted no time grabbing the image and going to work with Adobe Photoshop, methodically selecting the rim and barely-attached net and deleting the background. This image would become the cornerstone of "The Kreft Net"'s new logo, which you see on the site today. :-)

About five or six hours later, at the crack of dawn, I went to bed with 90% of my website completely re-designed. The only thing that was still unresolved was how to rename the sections from "The Man", "The Myths", "The Legends", etc. to something relating to basketball. The next afternoon, I came up with the existing setion titles:

Introduction : every basketball game has an introduction of the starting lineups. It was only fitting that my site have one, too.
Hardwood Journals : basketball games are typically played on hardwood floors--a fitting name for stories written about such games.
Halftime Show : The stuff you see in a halftime show has nothing (generally) to do with basketball--a perfect place to put all of the junk that had nothing to do with basketball.
Road Trip : Basketball players spend a lot of time on the road, travelling to opponents' venues. A page of links to other sites would be just like taking a roadtrip.
Contact : Another play on words. Basketball is a contact sport, and this is where people would be able to contact me via e-mail.

And so The Kreft Net as you know it today came into being and has remained fundamentally unchanged since then as a lasting reminder of a late-nite brain storming session with myself.

I don't know how long it'll stay this way. Maybe forever, maybe for only another day. I'm no longer a basketball player by profession, and I likely will not add any more to the Hardwood Journals, so once again the site's theme is outdated--but I just can't bear the thought of throwing away such a classic (IMHO) design. So I won't...unless I feel a sudden surge of creativity come over me again.

True Stories

When I was a little kid, I was always getting into trouble or toeing the line bordering on it. Take for example, the time I dove off the top of some bleachers during a baseball game...or the time I took a dead baby bird and dropped it into some guy's gas tank.

When I reached my teens (a miracle in itself), I was still prone to get into mischief-- like in high school when I hijacked the custodian's golf cart not once, not twice, but thrice!!!

Entering the work force was something I had looked forward to since the time I turned thirteen. I didn't know at the time what Workman's Comp was, but I was given a crash course in it after slicing open my left thumb and then later dropping a 3/8" sheet of plywood edge-wise on my big toe.

Sound FX

I led a very boring life growing up. The only entertainment I had outside of television was to keep myself amused making sound effects. These are some of the more recognizeable sound effects in my personal arsenal of strange noises.

100% organic--all sounds were made with my mouth and recorded straight to disk with no digital alteration whatsoever.