About This Site

Quick Links:  Intro • History • Credits • Links
About Fuzzy • About Images

Hello!  And welcome to About This Site.  This page gives a little more information on the current sections of Fuzzy World 3, as well as some history behind the site.

Intro

Photo Albums and Railroad Photos
As mentioned in History below, my railroad pictures were among the main reasons I developed a web site.  However, I also have a healthy interest in photographing some non-railroad subjects, which is why my photos are divided into non-railroad Photo Albums and Railroad Photos.

The biggest change for this section came in March 2004, when I purchased an Olympus C-740 Ultra Zoom digital camera.  Prior to this, I had taken all of my photos with disposable cameras, and later with a cheap 35mm camera.  (A few of these photos can still be found on the site!)  I had a couple opportunities in late 2003 and early 2004 to experiment with a camera of this same type that belongs to a friend, and I was so impressed with the camera and its 10x optical zoom, that I bought one for myself!  (And a second C-740UZ in 2005, after I broke the LCD screen on the first camera...)

For additional information on the images used on this site, please see About Images.

*** new feature coming soon... ***

Bicycling
In June 2003, I dug my ten-speed bicycle out of the "milk house" at my dad's, and started riding.  I hadn't been on my bicycle for almost ten years – though I always had those "good intentions".  After exploring a couple trails, I started thinking that I should document some of the routes that I was exploring, and thus the Bicycling section was born!  Along the way, I found that some trails had very poor maps, or none at all, so I also started mapping some of these previously uncharted trails.

Unfortunately, 2005 and 2006 didn't see me out on the trails much, but I did manage to check out some developing projects, and thus those two years are represented by "Trail Reports".  2007 should see me out on the trails once again, along with Debbie.

The Fuzzy World 3um
"3... um?  What's that?" several people have asked me when they see what I have on my site.  Well, here's the answer: It's a forum, but I couldn't very well have a "four"um on Fuzzy World 3, now could I?

The 3um is the newest section of Fuzzy World 3, and is a discussion forum for those who are interested in some of the same things that I am: Railroads, Photography, Milwaukeeland, Bicycling, Websites, and, well, just about anything else!  There's something for everyone on the 3um, though users do have to register and introduce themselves before they are allowed to fully participate in discussions!  (See the Important topics for more information.)

History of Fuzzy World 3

"Way back" in 2002, I decided that I would try my hand at creating a website.  My impetus for this decision was an increasing number of digital picture files on my computer that I wanted to share with the world, coupled with inspiration from other people's websites, as well as my discovery that I could start a website for free with GeoCities with my Yahoo!ID.

My first attempt at a website was somewhat horrible, but after switching to a different program and trying again, I managed to produce much better results.  The original public version (which soon became "Fuzzy Online") included the Home Page, Pictures, the predecessor to this page, and a page of links; Bicycling and Best of Fuzzy's E-Mails (predecessor to Stuff) joined the lineup in June 2003.

My GeoCities site reached an all-time peak of popularity in March 2005.  Unfortunately, with the increase in popularity came a decrease in site availability, due to my free site's bandwidth constraints.  Thus the decision was made to look for another site host.  Initially, I signed on with NRG.to (a German free host) as "Fuzzy World", but my existence as Fuzzy World ended abruptly when the site went down on April 15th!  I retreated back to GeoCities, fixed the "holes" left by NRG.to's unavailability, and went looking for another host.  (NRG.to came back by mid-May, but by then I had moved on...)

Finally, I decided to make the big leap and go for a paid website, selecting Lypha as my host.  The last thing I needed to do was register a domain; unfortunately, fuzzyworld.com was already taken, so I registered as fuzzyworld3.com, since this was my third website.  Moving pages from the old site to the new one commenced almost immediately, as some work had already been done in preparation for the aborted move to NRG.to.

Some content remained (and still remains) on what is left of the old GeoCities site, which has been slightly updated and moved to fuzzy2.8m.com.  The future of fuzzy2.8m is somewhat uncertain, and I may eventually just upgrade everything and bring it onto Fuzzy World 3.

By the end of 2005, I had expanded Fuzzy World 3 vastly, adding more Stuff, and more and larger Photo Albums.  In addition, I had started to experiment with hosting my large-view photos on-site (most photos were earlier hosted on Epson PhotoCenter), and tried out a photo album generator as well.  As a result, I realized that my site was pretty well disorganized, and badly in need of a redesign.

In early 2006, I developed a set of standards to which I would redesign Fuzzy World 3 in its entirety.  Included in the redesign was the badly-neglected Bicycling section, which was still hiding out on the old GeoCities site, along with the last remaining "Best E-mails" page that wasn't part of Stuff.  Work on those two sections wrapped up rather quickly; however, the Photo Albums was going to be a much bigger project, as I not only had to redesign the albums themselves, but also the large-view photos, which used at least four different outdated Album page styles!  Other complications to this part of the project included some serious reorganization of the section (including the Railroad Photos sub-section) and a healthy crop of new photos being added throughout 2006!  However, by the beginning of February 2007, Photo Albums had been completely redesigned, and the last remaining pieces of this site were completed by the end of March 2007.

Credits!

I need to thank several people for providing tools and inspiration, and helping me make this website what it is:

Andrew Martin!  Andrew was the first person I knew who had his own website, and despite his best efforts, I never created my own website until long after his had disappeared into oblivion.  To his credit, Andrew did create a page for me, since I had no web presence at the time...  Maybe I should return the favor...?

Rich from Rich's Website Help - Rich's site was a great source for some of my knowledge of HTML!

Bruce Oldenburg, whose Fill-In-the-Blanks web page forms inspired me to start experimenting with web pages outside of the page generator that I started with.

StatCounter, whose site statistics and counter are awesome!  And then there's the StatCounter Forums, from which I've learned a lot about improving my search engine standings, and cleaning up my website!

Isaac Olson's Site of Fools.  SOF was my first exposure to phpBB, which is what powers the 3um!  Also, the guys on there have been tremendously helpful and encouraging for some of my redesign ideas and photography.

Chuck Frey - for recommending Limon Photo Album

All the people on the groups and forums I belong to that have helped me be in the right place at the right time, and who are regular visitors to my site!

Photo contributors, including Eric J. Stoner, Ken Stoker, Brent P., MilwBeerNut, Chris Keating, and Roger Bartelt.

... And I'm sure there's a few other people that I've missed that I should be thanking as well!!!

Links

A few more notable links that haven't found a home anywhere else...

Fuzzy on MySpace!!!
Stupid MySpace... X(

watercolourwizard.com
David and Shana Crain's website, featuring all their arts and talents...

Wisconsin Highways
Chris Bessert's excellent site on the history of Wisconsin's numbered highways.
Not to be confused, however, with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) website...

Kurumi
Another road and highway website, lots of neat stuff on there!

Yahoo!
Yahoo! provided me with my first e-mail address, so you could say that they kinda started me in this whole mess!
Also, Y!'s GeoCities was the home of this site for its first two and a half years of existence.

Flickr
I started putting a small selection of photos on Flickr this year, and with the recent demise of Epson PhotoCenter,
they are now my preferred choice for a free (or cheap) photo host.

Lypha
The current host of Fuzzy World 3, an excellent low-cost host.