About two years ago, when I first learned just enough HTML to get me in serious trouble, I took advantage of my free academic web server account and created a slew of crappy-to-halfway decent webpages as an exercise in vanity. Those sites are mostly gone, with my blog using most of cyber-energy these days...but like a slumlord, I am slowly renovating what were the neglected dregs of interesting ideas and turning them into neat, gentrified little units. Sort of.

The first renovation was my tribute to the late, great Gobbler Motel of Johnson Creek, Wisconsin. If that name sounds familiar, that's because James Lileks created a hilarious section on his website called "The Grooviest Motel In Wisconsin" based on a vintage brochure from the torturously kitschy fleabag - every nascent proto-geek forwarded the URL to that site to all their Usenet buddies. Me included. Days after I stopped laughing my tush off, I realized I lived two hours away from the Gobbler and made it my mission to create my own Gobbler website - but although I didn't plan it that way, this one would show the place in its death and decline. Kind of like Elvis in the coffin. "The Requiem for the Gobbler Motel" is my oldest website; now all fresh and spiffied up on Blogspot, and more purple than ever.

Next project, my long-foundering X-Files site - The X-log. Somehow, there just never seems to be enough time to write commentary and synopses on the X-Files episodes we periodically pop in the DVD. It's my favorite TV show, and if any program is worth my time to pore over and analyze, this one is it. Well, now that I know a little more HTML (and a smidgen of CSS, too, for good measure), I thought it high time I brought the X-Log back to life, this time a little cleaner and sharper than before - and it doesn't hurt to have a DVD screen capture utility handy. Another little goose for my motivation was the fact that FOX recently deactivated their official X-Files site...boo hoo.

Somebody's gotta do the job.

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