About this site

What is GravityCore?

A gravity core is a scientific instrument used to retrieve samples from the seafloor. I first saw the term while watching the move The Lake at the Bottom of the World (2022). I was trying to think of names for my site and that really popped out at me as something I would have used for a site name in 2000.

I picked it because it sounds cool. I am not a scientist.

Why did I make this site?

I am 40 near the end of August 2024 so naturally I've been highly introspective and reflective about my life so far. I'm thinking of old art and media I used to get into but don't anymore, and I have to admit, I've missed personal sites since I stopped keeping them in 2011. In retrospect it's fine -- I was out living my life, not spending much time on the computer, but I do miss the community and pixel clubs from that time.

I don't expect to find the same community I had back then, only to capture a hint of that feeling I had 13-25 building sites and keeping my creativity out there. I also think this is a fantastic opportunity to share what piece of the old web I have contained.

It's really possible this may eventually become a maze of content and not a well-structured site. I am letting my messy side out a bit, too, because I like to mix some old and new in everything. GravityCore is my web playground to learn and try new things!

Current Layout

Instead of intending to do a layout that was "old" looking, I just used my most basic skillz to build this layout, but also did the kind of research one might have done in 1998 when building a new site: Click around other people's sites for HTML guidance and ideas, and combine all of the cool looking things into your site. (I also did some Google searching, which is cheating.)

In the spirit of myself circa 1998-2004, I mish-mashed a bunch of things I thought were neat into this one layout, which has turned out to look kind of dull. I still like it and I'll improve it over time! I am going for a spooky feel, I just need to learn more about coding and get better at editing images.

V1

Oops I put a red mark in the first image, I guess it's just like that now.

Instead of "coding like 1999" I wanted to open a page I made in 1999 and update it for this site. That seems like the easiest/fastest way to get back into that groove (for me) because I would be able to immediately see the limits and find where I left off creatively.

I found a 2005 HTML layout from my archives and started with that. I wanted to start with something MUCH older, but I couldn't find any good examples of code that was already started for me -- my pre-2005 sites are archived on floppy disks.

I'm still going to hunt down my archives and maybe my next layout will look older. This layout was "born" in Feb 2005 during my last few years of college. I knew a little CSS but I didn't know about keeping a separate "stylesheet" file yet. Because of this, the CSS is encoded into EACH PAGE, so any time I need to update a style, I have to update all of them. (The part of my brain that understands good content strategy is screaming, but it's worth it for the authenticity.)

Things adopted from sites pre-2005: Table layout, iframe layout, gifs, basically everything in the toybox, the background, guestbook, random images of things I own floating in space

Credits & Info

Built using NotePad++ on my computer and hosted by Neocities.