Over the Puddle

Ever since I heard about blogging on the web, and especially since I started working for the Web Development Office on campus, I thought I should have a page of my own. The primary purpose was to have a place on the internet where I could post my thoughts about studying abroad, and Japan in particular. Since then, I thought it might be fun to try and post articles about other topics that might be interesting as well. While I don’t have grandoise dreams of attracting huge swarms of readers, I feel if nothing else, this might be a good exercise in writing, and also provide me an opportunity to create a webpage for myself for a change.

The technical bits

Because I work at a Web Development office, I feel it very important to adhere to standards put forth by w3.org. To prove this, Ocllo.com is fully (x)HTML 1.1 compliant, and also CSS compliant as well. Don’t believe me? Try clicking on the links to the right there that say XHTML and CSS. This page is intended for modern browsers, and I highly recommend the latest version of Mozilla, Firefox, or Safari if you are Mac inclined. This should display properly in any version 6 or above browser (Opera, Mozilla, IE), and I give no guarentees about Netscape 4, as it is very old, and people should upgrade if they are still using it. What is actually ironic, is that this page will display properly in Lynx (text browser) of all things, and still have issues in Netscape 4. Anything less than Netscape 6 is vile, and if you are using Netscape 6+ you really should be using Mozilla anyway. Content generation is primarily done through Movabletype, as it allows for a wonderful templating system, and also through the use of a little php.

Why a name of Ocllo.com?

Like most things, I often don’t just come up with something and go with it, but rather ponder and agonize for days on end, trying to find that perfect answer. The same held true for trying to decide of a home for my webpage. I spent days trying to think of a witty site name, or a funny one, to no avail. I wanted something that was uniquely me, and then it struck me, Ocllo.com! What exactly is Ocllo though, and why would I use it as a name? Well, to properly answer this, we have to travel back in time to my freshman and sophomore years of college, and a game called Ultima Online, which is still alive and running. Ultima was a fine game at its time, and I still use it as a measure of all new MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games). With its classless, leveless system, it afforded a flexibility unseen in games before or after it. You played your character, and if you didn’t want to be a fighter anymore, you merely acted like a mage, or whatever new style you wanted, and your skills and stats would slowly change to something fitting the new style. What this meant was that if you got bored of a character, you played it differently. You had a character, and you became recognizable because you didn’t have many different characters, but usually one main character you played with the most. I was no different, and had a character, Salamander, who is near and dear to me. But why Ocllo? Well, I travelled across the lands of Britannia, and eventually settled into the city of Ocllo, which was on an island in the middle of the ocean. This became my home for almost two years, and I spent at least 40 hours a week playing, no, living in UO, and in particular, Ocllo. My online friends also lived in Ocllo, and we spent many hours talking, practicing, and just hanging out in the town as we would in real life. I love that town. So, as I was listening to some of the old midi songs of UO, I happened across the theme song from Ocllo, and a flood of memories hit me. It was then that I realized that I had found the home for my webpage. As it once served me as a home in UO, it now serves as my home on the web. There you have it, the story behind the name.