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About the Site

Motivation and Purpose

Over the years, the purpose of Star Trek Minutiae and my motivation for maintaining it has changed considerably. When I first started making plans for my own website in late 1999, I was quite enthusiastic for the Star Trek universe, and used the website to channel all my creative thoughts concerning the show. There were all sorts of projects that I either dabbled in speculatively or threw myself into entirely: the Advanced Starship Design Bureau, the History of the Earth-Romulan War, and Star Trek: Renaissance, to name just three.

But as I spent time creating and expanding the site, I discovered another interest as well: web design. STM has also become a platform with which I can experiment with new design techniques, and learn new coding languages and technologies. Sure, I may end up spending as much time redesigning STM as I do adding new content (or maybe even more!), but I think it's a useful endeavor.

But in the end, what is any personal website about in this day and age? I might as well just come out and say it: it's all about me! STM is a place for me to showcase whatever catches my fancy, to share with everyone else the stuff I think is cool, and to get on a (virtual) soapbox to at least pretend that other people are interested in what I have to say. And that's what the whole Internet is really about, right?

See also: History of Star Trek Minutiae

About Dan Carlson

Me and My PowerBook (ca. Spring 2006)

Me and my PowerBook. (ca. Spring 2006)

I'm a former history student who got an opportunity to follow his passion and work for an insanely great technology company. I spend my days sharing that love with others, showing them how they can do all sorts of cool stuff, to enrich and share their lives with friends and family. (I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true!)

In addition to Star Trek, my big interests in sci-fi are the grand, character-oriented space operas: Babylon 5, Farscape, Firefly, and the new Battlestar Galactica. I'm very fond of my family's three cats, and I'm developing an interest in amateur video editing and photography.

Site Design Philosophy

As a technophile, I always love the latest and greatest. I'm also an aspiring web designer. STM is not just a hobby for Star Trek, it's also a platform for learning about the most recent Web standards.

This site has been designed for and tested with the following browsers, or an equivalent using the same rendering engine:

Basic requirements:
  • Apple Safari 1.3 and later
  • Mozilla Firefox 1.0 and later
  • Opera 7.5 and later
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and later
Recommended browsers:
  • Apple Safari 3.0 and later
  • Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and later
  • Opera 9.0 and later

Notice how Microsoft Internet Explorer isn't listed as a recommended browser? That's because it's not a modern web browser, and despite many years of use, still has numerous display and rendering bugs in it. (It doesn't fully support most of the languages and file formats listed below.) I've checked to make sure that the current design at least will load and look presentable in MSIE 7, but I will not guarantee that each and every page will display properly. If you e-mail me to complain, I will tell you to get a modern browser.

In order to display STM's content properly, your browser should support the following standards:

With the sole exception of MSIE, all the major browsers support these standards. And I only check my designs in MSIE at all because 70% 55% of the visitors to this site are still using that pitiful excuse for a browser.

I have used several advanced design techniques that might stretch the capabilities of all the above-listed browsers in various ways. If you are using one of those browsers (or another browser using a similar rendering engine) and encounter a problem with the site's design, please feel free to report it — I am always willing and eager to listen to feedback concerning my work! However, if you are using an older browser, don't bother complaining, because I will just ignore you. The technology of the Web is constantly evolving, and everyone must keep up in order to keep using it.

For a long time, STM was mainly served as "pure" XHTML 1.1 with only a few exceptions, but I've since come to realize (along with most of the web design world) that XHTML is likely going to be a dead end for most developers. Although I have converted STM back to the more commonly-acceptable HTML 4.01, this was done mainly with the goal of adopting the developing HTML 5 standard as soon as possible.

Computer and Software

Apple 20" iMac (Mid 2007)
2.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive, Mac OS X 10.5
Apple 12" PowerBook G4
1.5 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM, 100 GB hard drive, Mac OS X 10.5
Coda
A versatile one-window web development tool, for editing, styling, previewing, and uploading.
BBEdit
For unparalleled text editing and manipulation.
Fireworks CS3
A reliable and straightforward tool for snazzy web graphics.
Lineform
A simple but capable vector drawing application.
Transmit
Simply the most Mac-like FTP app around.
OmniWeb
The great, unsung champion of web browsing.
MarsEdit
A handy tool for publishing your blog from the desktop.
Hex Color Picker
The perfect way to choose colors on your Mac.
Mint
The most comprehensive, yet easiest to manage web stats app I could find.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go out to everyone who helped me put together this site:

This page was last modified on Sunday, March 16, 2008.