chapter 3: sputnik 6!
(january 2000 to april 2000)

Boy, wasn't I clever! Look at the logo in the upper-left-hand corner: I spelled Sputnik 6! in Cyrillic letters. Sometimes I amaze myself.

Sputnik 6! was my online 'zine associated with Planet StarRaver. It consisted of two parts: The Bitch Column, which was updated (mostly) daily, and the monthly content. The Bitch Column is the most important part here, as it was the true predecessor of my current weblog. I wrote a new column daily ranting about whatever I felt like ranting about that day. It eventually died by early-April when I got sick of having to create a new page every day by hand. Although there was no index of old columns, they were all archived and could be read by clicking on the link at the bottom to the previous day's column.

The monthly content was split into four sections: From the Editor, Movies 'n' More, Musique Non Stop, and the feature story. From the Editor was just an introduction that I wrote each month to that month's new content similar to the Editor's Note or Letter from the Editor featured in many popular print magazines. Movies 'n' More was, as the title would indicate, the movie section. The original piece was about my favorite movies from the previous year, the second piece was about the Golden Globes, and I never wrote another one. As it was billed, Musique Non Stop consisted of "News, album reviews, and personal commentary about the music industry." By the end, I had gotten bored writing that also, and got someone else to write it for me. In the only feature story ever written, I wrote about the 35th Annual Great Midwest Trivia Contest held in January 2000 from the perspective of a participant on one of the teams. It was a really in-depth expose... ha-ha.

I was quite proud of my design and layout of this website. It was the last website I ever designed using frames, and for the most part it worked out quite well. In the process of creating the graphics, I had a hard time matching up shades of green. I suppose that will happen when one is limited by the power of MS Paint. This is most obvious when looking at my attempt at rounded corners. The green around the rounded edges doesn't match the green of the background. Oops. Really poorly done also was that logo for The Bitch Column. Not only was my choice in typography horrid, but what was I thinking using that blue? I don't think I could have picked any color and had it clash worse with the green-and-yellow theme of the rest of the site.

After I quit updating Sputnik 6! in April 2000, it sat dormant until blueflower.org was introduced in June, and eventually it faded into obscurity until GeoCities purged it from their servers.

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