RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

I’ve created an ‘about’ page

After having the blog up for very close to a year, I decided that it’s time to create an ‘about’ page. So earlier today I wrote one. As a history major, I’ve built the text on this page to retrace the history of my web-presence. It also serves as an overdue FAQ. What is a dovate? Photography or writing? Debased Crackhead? Etc…:

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In the year 1999 A.D. I, Stephen Benjamin Weinik, bought a $70 scanner. My intention was to scan my photos and put them online. At the time I had a geocities site and was looking for content. Originally titled “philly links etc.” (I spent 10 seconds thinking up that one) The site was an assemblage of crude tables and pop-up windows. I renamed the place “debased crackhead.” on the day I abandoned it. Here it is. [link]

It was sometime around the year A.D. 2003 when I decided with that with their 10mb limits, side-bar ads and fucked up url’s, geocities just wasn’t cutting it. After another 10 seconds of thought I purchased the domain name dovate.com.

What is a dovate?

The word is a dilution of a handle I originally invented as part of an anti-war poster project. The project was abandoned, but the online handle stuck. When time came to choose a domain name, I didn’t want to use my name, so I just stuck with dovate. For better or worse, I’m stuck with it now.

Like Debased Crackhead, Dovate.com was originally launched as a place for me to show my photography. Suddenly having a whole lot of bandwidth, storage and a shitty job that allowed about 6-8 hours of daily downtime, I soon added writing. Here’s what the site looked like by early 2005. [link]

Menus and layout changed, but the hard-coded site continued to grow. I have to say the photo galleries looked pretty slick for something drawn up with nothing but html and a little bit of javascript. Here’s the Paris menu: [link] and an example of a gallery: [link]

Development

Long after realizing that the site needed a real content management system I decided to learn PHP/MYSQL and create one from scratch. A few weeks later, I instead decided to use dreamhost’s one click install to create a wordpress blog on dovate.com. For photos I installed pixelpost. That’s where we are today. Although I spent years despising the blog format, (mainly just because of the word “blog”) I eventually succumbed to it. This is something that still causes some degree of shame.

What’s more important, writing or photography?

I created a website because I wanted a public forum for my photography. As a creative person I am far more mindful of my photographic work. I practice it more, I think about it more and I put a hell of a lot more energy into it.

With that said, I have always written. In my possession are stacks of old notebooks filled with writing. I’ve written obsessively for years, but I don’t think about it much. After writing a few million words I’ve developed a voice and flow unique to myself, but I don’t craft it or refine it or think much about how I could make it better. I used to think I wanted to be a writer and maybe someday I’ll still be a (paid) writer. My only A+ at college came in a writing class and my head remains slightly inflated when it comes to my self perception of my own word-crafting talents. But more than anything, writing for me is a necessity. I do it because I have to.

Why the blog?

For years I only wrote in notebooks. Existing in a small physical medium and written with a penmanship that even I have trouble deciphering, I could choose who had access, when they had it and how much I would allow. Now with the blog, 80% of my writing is public. I consider this (we)blog a long-term experiment. I don’t promote it, or really care how many people read it. I actually have an instinct of discomfort when I find out people (I know) are reading it. Still though, I do get a certain satisfaction as my stats climb.

I’m mindful of the audience I seem to be attracting, but at the same time the audience I actually write for exists entirely in my own mind. This site has no purpose. It might teach you something, it might make you laugh and it might fascinate you in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. It’s not political, it’s not local, it’s not personal, it’s not topical. It’s a little of all of these things and not really any of them. That’s all for…

Toynbee tiles:

I couldn’t end this without talking about the tiles. Toynbee tiles have fascinated me for a decade. In that time and with the help and collaboration of the Resurrect Dead film crew, I’ve become one of the world’s foremost scholars on the subject.

As of early 2007, my name registers 781 hits on google. My name + the word Toynbee brings back 527 of those hits. At this point in my life, my global existence is inextricably linked to Toynbee tiles. That’s fine with me and that’s all for now.