The end of an era...

It seems like just 11 years ago when I first started this web site. It meant a lot to me, the old Rebel Headquarters Information Centre. Even then, on GeoCities I had my own Canadian twist to everything, but just as it was the "Rebel" headquarters, over time it evolved into a more mature and more interesting web site. I abandoned my childhood dreams of fighting for the good side and joined the Empire at heart. I realized at a young age that the good guys weren't always the good guys, and that the need to fight for what appeared to be the good guys was immature. History is written by the victors, it is not always a reflection of truth.

I never thought I'd stop working on this web site, but the last couple of years (perhaps more than a couple now?) have changed my life in many ways. I am the same but I am a different person, eleven years of owning this web site has been enough time to go through many lifetimes. Web sites like Wikipedia (and the topic-specific pedias of the web) have replaced the need for this kind of a web site, and I'm not against them, they're brilliant in concept but it makes this web site a bit of a dinosaur. Like Jar Jar.

Being honest, I wasn't planning on taking down this web site, it was at least a piece of nostalgia I could return to and dream of from time to time, but I guess people have been hotlinking to it or using aspects of it without permission (hey, it's the internet) and my bandwidth has been going through the roof, thus, I have deleted everything from the server, I still have copies for myself but this is where it ends. Anyone who wants to link to the logo at the top can, it won't exactly kill my bandwidth.

I am willing, at this stage, to sell the technology behind this web site (if you can remember it) or the domain name. Please feel free to contact me. How will you do that? Well, I'm sure you can figure it out, I'm tired of spam too.

These days, well, as a proud member of the 501st Legion, I've been involving Star Wars in my real life and helping people at the same time. I know everyone does this, but I'd like to thank George Lucas, the guy made Star Wars, he's been a massive and phenomenal factor in my life (indirectly) and has helped make me the person I am today. Whether that's a good thing or not I'll leave for the ages, but it's been a fun ride and the world will continue to spin.

Thank you, George, and thank you to everyone who ever visited and supported Star Wars Source.Net.

As a little piece of history, here's the About Us page from the site...

Welcome to Star Wars Source.Net. We are dedicated to providing you information about the Star Wars universe. At present the scope of this web site is ever-expanding, offering information on characters, software, applications, vehicles, technology, planets, production and much more. The web site is owned and operated by multiple individuals whose hard work and dedication to the "free" internet has made this and countless other web sites possible.

A Letter from the Owner:

Star Wars has always been my favorite topic, and when I started to learn HTML in August of 1996 (which, amazingly, is unrelated to Star Wars), I decided to create a web page. It did not take much effort to conclude that Star Wars was the best possible topic for the web site, and thus started the beginning of my web page. I did not know at the time how much the web site would evolve over the year, and how much I would have to learn to keep it looking fresh and new. These sorts of things are never discussed in the books that you read, and it continues to amaze me, even to this day, how little books actually teach you.

Having agreed upon the topic of the web site, and completed work on some preliminary sketches for it using the original "Netscape 3 Composer", it dawned up on me that the simple project I had undertaken would involve a lot more than the books had suggested. Since I was brand new to the entire concept of making web pages at the time, my plan of action was at best a muddled one. Step number one would be to find a free homepage provider where I could settle in comfortably, and work on my page whenever I wanted. Fortunately for me, at that time there were very few providers of free hosting services, unlike today where you the old phrase "a dime a dozen" is vastly inappropriate. I visited AngelFire, Tripod, and a couple of others, but quickly determined that I did not like the looks of any of those providers. Persisting in the search for the perfect home page provider, I found GeoCities. It was bright, merry, and I was amazed at how different it was. I immediately grabbed a homepage, at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/3696/. Unfortunately that address no longer works, though it did house my "we've moved" message for a year before it was removed.

Of course, my page didn't evolve to this stage instantly, it took months of hard work just to have a small version of the page available for viewing. With a single visit count (my own), my page was developing slowly. It was originally called "The Rebel Headquarters Information Center". I changed that title twice in the past years, until I came up with a new title, "Star Wars: The Imperial Information Centre". Back then, when my page was still small, horrible, and generally everything an Internet-savvy visitor didn't want, the whole look and feel was different. For instance, I had a starry background with gray text (very difficult on the eyes, not just the legibility), and to visit each section (I think I had three sections, composed of Bounty Hunters, Links, and Disclaimer) you had to click on the planet that represented that section. It was very corny, and definitely not worth the load time, but a good step in the necessary directions to learn how to become a good web developer.

Of course, with HTML editing came image editing, which I now do professionally. At first I would take images from other people's sites, as I had very little to work with. The truth is, I first created my site using a 386 MHz computer, and a 2400 modem. To put it more simply, back in the days of pc speaker (no sound cards worth anything) and Windows 3.1 or DOS. Then, as my needs for the page increased, I learnt how to use Paint Shop Pro and utilized the vast power and potential of raw HTML coding, which I still use from time to time today. At the time, my favorite fancy HTML editor was Notepad. Other than that, I use Paint Shop Pro for most of my image editing. Currently, I scan all of my images, or create them from scratch.

After learning how to edit images, my web page evolved and I added frames, and two new pages. Now, over nine years since I started The Rebel Headquarters Information Centre, it has blossomed. Also, from the original four web pages (including the main page), I now have more than 400 (including this page) pages! That isn't the amount of files on my site, but the amount of pages which have information on them.

August of 2005 will make nine years since my web page was first started, and I hope that everyone who has visited my site will help celebrate it. It's been a joyous experience for me, and I intend to keep on working on Star Wars Source.Net as long as I can. Now, with Episodes 3 (Revenge of the Sith!) destined to be released in May of 2005, this site will be able to continue to grow and prosper.

I would like to give a very special thank you, to Mr. Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, without whom I would never have had the inspiration to create this web page.