The Curio Cabinet: FAQ

I get a lot of the same questions from folks who have visited. Here's the answers.

What did you use to create these pictures?

Deluxe Paint 2E
Adobe PhotoShop 5
Corel PhotoPaint 8
Paint Shop Pro 6
Eye Candy 3
Kai's Power Tools 5
Bryce 3D 3
Poser 2
A Nikon CoolPix 950
A Logitech ScanMan that's older than dirt
A Canon 650N that I won at AIIM

How did you create the images?
Well, some of them start out as sketches or paintings and make their way onto the page just that way. Some start out on the PC and never saw a pencil or scanner in their lives. Most are sketches that graduate to color, and I use Adobe PhotoShop and other tools to basically paint over them while preserving the original image form.

Returning 'real soon now':
How To... Render a pencil drawing to color.
How To... Create an image in Adobe PhotoShop.

How did you create the pages?
The Curio Cabinet v.1 was done in Notepad. Cabinet v.2 and the original @Home version of v3.0, a combination of Netscape Composer and Notepad. Composer has a habit (like most WYSIWYG editors) of throwing in useless or proprietary code only a mother could love.

FrontPage, although a member of Microsoft's Bloatware suite, is what I'm using for this updated version. I confess I've gotten lazy. I do like the option in this version of FrontPage to edit the HTML directly, something made difficult in previous WYSIWYG versions.

I'm starting to play with Dreamweaver so if you stop by one day and the page has gone all artsy fartsy, you'll know the reason why.

In keeping with the spirit of evolution, e-mails from people attempting to browse the site using any version of Lynx, their Pocket PC or their notebook with a stunning resolution of 640 X 480 complaining about how the site doesn't fit on their teeny screens will receive a gen-you-whine Bronx cheer.

What happened to all the Pern stuff?
It's not here (to state the obvious). You'll have to take a trip to The Harper's Window. It was taking over the place. And no - I do not accept any commissions for Pern based art. Period. So stop askin'. I just do it for fun.

Why don't you change the picture?! The Twin Towers are gone! Have some respect!
That question pissed me off. No. I also think it was pretty dumb for a lot of TV shows based, at least fictionally in NYC, to edit out scenes in their opening credits to remove shots of the World Trade Center. Pre-September 11 movie trailers and promotional art for Spiderman were recalled because of the presence of the image of the now destroyed trade center. Go to the website now, and it's as if the censored material was a figment of our imaginations. While they're pretending that the buildings never existed, why don't we just stick our heads up our collective ass and pretend that the whole thing never happened, huh?

I won't lie and say "This page is updated frequently, so bookmark it". I see that all the time on pages with the most recent update dated two years ago. So here's the truth of it: Soon as I think of anything else remotely noteworthy, and I get around to it, I'll update this page.