About the old ~WESTR Website

I originally posted this on my old website on March 21, 2006. Most of this information applied only to the old website, and not to this blog. The laptop and digital cameras shown here have been replaced by newer models.

On this page, I will discuss the technical aspects of my old website, for people who may want to build their own website, or people who are just curious.

I've found it really doesn't take a lot of knowledge or equipment to build a website.

This website was hosted on the servers of the Milwaukee School of Engineering. I am an MSOE graduate, and thus I had a limited amount of webspace from MSOE for a website. Because of this, I don't know anything about finding a webhost or registering a domain name. I know very little HTML. I built the website almost entirely with Microsoft FrontPage 2003. I also used Microsoft Word and Excel a little. I used LeechFTP to upload to the MSOE server.

The website was in its second version. I originally created the website in the fall of 2002. The pages had a very simple format, and I used frames to create the menu bar on the side.

The original website consisted of an About page, similar to my later Bio page, my class schedule, with a list of classes taken to date, and resume, a Picture page with personal photos and links to pages with Car Pictures, Airplane Pictures (all from the Evergreen Aviation Museum) and Milwaukee Pictures, a Trains section with Train Pictures pages as they are now, though only with pictures taken from 2001 onward, and the Logan & San Miguel section, and then the Writings, Humor, Quotes and Links sections, though they weren't as extensive as they eventually became. Later I added the HO Scale Diesel Production Spreadsheets to the Trains section, and created MacGyver's How-To Guide.

Eventually I discovered that because the website's pages were on MSOE's server, they came up in searches on Yahoo! and Google, without the menu frame. I didn't like this idea, and I was never happy with the look of the website in the first place, so after graduating from MSOE I began a complete redesign of the website, using tables instead of frames to create the menu bar.

With the redesign came some changes in the content as well. Since I was no longer in college, the schedule would disappear. I also removed the Personal Pictures, Car Pictures, Humor and Quotes sections to save space for pictures scanned from my photo albums. I created a Places section, and the Airplane Pictures page became the Places: Evergreen Aviation Museum page and the Milwaukee Pictures page became the Places: Milwaukee, Wisconsin page. The hard-to-categorize MacGyver's How-To Guide became a Feature. Many new Features, Places and other pages were added.

In late 2004, I uploaded the new version of the website, which is basically the version you see now, though I've added a lot to it since then. In March 2006, I brought back old the Humor, Quotes and Cars sections, all expanded.

Many of my photos were hosted in other places, such as Bebo and MSN Spaces, to save space. The Journal (I hated the word Blog) that appeared on the site was also hosted by MSN Spaces.

My computer was an MSOE-issued Compaq Evo N800c notebook, with a 1.6 GHz Intel Pentium 4 Mobile processor and 256 MB RAM. Connected to it was a Lexmark PrinTrio X1150 Printer/Scanner/Copier supposedly capable of up to 9600 DPI Scan Resolution.

As for creating graphics, almost all of my graphics started out in Microsoft Paint. Many of the maps and other complex graphics are hand drawings that I scanned into MS Paint as simple black and white line drawings, and cleaned them up and enhanced them from there. This is where I added lettering and color. In making the transition from drawing to bitmap to GIF or JPEG, I usually used the Lexmark Photo Editor that came with my scanner and the Microsoft Office Picture Manager. If those wouldn’t do what I want them to, I could usually manage with Paint Shop Pro 4 or Roxio PhotoSuite 7.

Now for the photography, which I think is the most interesting part.

Like many kids, I had a series of cheap, fixed-lens, point-and-shoot 35mm cameras when I was young. There might have been a handful of pictures on the site that were taken with these, or with single-use disposable cameras, but there wouldn't be many.

Most of my early photos on the website were taken with a Philippines-made 35mm Vivitar 5500PZ, featuring a Series 1 Auto Focus Lens with a 38-70mm Macro Focusing Power Zoom. It was a really nice point-and-shoot 35mm camera when I got it in the mid-1990s. I used this camera up through most of 2002. Just about any picture on this website taken before 2002 was taken with the Vivitar, usually using ASA 200 film. This included many of the train pictures, the Stevens Pass pictures, the Chicago pictures, many of the Milwaukee pictures, the older Astoria pictures and the pictures for The Last Voyage of the USS Missouri.

The Vivitar was replaced in 2002 by a classic 35mm SLR, the Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SP. The serial number of mine is #1098543. It was made in Japan sometime between 1964 and 1967. It may be old, but in 40 years the 35mm SLR hasn't changed much, so it doesn't really matter. The Pentax Spotmatic is entirely an optical/mechanical device; the only electrical component in the camera is the light meter, and the camera can operate without it.

My standard lens for the Pentax is a Japanese Asahi Super-Takumar 1:1.8 55mm, serial number #1467895, which was probably the lens that came with the camera. I typically use Kodak ASA 200 film. This combination took practically all pictures from 2002 to 2005, including the Evergreen Aviation Museum pictures, Illinois Railway Museum pictures, Weyerhaeuser Woods Railroad pictures, Lewis & Clark Explorer pictures, Rainier pictures, most of the Astoria pictures and many of the Kelso-Longview pictures.

For more about Pentax Spotmatics, See Photoethnography.com's Spotmatic page.

I have other lenses for the Pentax, all of Japanese manufacture, though they don't see much use. My Wide-Angle lens is a Asahi Auto-Takumar 1:2.3 35mm, serial number #879611, dating from between 1959 and 1962. I found that of my lenses, this one gave the best depth-of-field for taking close-up model railroad photos. The Logan & San Miguel Railroad pictures were taken using this lens and ASA 400 film to make up for poor lighting.

When I need to zoom in on something, I use a Vivitar 85-205mm Auto Zoom 1:3.8 58mm, serial number #22417971. This is a long, bulky lens, so I only use it when I really need it, but it works well. (My dad's camera is a slightly newer Pentax K1000, and his Pentax zoom lens is much more compact, so he uses it as his standard lens. I have found that I really don't need the zoom that much. A Wide-Angle on the other hand...)

My last lens is a Soligor Telephoto 1:3.5 135mm, No. M3747, dating from 1960, though I don't recall ever actually having occasion to use this lens.

I typically have my 35mm film developed to 3" x 5" prints, which I then scan on my flatbed scanner at 300 DPI for website use. My typical procedure is to use the Lexmark Photo Editor to scan the photo to the clipboard as a bitmap. I then paste into Microsoft Paint, where I crop the edges of the image and save as a JPEG. Any further resizing or cropping is done with the Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

The Pentax is still my choice for 35mm photography, but it is bulky to carry around every day. Plus it has the drawbacks of film, namely that is has to be developed to know for sure how the pictures came out, and that there is a long process to get the photos into electronic form. Given that, I now use a digital camera for my day-to-day use.

I bought my first digital camera, a Chinese-made Argus DC1512, in December of 2003. The Argus's only selling point was that, at less than $20, it was cheap, and I was in college so I didn't have money for a decent digital camera. I bought the Argus specifically for taking pictures of my cross-country drive from Wisconsin to Oregon, so I could have a small, light camera for taking pictures while driving without having to worry about wasting film or dropping the camera. As the price implies, the Argus was very limited, with only 2MB of internal memory (and no provision to add more) and resolution of up to 352 x 288 (just over 0.1 Megapixels). Photos taken with the Argus were limited to the American Journey page.

In October of 2005, I finally got a good digital camera: the Malaysian-made Canon PowerShot A520. The Canon has a maximum resolution of 4.0 Megapixels, or up to 2272 x 1704, and features a 4x (5.8-23.2mm) 1:2.6-5.5 Optical Zoom Lens. In addition to the resolution and optical zoom, I was also drawn to the PowerShot A520 because it takes either alkaline or rechargeable AA batteries, and is also capable of taking short video clips. The camera came with a Canon 16 MB MultiMediaCard, but I have since upgraded with an ATP 512 MB 60X Secure Digital Card, and two pairs of Ni-MH rechargeable AA batteries. As I learn its controls, this camera continues to amaze me with its ability to take good pictures in almost any conditions, from  night pictures of buildings, to Box Elder Bug close-ups, to taking a picture of a train through the car window without looking while driving on the freeway at 80 miles per hour. It does have drawbacks, namely the lag time between photographs, and it has trouble with fast-moving objects (like cats). It is also so small that it is hard to hold steady; I usually use Sport Mode to compensate. Originally, there weren't many pictures online from this camera, though some of the Kelso-Longview pictures, and train pictures from 2006 were taken with it. With the convenience and nearly unlimited picture capacity, this camera soon became my main camera, and I abandoned film.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank some people who have made this website possible.

• The Milwaukee School of Engineering, for web space, and an education.

• The MSOE Library's Gary Shimek and Bill Krajnak, who gave me projects that developed my webpage-building skills.

• Fred Anderson, for the Pentax Spotmatic.

• Scott Keller, for Technical Support, and MacGyver Screen Captures.

• Bebo and MSN Spaces, whom I leeched off of.

• Wikipedia, for being an awesome resource.

• The late Harley Earl, for inspiring some of the site's aesthetics.

• Anyone I linked to on any of my pages: you've contributed somehow, even if you don't know or can't tell.

• Anyone who emailed me about the website, for letting me know people did read it.

• Anyone who enjoyed something I posted, just for being out there somewhere.

• and Richard Dean Anderson, for playing MacGyver.