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This site is the residue of a past business venture. The idea was to combine my programming skills and artistic genius into a new, lucrative, fun career. What better way to show that I could do a good web site than to put up works by artists on a site of my own? That was back in 1995 -- almost thirty years ago today (March 1, 2023) and counting! Now, and long since really, everyone and his dog has become a web site designer, and the government pays me to be old, so I don't need a career. However, I am retaining the site, mostly for the sake of the gallery, and as a humorous memento of days gone by. I am still doing web site work, programming, and so forth, but now, being in the paradise of communism (from each according to their ability, to each according to their need, or something like that) I do it free, for projects which I find interesting, or worthy, or just because it ought to be there. Which is pretty much how it worked out anyway. A curious fact about the world of small business, at least certain kinds of it, is that many people, a signficiant proportion of them, -- nice people, sometimes well-off people -- simply don't pay those who have provided them with goods and services regardless of prior arrangements if they can avoid doing so. It's not a feature of web site design work; I've heard the same complaint from hairdressers, auto detailers, dog walkers, cat sitters, and so on. Thus they remain slaves of capital, willingly I suppose. It's a mystery. The word ETAOIN stands for 'Eastern Technology Associates on the Internet'. 'Eastern Technology Associates' was the name of a corporation I created because I had to have a corporation to get paid, and I gave it one of those corporate names. However, ETAOIN has a variety of meanings. For one thing, it is the left side of the top line of keys on a linotype machine. At the time the linotype was invented (and maybe still) it was also a list of the most frequently-used letters in the English language. It is also the first word of the title of a great science fiction story of yesteryear, 'Etaoin Shrdlu', which is about a linotype machine that becomes conscious and begins to produce unwanted criticism and revisions of the material it's expected to set. 'The departure of the linotype, a machine with fire, molten metal, and alphabets in its heart, leaves the world a poorer place.' This is not a Nunc dimittis; I have no intention of departing, and if something tries to make me depart, I'm going to go out kicking and screaming and hanging on to the last fingernail. But it is a kind of kiss-off to a certain world from which I have now emerged, hopefully for good. Activities continue with Artezine and StarryGordon.com. and some other people's websites:http://minervasoho.com http://1freeworld.org http://bedstuyfnb.org Gordon Fitch |