I really don't know why I'm putting this up again, but I am. Nostalgia? Whim? Egotism? It all seems so long ago now. It's hard to believe the web was every cozy enough to merrit this kind of a website.
My original website—circa 1996—seems lost forever, which is pretty tragic as far as I'm concerned. No matter. It was a tilde account. My user name was "amateur", which, at the time, stood for a very elaborate acronym that had a lot to do with my youthful dreams of being subversive, but also was a reference to the latin root of that word which implies that done for love and not necessity. Ah, youth!
When I finally decided to settle down with a domain, I tried to concoct something vaguely corporate sounding and yet punnish. "Phostar" seemed corporate enough and the "faux star" pun was good enough for me. I set up another tilde directory, this time ~heidi, to further the illusion that phostar.com was merely my host and not my own province.
The version of the ~heidi/ site linked below is not the final version that ever existed. Sometime in 2001 I scaled back dramatically and wiped away the archives because they seemed embrarassing. The site never really flourished after that and was eventually deleted entirely except for the strangely popular FAQ which persists today. Please keep in mind that many of the navigation links aren't likely to function as advertised because I have not bothered to update their references. Keep your "back" button handy.
While the site was still in its heyday, I frequently updated the top level home page, a spoof on the plentiful and horrific sites of the boom times. The best version, which I'd thought lost until today, was the first, and features the infamous bear icon. If you aren't using Internet Explorer, you will be treated to a rare siting of the BLINK tag.
Enjoy!
July 2004