Q. What is the Internet?

A. Once upon a time, the Internet was a world of its own.
It was a passion. It was a way of life. It was a new kind of art.

But that was before it became Big Business.

With the invention of e-commerce, the friendly Web community as we knew it back in the mid-nineties, slowly died out. The Internet is now just another commercial medium, filled with people eager to sell you anything and everything. It is no longer about sharing the information and building relationships. It is simply about making money.

For all I care, the Internet is dead.

Stanislav Kelman's Absolutely Wonderful Universe is one of the few "true" personal sites left. I hope you enjoy your trip back in time!

Q. When did this site originally go online?

A. I started working on it in the summer of 1995 and it was initially posted on the Web in the fall of the same year (v. 1.0). Therefore, it can now be safely considered as one of the oldest continuously maintained personal sites ever. Woo-hoo!

The current "framed" design was introduced in the late 1996 (v. 2.0) and the basic layout has never been tampered with ever since. Yes, I realize that it breaks every rule of "proper" Web design, but back then there was no such thing. And, for posterity reasons, I intend to leave everything intact as much as I can and for as long as possible.

However, change is inevitable, and over the years this site has been hosted on various educational servers until I bought the rights to the LetItBe.org domain in January of 1999. Shortly thereafter, I moved everything to DreamHost, which forced me to do some minor appearance modifications (v. 3.0).

Finally, in July of 2001 I had to rearrange the top navigation menu to include all the various other sites that I maintain (v. 3.3).

Q. Why did I create it in the first place?

A. Having a site on the Net is like having your own home in the cyberworld. If you don't build one for yourself, you will always feel hopelessly lost in this jungle of countless hyperlinks. When you get bewildered and overwhelmed with all the stuff out there, you need something to come back to.

In a sense, this site is my secret hiding place.

Q. How do I maintain my site?

A. Basically, "by hand."

Doing Web design with a simple editor is the most fun you can have in public. This is why I don't use any advanced publishing tools. Most documents are first typed and spell checked in WordPerfect or AppleWorks, then edited in a plain text editor (like vi or BBEdit) to include all the HTML formatting and JavaScript. This gives me ultimate control over the final design and allows me to make sure that everything looks just the way I want.

Q. Who reads my pages?

A. People all over the World. You can look at some of the Responses I received over the E-mail. Getting feedback is always a pleasant surprise. So, please, tell me what you think. Write to me at Stan@LetItBe.org and come back often.