A long, long time ago, I happened to mention to a friend that there was basically nothing to HTML -- it was just a markup language like the one used by NROFF under UNIX.
No innocent remark goes unpunished. The result of this offhand comment was the Chicago Paddling/Fishing Pages, which has grown into a massive compilation of maps or charts of many of the public lakes and streams in the Chicago area. It turns out there are a lot of little lakes and streams out there, not to mention the big ones.
My role in the Chicago Paddling/Fishing Pages has mainly been to offer constructive criticism and correct numerous spelling errors. ("Du Page" -- one word or two?) Recently, however, the energetic but more or less anonymous jwn took a vacation, and let me be the webmaster for a while. The result was the awesome Chicago Harbor page, showing the downtown lakefront from North Avenue Beach south to the end of Grant Park. All done in the style of the great master, which involves a pixel-by-pixel retouching of the scanned chart or map. (There were lots of pixels in this one....)
Although basically a lazy procrastinator (a very ecologically sound position) who in theory at least should have no spare time, my brief watch at the helm convinced me to go out and found my own web page. (Actually, I had been thinking about for almost two years, but hadn't gotten around to actually doing anything about it....) So here goes...the Chicagoland Online Natural Knowledge (CLONK) page.
The concept (roughly) is to do for the land mass what the Chicago Paddling/Fishing Pages has done for the waters. (Whatever that is.) (Can I get in any more gratuitous plugs for the Fishin' 'n' Paddlin' Pages? The poor demented lad does love to see this counter go up....)
© 1997 Clonk - All rights reserved.