Welcome to my Anime shrine! Over the years, I've had a chance to see some of the best that the anime-verse has to offer. After trying to find others like me on the net, I only found some people who only had a part of what I was looking for. So I decided to set this up to let anyone else who was looking for greatness find a home. I hope you enjoy!

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This page was first created, in concept, in November of 1997. I had wanted to make an anime based web page, but was afraid to do so because I didn't know anything about HTML and didn't want to make something that was ugly, unworthy of the subject matter. But then I saw a page by an ordinary person who had taught herself how to make a webpage and had created something truly great. Her name is Wing See, and her page is even better today. I decided to at least give it a shot. The plan was rather sketchy: I knew what I wanted to be in it, but I had no idea how to program in HTML. And in concept is stayed until the following Spring Break, when I finally wrestled some clues from my brother. At that time, the home page was born. It exists today, more or less in its original form, through the link above. It isn't about anything but me, really. The counter and registry was started at the same time. It isn't near as polished as this page, but I'm still proud of it as a first effort.

After thinking about it for about a month, I finally set out to create an anime page worth seeing. By that, I meant to make one that fans would enjoy visiting for both the pictures but more so for what I wrote there, and hopefully would inspire some kind of response, whether in the form of e mail or just giving them something to remember the series by. If all you take away from here is the pictures, then I have failed utterly. I also wanted it to be good enough that I would never get tired of seeing it. And so far, I haven't.

Up until the end of May 1998 I added pages as I could get material on the series, and changed the series synopsis many times, trying to get them better. I also added to existing sections. Writing those captions for the pictures took a really long time! Then I went home from college. So that pretty affectively cut me off from seeing anything new, and the slow modem speed at home (I hate modems) made me wimp out from looking for more pictures.

After returning to school in August, I added the two sections Escaflowne and Music and Movies, and created all the thumbnails (all 209). I continued to rework the synopsis, focusing mostly on the Evangelion one. I also added this news section and rewrote the Page Info.

In 1999, I continued to add pictures and update existing sections. In March, I created the Area 88 section. Only one picture, but I've been thinking of making that page ever since I opened the hub. In April I realized that there are 15 (!) pages I made for series so I alphabetized the pictures and revues page. In August the Only Yesterday section was created, the second fan page about Only Yesterday I have ever seen. Each section received an overhaul, and the file structure on the server was re-organized to satisfy my sense of aesthetics. Then in September I realized that I hadn't implemented the new file structure universally on each page, so I had to fix that.

Between then and December I updated all the page synopsis. I believe I finally have the Evangelion synopsis up to its final form (famous last words). I plan to update a few pictures between now and the new year, so if the world ends at least my page will be up to speed!

I started off the celebration millennium right, by rewriting the MIDI file structure to give it some order, and I updated most pages again, most notably the Ah! My Goddess!, Fushigi Yuugi, and Evangelion page. Yes, I wrote more on the synopsis to Evangelion. And it seems likely I will write even more. In February I added a Message Board to interact more with people, and I updated the links a little. In February I made my Megazone 23 page. The Fushigi Yuugi page was updated in March to include the OAVs. Also, I redid a ton of the HTML code to make it more HTML 4 compliant.

At the start of April I finally finished my On Your Mark page. I have wanted to make a page for it very badly since I first saw it but could not find the time nor materials to make one. However, it all finally came together. I also added quite a few MIDIs to the Media page. After attending Anime Expo 2000 in California in June, I made a webpage for it in July. I also created a few new web graphics to make everything look nicer. In October I finished the Whisper of the Heart page and changed the general table structure for easier loading. In November I finally was able to finish watching Key the Metal Idol, so I finished writing up how I felt about it.

With the start of the actual millennium, I overhauled the page structure code again, including all the links. I swear to God, I'm never doing this again, it takes too long. In March I finished the Kareshi Kanojo No Jijou page. I finished writing the Kimagure Orange Road page but didn't do get any graphics for it. At the end of May, I finally had some free time so I updated the site to use cascading style sheets. If the text is no longer green and links aren't blue or pink, then your browser is a pathetic throw back that doesn't support cascading style sheets (CSS) (read: you're using Netscape). If you would like to see the CSS I made, click here. If you want to know why I switched to CSS, or just get some general tips on CSS, email me. At the start of June I created a page for Kimagure Orange Road. This is another page that I really wanted to do but just didn't have time during the school year. At the end of June, despite my oath to God, I updated the links again.

At the start of July, I went to Anime Expo 2001. It was a lot of fun, like last year. The pictures did not come out very well, so I had to take them to a professional photography place to have some of them redone. At the end of the month I updated the Key the Metal Idol page with some additional information that should pretty much wrap that page up. In the middle of August, I managed to add a few pictures here and there, plus rewrote part of the movie write up for the Escaflowne page. Due to a heavy load of work and school, I only added a few pictures in October, and continued trying to get the Anime Expo 2001 page done.

2002 started without much fanfare on the page, except for one major event- the web server is now working! Thanks to my friend Richard, that is, who was able to tweak the config file to make it work for me. So now my web server is running on the de facto standard of the web, Apache Web Server! At the end of January, I finally finished my Anime Expo 2001 page. This was hugely satisfying, since I had to scan all the pictures myself. Next time I'm just going to pay the photo lab to do it. By the end of February, I added to the code on every page so that when you click on a thumbnail, the picture opens in a new window.

At the end of May, I graduated from the University of Texas with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering. This meant that I had to close my account with the university, so I had to decide to either lose my webpage or move it somewhere else. After considering my options, I decided to keep my webpage. I found that all of the numerous free services, although attractively priced, just weren't what I wanted. They were slow, they put on ads, they make you use some kind of proprietary system to manage your page, etc. So instead, I decided to pay a little money and buy a domain name (www.theroseking.net) along with an attractive hosting package from Host Rocket. How cool is that?

After working for a very long time on writing an HTML Guide, I updated my entire web site to XHTML 1.0 Transitional by early July 2003. This took a long time, but I think was worth it. In general, I feel like XHTML is much cleaner than HTML 4.01. Also, I modified the external cascading style sheet to be more efficient. The transistion, when finally implimented, went suprisingly smooth. I also updated a few pages to bring them up to date.

Problems with the page? Comments? Questions? Why wait?