Computing
WWII
Books
Sharks
Humor
Odds...
Hey, what am I doing here? You're looking at an "About Blinky" page – or at least one about his online activities. If that's not something you wish to do, then explore the main menu, up at the top of the page.
Why "Blinky the Shark"? Blinky was born when I read that sharks don't blink. It was obvious that there should be one that does, and I decided to shoulder that responsibility, myself. Then I realized that sharks don't have shoulders. Hell, they don't even have bones - just cartilage. So I was forced to simply take on the responsibility without the metaphor. That seemed a lot less classy, but it had to be done. As it turns out, some sharks - besides me - do blink, but by the time I found out about that, I was already Blinky. That works out fine, because I'm the only one that blinks and can type, so I'm still special.
What's "Dogfish"? (About this site.) I originally called this Blinky's Dogfish Home, and some will remember it by that name. When I originally created it, it was necessary to have a site address less than nine letters long, and dogfish was the only shark name I could think of that satisfied that criterion and didn't invite confusion. Leopard (as in leopard shark) is short enough, but without context it sounds like a big cat. Similarly, thresher is just the right length, but it could equally refer to some guy in overalls who's bringing in the grain harvest. Mako would've been fine, had not a friend pointed it out after I'd already named the site. At any rate, Dogfish is now blinkynet, so that's all irrelevant, but that being my first location, I decided to keep this explanation for old time's sake and continuity. If I may corrupt a slogan from the St. Pauli Girl beer folks: You never forget your first site. The first one was ugly, tossed together in a near-instant. It didn't live long, thankfully. I did a total revamping, and it was cosmetically much better. Later, I decided to kill the nested-tables approach to structure and simplify the layout – and the maintenance. I reworked it to be simple and fast, even on a dialup, because that's what I found myself applauding when I was browsing, and that's the style you see today. For file management and editing, I use Quanta Plus, although my primary text editor is gvim, a graphical version of vim.
Where does Blinky hang out? Here.
Where else does Blinky hang out? I tend to hang out in technically-oriented (although not developer) groups, but not exclusively. That said, I learn from, and would like to believe that I contribute a bit to, these newsgroups (some of which I mostly just read).
I also frequent the following very small hangout: alt.newgroup.for.fun.fun.fun. And, yes, it's an embarrassing name, but some of my dirty, hairy, stinky Usenet mammal friends hang out there.
I read a few other groups occasionally, but the above pretty well represents my Usenet Life, which originates in North Hollywood, California, USA.
What does Blinky wear? Don't be fooled by the ugly rumors about hats that look like giant spools of thread. They've been spread by dirty, hairy, stinky Usenet mammals, undoubtedly because they envy Blinky's oh-so-sleek and graceful form, naturally self-cleaning surface, and lofty position on the food chain. Where this spool idea came from...uhh...I have no idea. Right. That's it. It certainly had nothing to do with a botched job of making an X-Face avatar of a shark wearing a top hat. Nothing at all.
Some shark art courtesy Fiona's Shark Mania
