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What's in a Name?
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So of course you are wondering what the name swaq means. Some people have asked if the name
has any relation to squaw or if it is Native American or something like that. Truth is, I
came up with it pretty randomly. Story time!
When I first started to try to make a website I signed up for a free web account thing with
GeoCities. I had absolutely no idea
how to make a website, but fortunately GeoCities had a free visual web page editor online that
I could use. The visual editor was pretty crappy and my effort at a first website absolutely
sucked. I thought it was awesome. The web site needed a name so I called it Zeek's Car Page
or something lame like that. The only thing I remember was that I used the name Zeek. I now
had my own personal web site for all the world to see. Um, that is, if they could find it.
Remember, I had no idea how to create a website. Who needs an index.htm page anyway? I
deleted it, figuring that I could name my pages whatever I wanted and it would work. So, not
only could no one else in the world find my website, neither could I. That was my first
attempt at a website, which was probably back around 1997, and it failed miserably.
In April of 1999 I decided to take another shot at a web site. Being a foolish person, I decided
to go with GeoCities once again. This was still before they had merged with
Yahoo. So I need a user name again. I
could have gone with Zeek again, but by this time I arguably had a little more taste in name
selection. Somehow I came up with swaq. It was really random. I think the main factor in
choosing a name for me was I wanted something I didn't have to put numbers after. How original
is Viper80586? Okay, so those numbers actually do mean something, but still, I wanted something
unique without numbers. Something that would set the name apart from the crowd. As for the
unique name I picked, I pretty much just chose some random letters that were close to each
other on the keyboard. Also, I had been playing some Scrabble in those days so I was slightly
fascinated by words that end in Q. Ever since that day, I have used swaq for almost everything
I do online.
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The Legacy Begins
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For my second attempt at a web site I did a little more research before hand and learned about
index.html pages. If you want people to find your page, you need one. Actually, I didn't know
at the time, but it only has to be index dot something. The extension doesn't really matter
as long as it contains a web page. I also decided to look into Hyper Text Markup Language,
more commonly referred to as HTML. I found a basic tutorial on a web site also hosted on
GeoCities and went to town making myself a website that was at least slightly less crappy than
the last one.
As I was creating the site I realized that the site needed a name. Yep, here
we go again with the names thing. Why not use my user name in the title? Brilliant. I hadn't
even thought ahead to a title for the web site itself when I created that name. If I had known
I was going to use it for that then I probably would have chosen something completely different.
But as fate would have it, I stuck with swaq. But swaq alone does not make for a web site name.
I think my decision to call the site Swaq Valley was partially influenced by vacations to
Squaw Valley and the
Napa Valley. Even though the Napa Valley
really has nothing to do with cars, and a lot to do with wine, Napa always reminds me of cars
because of NAPA Auto Parts. Swaq Valley
was born.
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Growth
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I always knew I wanted to do something about cars on my website. By this time I had about two
years worth of Road & Track magazines
so I decided to use scanned pictures and information from them as content for my site. I still
use Road & Track magazines today, I just don't scan the pictures anymore. I get most my images
from websites and pictures I take myself. Swaq Valley version 1.0 was pretty bad. I thought
it was great, but looking back it was kinda pathetic, though definitely better than the previous
attempt at a website. My images were very low resolution GIFs and navigating the gallery was
difficult at best. The car statistics were in tables that used an ugly color scheme and were
pretty hard to read.
The next significant version of my website used tables for layout, as opposed to the frames the
previous version used, and had a few graphics as a design on all the pages. I wrote a bunch
of JavaScript to simulate what I do with PHP now. I had a single JS file that was included in
every page. It generated HTML code so that all the pages would look the same. The only thing
I had to write in the actual HTML pages was the content, header, and footer. The gallery had
improved significantly. I wrote some more JavaScript that handled the drop down boxes to select
a make and model of car. The method I was using to actually display the statistics was still
very inefficient, however. I had a separate HTML page for each section of each car, as well as
a separate page for the pictures. If I remember correctly, the statistics themselves were in
external JS files. This method led to hundreds of HTML pages which were very hard to manage from
a web designer's point of view.
I experimented a little with a white background and black text for a design, keeping almost all
of the rest of the site structure. I didn't really care for that so I soon changed back to a
black background and white text, and changed the images and page layout again. The structure of
the page was still the same, and it was still hosted on GeoCities, though I had written some
JavaScript that would hide their advertisements.
My sophomore year of high school I came across
Namezero.com which was offering domain
names for free as long as they had a banner ad in a frame on the bottom. So in 2001 I registered
the domain name SwaqValley.com through them. I still kept GeoCities as my web host for a while.
When I started offering blueprints on my website I needed more space so I hosted the blueprints
separately on Crosswinds which had
unlimited web site space for free without banner ads. Crosswinds slowly went downhill though
so I switched to FreeWebs.com and paid
for my website for the first time. Soon my free trial for SwaqValley.com ran out so I ended up
paying for that, but without banner advertisements, and I switched to my current host,
Nexpoint.
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Advanced Techniques
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For the spring break of my senior year of high school, March 2003, my family and I went to
Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. I brought along a beginning PHP book and read it all the way through
in the week we were down there. When we came back I completely rewrote my website in PHP. I
got rid of the external JS files and replaced them where necessary with PHP include files. The
new site design was much cleaner and a lot easier to maintain. The gallery used only three PHP
pages total to select and display any car and I made sure that there was an image of every car.
I also finally got the compare feature to work, something I had been wanting to do for years.
In July I added a monthly poll using more PHP.
Near the end of my first year of college I got a job programming in PHP for a research project
on campus at OSU. I taught myself the basics of MySQL in a couple days and learned a lot about
PHP and CSS. Mid-summer I found myself with no tasks at work so I used my spare time to revamp
this website. I used some of the new things I learned, especially MySQL, to rework almost all
aspects of the site. I kept the general design and layout, with a few slight modifications and
tweaked and rendered the graphics again. The result is what you see today.
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I live in Corvallis, Oregon. I am currently studying at
Oregon State University. My major is
Computer Science and I'm planning on getting a minor in Mathematics as well. I'd like to
pursue a Masters in Computer Science after I graduate, but we'll see if that actually happens.
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My primary interest is computers. My second love is cars. I also enjoy rollerblading, biking
(before my bike was stolen), playing chess, snowboarding, listening to music, watching movies,
and hanging out with friends.
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So if I love computers more than cars, why is this site about cars? The answer is, I was
interested in cars before computers, and they were number one on my list when I first created
Swaq Valley. Since that time computers have risen above them, but the site is still about cars.
Also, just working on the site satisfies my computer passion, so its hitting two birds with
one stone. I would like to do a site about computers some time though, and you'll probably see
parts of this site become computer related in the future.
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I first got interested in cars back in 1995. After playing Need For Speed SE I fell in love
with the Toyota Supra Turbo. I have yet to be able to afford a 1993.5-1998 Supra, but I was
able to buy a 1987 Supra in December of 2002.
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