I know, we're somewhere near version 3 right now (3.3.1 to be exact, check out the Web Log page to see why), but I'm not saying anything about us being at v.1 now! Everyone, take a moment and look to your left. Don't move your head. See that graphic to the left? Ignore the Aero mouse pointer and look at the design, does it look familiar? Back in July of 2005 (July 7th to be exact), after I had two successful websites under my belt, I decided to venture out and purchase my own personal domain. My first choice was, surprisingly, not "modenadude.com", it was in fact "asim.com". But "asim.com" was not available. The company that owns that domain, still, is Abel Insurance Agency. Can someone tell me how the hell does "asim" have anything to do with "abel insurance agency"? I'm sure you feel my pain at the time. Now, I wasn't particularly surprised that "asim.com" was taken, Auto Show In Motion's (an auto show where you get the keys to drive the car) initials are ASIM, so I knew it was a popular name; I was surprised that it was being occupied by such a lame company! I naturally contacted the company and asked them what the hell their problem is. Well, I was nicer. The actual e-mail (dated 6.30.05) to "Joe" schmoe (joe@asim.com, ugh!) read:


Oh the idiot. This was his reply:


What a turd. Anyway, I followed that e-mail up with a reply asking him if he would renew the domain in 2008 (at the time, that's when it would expire), and he said yes, they would. They've renewed it early and it doesn't go on the market until 2011. But I'm over it now and don't really want "asim.com", well I still do, but just because I don't want them to have it.

Okay, so after my first choice was turned down, I went to Plan B, and still "modenadude.com" was still not the next on the list. Most people who know me do not know that my legal first name is Asim Ali, we've unofficially changed the "Ali" into my middle name and just kept "Asim" as my first. Anyway, my second choice was "asimali.com" (also taken by the way, but it expires in 2008; it's annoyingly empty), but that sounded too ethnic, and in no way did I want this to be a religious site. Finally, embarrassed that I didn't think of it earlier, I decided on my third choice (no, not "bharwani.com", that's taken too - some family site that has yet to be completed after six years), "modenadude.com". Ahh. How natural that comes to me now. Everything I have online is modenadude. I do not know why it wasn't my first choice. modenadude makes it somewhat ambiguous, which is good because I didn't want this site to be totally personal, yet at the same time I wanted the visitors to know who I am. Looking back, it was the perfect choice.

My first design is something that still marvels me to this day. Not because it's perfect, because it certainly isn't; but because I feel amazed that I was able to make it back then. Many of you must be extremely curious what the design is, so if you don't remember it, click here to go to it, I uploaded it into a portion of this site. Alright, let's run it down. The "logo" and the favicon are a drawing that I made during an AP World History period a few years ago - I doodled it into my notebook and took a photo of it. What is it? My name of course. It looks pretty crappy, but it's the only thing I could think of for a logo - which is funny because even now I do not have a logo. It's protruding out of - I have no idea. Some tribal thing I made real fast, haha. The whole top bar is befuddled with dots, 1px dots. I remember seeing this done somewhere else, dots, and decided it looked awesome, so I put it in as well. All the way to the right, you can somewhat make out a phone, the Motorola MPx220 - my phone at the time; I told my self I would update that corner each time I got a new phone, or a new electronic. Underneath the top menu is a small gradient that I used as a border. This part always interested me. It looks so milk-chocolaty, maybe that's just me, haha. But the menu, ah, the menu. This is what I loved the most. The menu consisted of five buttons, only two of which worked, Home, Photos, LightWave, PS, and Websites. I created them myself, and to go with the whole pixel scheme on top, I decided that making them 1px by 1px would be very appropriate - and for some reason the Is are lowercase, haha. Underneath these buttons I had a pixelled underline, each different depending on however many letters the word had (except for "LightWave" as 9 pixels were too short, haha). When you'd hover over the link, the writing would turn red and the underline would shift down 2px, very reminiscent to the current link behavior, except opposite. The rest of the site was very simple, simple Trebuchet font (which is the official font of the Yearbook, by the way) covering the site with links red when you hover over them. Extremely simple.

I originally did not want the five links to not work. Before this design, I had an even simpler design through a site called Domain DLX. I used to use its server all the time - only 100MB though. With them, I created this (I'm so loyal to Domain DLX, haha, I didn't need to put its name everywhere). Yet still, not all the links worked, haha. Photographs was supposed to link here. Extremely basic, right? After a while, I put together that v.1 and came up with this, and that's when I decided to start hosting myself. Great stuff, eh? The LightWave and Photoshop stuff used to be up, but I have no clue what happened to them. I made some cool stuff too. I have a LightWave section on this current server if anyone is curious, here.

That's about it. This site started from the small Domain DLX stuff, turned into a v.1, then I started hosting it on my current server with another site, then I changed some more, and some more, and some more, and here we are! There's a very, very brief history of "modenadude.com". I hope you enjoyed it. A very unorganized story, I know, but at least now you can say you know our history. Before I go, I wished a Happy Birthday to PTA. I didn't get to wish a Happy Birthday to another person, because frankly he just wasn't born, haha. So for those of you (probably two) who know who I'm talking about, Happy Birthday, Rahul. And a Happy Birthday to my Mom too. She turns - woops, not allowed to say, haha. Take care everyone. see u.