i've been making web sites for more than ten years now.

i don't remember very much about my first. i'd guess it went something like this: a heading reading "atashi's web page", then a few words about myself and a small collection of links to places that i thought interesting. in 1997, that was how most every personal site went.

my dad worked at a university back then, in a lab surrounded by pipets and centrifuges and those heaters with spinning magnets for stirring beakerfuls of solution. he'd often bring me around for the day when my mom was taking classes, and give me free rein over the quadra 650 that sat in the corner. considering the abundance of breakable things in the same room, his decision to let me play with the computer instead was, in hindsight, amazingly prescient.

it was on that old mac that i cobbled together my first page, probably after my hundredth time trying to figure out how i was supposed to solve that fiddly slide puzzle that came with the operating system. my dad pointed me through the menus of netscape composer, waiting as i fiddled with fonts and colors for minutes on end. it was at his suggestion that i added the only element of the page that i really remember: a background picture of the rivers and mountains of guilin, china, which he called one of the most beautiful places on earth. from the photographic evidence presented, i found it difficult to disagree.

after a few more button clicks, i had made something that the entire world could see.

atashi.org is my attempt to recapture that spirit of first creation, separate from the design specifications and branding guidelines that have tied mine down in the decade since it first came to me; where i make something not for the sake of an organization, a cause, or a weekly paycheck, but because it's a way of making a statement about myself.

some people write. some people paint. some people sing.

i make web pages.

enjoy.