Some people have 'home' pages, some have 'virtual towns' and others are more conventional and have pages of information laid out in a normal way. But web pages are almost purely a construct of the imagination and mind alone. Consequently my pages constitute a web fortress, guarding the harbour of personality from the sea of consciousness.
Which is a slightly pretentious way of saying that I regard this web page as a peek into who I am, how I think and what I like. Because I don't want someone rummaging willy-nilly around in my head, exactly what is accessable is controlled. Thus the fort above the harbour metaphor.
Forts have always been about controlling something. Usually sited near trade routes or mountain passes their function has been, often, to restrict access and to protect the lands lying behind the fort. Sometimes they are little more than a barricade of some description and guns. (Akin to the Wrights Hill fortress placed up above Wellington city during World War II. Fortunately that installation was never challenged and has been decommissioned for some time now.)
But the more elabourate fortresses were like minature cities. Complete with manufacturing workshops, food, libraries, accomodations for both personnel and prisoners and (naturally) weaponry. My web fort strikes a balance in between. You won't find weapons here, it is purely a defensive fort and relies on brute strength to serve it's purpose. (Well brute something anyways.)
It must be noted that the idea for a web fort is not completely based on such reasoning. In reality the above constitutes the rationalisation that appealed to me. The fact that Wellington, my home town and birthplace, has a fortress above it and is a harbour city is no coincidence. It adds to the appeal of the idea for me, as it reflects my local flavour as well, and instead of, just being a 'concept' page.
Also the metaphor allows me to be deliberately slightly confusing as to where items of information are on the site. There is still a method to the placement but the aim is to encourgage a rummaging form of exploratory browsing where you move around the pages and find various semi-related things of interest. That way hopefully as you strike to find what you are interested in you will come across a few other things as well.
Finally due to not being a graphics artist, I have deliberately chosen to keep these pages lite on the graphics side. Most of the graphics you will meet will have been designed by me or photographed by me, but I hope to constrain myself to just reasonable level of images. Seeing as this is a text medium I have instead opted to trying to use words to paint the pictures for you. This also has the nice side effect of keeping load times to a minimum, good for all those people on modem lines out there - like myself.
Have fun exploring and let me know what you think of it all.
Philip