About Alwanza Who is this Hittite from Seattle? And what is she doing in my browser window? Seattle Alwanza is a personal site dedicated to the friends of Meryll Larkin, and like-minded strangers. As ancient as pictures and the written word, as modern as tomorrow's technology, a Web page can put us in communication with people we have never met.  It can broaden our thoughts by exposing us to unfamiliar ideas, concepts, art.  It delivers research and reference material into our homes without requiring the space to store a library. The communication is instant and defies national boundaries. This magic, this Alwanza, contains my perspective of the world.  I hope you enjoy your tour of the world through my eyes. Here you will find links to libraries, news sources, recreational resources, Web page coding resources, and a few personal projects:  birding, non-dithering color charts, and special pieces of useful coding for the Web. This entire site has been coded using text editors.  My favorites are CuteHTML (on Windows) and nedit (on Unix, Linux) and BBEdit (on Macintosh). At Alwanza, there is a mish-mash of some very good navigation, some mystery navigation, and some deliberate misdirection.  It is possible to get lost at this site if you try to explore all of it.  That was intentional.  There are also a few hidden surprises and some subtle but obscure humor. How much of this is mine? All of the coding is mine, and all of the design and layout. There are a few midi (music) links hidden on several pages of this site. I did not record the midis myself, I copied them from other sites that permitted copying. Although my goal is that eventually all the images on this site will be mine, that is not the case right now. For example, all the pictures in the birding pages were copied from other sites. Why doesn't any of it match? Right now there is very little uniformity between different pages on this site. The reason is that I am exercising my coding and design muscles.  I want to use this site to experiment with different ways of doing things. For example, I have used both embedded and separate file style sheets, but you won't notice that difference unless you peek at the coding. Please feel free to add me to your bookmarks or favorites, invite your friends to view, too, and you may copy anything here that you like, but please observe normal guidelines of courtesy.  If you want to do something with something you found on this site and normal guidelines of courtesy lead you to email me to ask permission, you will find my address below.  In general I won't object to use for non-commercial, non-religious, non-promotional purposes.   [ Return to Top ] Please email to contact.cgi if you have any comments or questions about this page. Created: 8/08/00 Updated: 12/24/09