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Fan Interview: Ryan Irvine
Copyright © The Simpsons Folder
This document is done
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Could you tell us something about yourself, where you live, how old are you?
I'm currently living in Dayton, Ohio, and I'm 19.
What are you doing now in your life?
I'm attending school at Miami University (the one in Ohio...the good one). I'm entering my second semester of Freshman year, though I technically have Sophomore status because of credits from AP tests and such.
You had website called the Simpsons Web on the net few years ago. What happened to it?
Well, that opened in March of 1998 and remained open until August of that year. During that brief period, it started to become popular, but never immensely popular. I remember the day I found out that I recieved 4-stars on Shannon Picken's links page, and that's when traffic started to pick up. It was the first site to make good use of mouseovers, which might have caught some attention, even though the mouseover buttons I had were incredibly shitty. That was a good run, and it ended because I had doubts about whether I could continue to maintain it during my first year of high school.
Shutting it down was a mistake, in retrospect. I had a lot of fun doing it, so I began work on the next incarnation of The Simpsons Web around thanksgiving of that year, and started hyping the shit out of it, mentioning that it would be opening on 12AM on New Year's Day (I had nothing better to do at the time, I had not yet learned about the wonders of excessive alcohol consumption). The site launched as planned and really became (since the sourcebook was down and the archive had no media) the largest source for multimedia content that was available. I think I was the first site to have a few thousand framegrabs, and I offered plenty of sounds/movies. Within a month and a half, I was recieving upwards of 1000 unique visitors a day, which is a pretty cool achievement, but it all came to an abrupt halt in March of 1999. My host, Communitech.net noticed how much bandwidth I was consuming, and cancelled my hosting agreement because I was violating copyright. A webhost got to me before FOX could. And that's where it ended. I gave all my content to John Fiedler and went to work for him for a while.
In conclusion, I should recieve some sort of medal for making the first site on Windows 3.1 with Paint Shop Pro 3.12.
Who/what inspired you to make the Simpsons Web?
It was both Jesus Christ almighty and Brian Mayo, if I remember things correctly. Actually, I don't remember who motivated me to make the site. I guess I came to the realization that The Simpsons was really the first thing I was truly obsessed about. I began watching it religiously and decided to make a site about it. This was in eigth grade, remember. I had watched new episodes until then, but I think I was finally beginning to realize its brilliance.
What do you think about today's Simpsons sites on the net?
I don't really visit any sites anymore because none of them offer a reason to visit. The Folder was the only site I visited regularly, because the content was unique, the design was cool, and the english was unintelligable.
Are there any Simpsons websites with an attractive design and layout in your opinion?
Alicia is really good at designing webpages. Her latest design is really cool and inventive, and her last design was great as well. So LMS is the answer, I guess.
What is the worst Simpsons site you have visited?
Without question, Evergreen Terrace.
What are design styles you love and hate?
I used to think that sites with navigation on the left and content on the right were bad, but now that I've thought about it, that's really the most useable, navigable design to do. Getting past that, I hated how for two years, sites were entirely blue. That is still somewhat true. And I hate goofy stroked white cartoon fonts. God, those are horrible. Nobody tries to make clean designs, from what I can tell.
What do you like and hate about the net?
I like free music, downloading tv shows before they air, and the infinite amout of information that is available.
And when designing, what programs do you use and why?
For about five years, I used Notepad to do my code by hand, because at the time, HTML editors couldn't do everything I could do. But I discovered Macromedia Dreamweaver 3 years back and have been using that ever since. Photoshop will forever be used for graphics. There is no better graphical tool available.
What kind of computer system do you use?
A 3 year old HP Pavillion 8700. Here are the specs:
750 MHz AMD Athlon Processor
192 MB SDRAM
40GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
100GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive (added a few months back)
8x4x32 HP CD Writer Plus
16x DVD Rom Drive etc, etc.
For an operating system, I'm currently running Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Linux Mandrake 9. I mostly boot up to Windows 2000, only because XP seems to run slowly ever since I installed the second drive.
Describe your desktop. What do you see around your computer?
I store a lot of files on my desktop itself, so it's very cluttered. Everybody thinks this is really wierd, but it's normal to me.
What is your favorite episode on The Simpsons and why?
And Maggie Makes Three. I offer no justification.
How do you see future of The Simpsons?
It will go on for many more years in the forseeable future. I think Al Jean has made some good changes in terms of getting the show back on track, but they're not happening fast enough.
Any final comments?
Eric Wirtanen's little brother could beat the shit out of Eric Wirtanen.
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