This was the first layout to my site. I love animals, and cats are one of my favorite animals. So they came to represent this layout. This site was a lot of experimentation, because when I bought my domain I had no clue what to do. I had never worked with html or Frontpage before. So it was to learn from scratch, by trial and error.

Once Upon a Time...

It all started in May, 2003. They were selling out domains with first names. My father got hooked immediately and told me that I should buy a domain with my name. Since the spelling of my name is pretty unusual, we were quite certain that it wouldn't already be taken.

www.josephin.se was chosen and on the 15th of May 2003 I had my own website to play around with.


Easier Said Than Done...

Oh, all the things I wanted to put on my homepage. I had all these ideas. That is, before I bought the website. Then when I was finally sitting there, in front of the computer, my head had turned into a great black hole of nothingness. All ideas had disappeared, and it was about this time that I also realized that I knew close to nothing about building a homepage. First of all, which program do you use? What the heck is html?! Dhtml? How do you make links? How do you upload images? How do you get the images to stay where you want them to be and not start floating around...? I actually had a lot of these "floating" images. I put them in one corner and when I uploaded the page the image had of course moved to the other corner. There were images laying over other images - blocking them. I could see them, but they couldn't be seen on any other computers. Let's just say that it was a confusing first couple of days.

Fortunately, I'm a Quick Learner...

Through trial and error, I was stubbornly learning more and more. There is still more to learn and I discover something new every day. But now I know the basics. To my great relief (and it's a real time saver too) I can now write html. It actually makes some sense to me now. It doesn't merely look like a very complicated foreign language anymore.

It's the Inside that Counts...

So they say. Boy, was I trying hard to live up to that. I wanted everything on my website. Useful links, not useful links, funny links, entertaining images, interesting stuff. After a while I realized that I was aiming a little tiny bit too high. So I settled with the main things; What I wanted on my website.

The Human Being is Never Satisfied...

So my first layout came out, featuring cats. Then I learned some new functions and found some interesting websites on homepage building and no sooner had I uploaded the first version until I was working on the second. Version 2.0 was inspired by silence. I was going through a very hectic time and I wanted something I could escape to. Hence the name of that version, ::: Nowhere :::.

Version 3.0 was to follow. I worked hard with that layout. I was slightly more familiar with the basic functions of website building and could focus more on the artistic parts. "Silent Lullaby" followed, which was inspired by the warm weather in Australia, I guess. I experienced a big transition, moving from Sweden to Australia on the 11th of February; one of the major things being the weather. Layouts changed quite frequently after that, as much as my hectic schedule would permit.

After some hiatus, I'm now, 11 years after the first version, on version 11. Judging from my different layouts over the years, my taste as well as my ability to manipulate html has varied quite a lot. Who knows what the future will bring for this webpage?

The constant with my homepage is to create a place where I have fun being and hopefully other people will have fun navigating it. Nowhere is something that I long for actually. To be nowhere. Where there are no noise. No annoying cell phones or cars. Where you can be at peace with yourself. I wanted to create something akin to that on my homepage. A place where only you exist. Nowhere...

The idea to the name of this layout came from the song "Lady Stardust" by Lisa Miskovsky. I already had the images for the new layout ready, I just needed the name. I was thinking about a suiting name at work and "Lady Stardust" was played on the radio. And the name stuck. Stars symbolize a lot for me. Hope. Future. Peace. And a cold winter day is just that. The nature rests under this thick blanket of snow, waiting for what the future has to bring when the snow thaws.

After my arrival in Australia, I got this sudden urge to change the layout for my homepage. It might just be that I wanted to find something that I could use to escape my homework. Or it could just be that I have now - as I write this - left the winter scenery behind me and stepped right into the warm summer and I wanted a layout that reflected that. The content in the hompage is the same, it's only the layout that has changed...

Finals are over and I so desperately wanted to change the layout for my homepage. So I did. In the process I noticed a lot of broken links all over the place. This has been cleaned up now though, which hopefully will keep the frustration level down for both visitors and me. I really love this new layout. I love to have bright colours in contrast with a black background.

Maybe it will become something of a tradition for me to update with a new layout after final exams are over, because I just finished exams and I felt that my dear homepage needed some of my immediate attention. The layout for this version is inspired by a number of great artists on the web. The lyrics (and thus the title) are taken from Natalie Merchant's song "My Skin" - an absolutely beautiful song. It captures how I've been feeling the last couple of months so perfectly I couldn't let it go.

This layout was inspired by the things outside of our grasp. Things so beautiful they become unbelievable.

Featuring the people dear to me.

Text in the main banner is by Alanis Morrisette's "Thank You".

Version 10.0 ::: Terra Incognita ::: Closed

Trying out painting style... Terra Incognita is a phrase I found in my thesaurus when searching for a synonym for mystery. It means "Unexplored grounds".

It's been a while since I last used my homepage actively. A recent need to collect all my interests in one space has lead me back to my homepage. This is therefore the reawakening of my good ole' homepage.