Let’s take a little trip in the ol’ Wayback Machine.

The Wayback Machine is an awesome project that attempts to document the internet on a periodical basis. Try out some of your favorite sites over there and see how its all changed over the years. Consider it our generation’s photo album. So, I took a gander at some of my past stuff, most of which is either lost or uncached and thought I’d let you in on some of my internet history.

Let’s fire it up!

Geocities & MS Frontpage 1998-2002

I will never be able to remember the address for all this madness, but during this time I spent a lot of time making FFVII fan sites. I’d rip walkthroughs off of GameFAQs or something and make webpages with the most unholy of WYSIWYG editors: Microsoft Frontpage. I learned HTML and all sorts of dirty hackery like hotspots, frames and other now-bad practices. Though, it’s what eventually led to my ability to be a game developer.

wu.sw0bes.com 2002-2005

I refuse to read any of the text on these pages. Just know that I was young, idealist and trying to “find myself.” We’ve all been there and if you haven’t been, you will be someday. During this time I was trying a lot of stuff out. I made animated music videos in Flash, [even Windows Movie Maker] tons of digital art, took loads of pictures outside, documented just about every dream I ever had, wrote a bunch of poetry, non-fiction stuff, short stories, and drew a bunch of crazy intricate doodles while redesigning my website just about every 6 months. For the most part it was fun, and somewhat fulfilling, albeit aimless. It’s too bad the images didn’t cache [though I don't blame the archive] so you can’t see all of my past madness. But maybe that’s for the best…

maroonedmoon.com 2004-2005

Ah, my first domain. Since I’ve probably purchased a few dozen, but this one was just another creative outlet. I’d post anything I thought worthy of going up there, mostly photography and digital art stuff. During this time I was really into image manipulation, symmetry and nature photography, all of which were of amateur quality. I also was obsessed with the moon, specifically lunar eclipses. After this phase of my life, I realized I wasn’t happy with my artistic abilities and started to ask myself: “What makes something look better than others?” It’s a tough question, but it’s why I decided to head to an honest design school. I knew certain designs/websites/paintings looked better than others, and I knew why some of the time, but otherwise I was lost on where to begin.

gregwohlwend.com 2005-2009

Apparently 2005 is too recent for the Wayback Machine, but gregwohlwend.com has probably gone through about 4 total redesigns, maybe more. Gregwohlwend.com more or less marks the beginning of my trying to be a designer in earnest. I tabled my more wild artistic dementia in favor of stuff that would actually get me a job. It did during college, but by the time I was out, I didn’t want a job anymore. Nor was I interested in the wild-artistic-dementia mentioned earlier.

mile222.com 2007-2009

As for mile222, that’s probably gone through 2 total redesigns, starting out as a portfolio experiment which eventually turned into what you see today. So here’s to the Wayback Machine! Continuing on its valiant quest to archive the internet, as impossible as it may sound…

EDIT: BTW, this was the 222 post published on mile222.com! :)