Release 3.0 November 2, 1998 I was thinking about placing some other brief on who I was in the About section, but it's not time for that. I'm still starting up and I'll tell my story in here (for now). I wanted to share part of my background and to plug into what I'm doing on the Web. Three years It's closing in on three years when I first posted something on the Web. I had a lot of experience with computers and the Internet wasn't new to me, but I remember during Christmas in 1995 spending time just surfing, viewing source and seeing what I could do.     Something that got me on my way was finding Robert Hess' HTML Wizard Assistant. The Assistant was nice when HTML seemed so foreign to Windows 95, but it was the e-mail we passed back and forth about my first site. It was just the start of many conversations from people that shared insight on a topic when approached with respect.     In the past three years I've been more focused on the Web… Learning by creating sites, magazines, books, seminars, conferences, websites, mailing lists, and newsgroups. My first major web project started in the fall of 1997 working on the production of the Air Canada Cargo website. I was brought in for several months to assist in the production of some new components for the existing site. lowdown I think that the various spokes in Tomalak's Realm will be a good step at learning some new flows in producing a site and a chance to wear my writers' hat at the same time.     The closest mix to producing a site and writing was when I launched a site for a local provincial election in 1996 and another for the Canadian federal election in 1997. They were titled "lowdown on election '96/'97" (LOE'96 and LOE'97) and both took a humorous take on the elections with editorial and other features.     LOE'97 received some publicity in The Vancouver Sun and I popped up on TV with a CBC National story about websites covering the election. Not the best interview ever aired on the CBC, but I was still excited. Especially when being thrown some curve balls during the interview.     In terms of a workflow on LOE'97, I got comfortable with my text editor, Microsoft Word and Photoshop. I used a navigation tool called the "doughnut navigation system" for the editorials that were just links to any stories posted three days prior and three days after the current article. Which meant when I added an article, I would have to go back and update the other pages that referenced the page added.     Now I'm working inside of UserLand's Frontier content management system. Sure, I've spent hours creating a flow for my articles and site management tools to get started. But, after I have everything placed where I want it there's a nice balance in where I want to get my hands in to tweak and when I want to automate some other things. A unique balance. Tomalak's Realm I've been tossing around the idea of creating a general web resource for almost a year now, but it was only in the past few months where I had some time to immerse myself in thinking about the site.     I look at sites on several different layers of depth... where I can separate them and follow how they fit together. At a level where the discussion is both retrospective and looking forward.     I'll be covering these issues on Tomalak's Realm in a lot of different formats. You can join in daily with Today's Links where you'll be linked to interesting stories. Or you can read one of the in-depth reports and commentary in Works of Wonder or the Lab. And finally, I'll be writing essays about the Web in here and relaying some stories about working on the Web. Come on! Later, Lawrence tomalak@tr.pair.com