Updated Jul 29, 2024. View what's new.
Over one million visitors and counting!

Welcome to page one of the Cartania Website. Please take off your shoes and pour yourself a drink. Become idle, then curious, then child-like. Relax.

I love nothing better than a good, deep, meandering conversation. On a web page, I must let my words and images speak for me, so here goes...

	Visit beautiful Cartania! Learn about PONARVs and marvel at the tallest tower in Cyberspace!
	Investigate the 20 most strange and wonderful books in my library.
	Travel along to the Emerald Isle with photos and impressions from a Journey To Ireland.
	Embark on a spectacular search for the fabled Northwest Passage.
	Explore the photos, genealogies, and stories from my Family History.
	Consider the eulogy I delivered for My Father.
	Take to the air and study the third dimension in a Flying Lesson.
	Ogle my Desktop Images, Fabric Designs, and iPhone Panoramas.
	Experience the kind of bouyancy which may come at 36.
	Suffer the torments of a Mid-life Crisis. If you thought 36 was bad, wait till you see 40!
	Find out how to get past a mid-life crisis by Falling Silent.
	Join a lively classroom discussion as I try Teaching Tolkien.
	Ponder an odd question: Who Do We Dream Against?
	Marvel at my private obsessions on display in the Museum of Play Maps.
	Relive a seven-year journey through Archipelago.
	Descend into the underworld to buy A Table And Four Chairs.
	Celebrate my most eccentric friend, a cat named Aristippus.
	Imagine Gilligan's first sexual experience, Gilligan Unbound.

I am a writer/generative artist and I live with my wife Betsy, daughter Sarah, and two cats, in a charming old Edwardian on the Isle of Alameda in the San Francisco Bay. I started this website back in 1995 and have left it up as a reminder of what the web used to be like. I hope you will enjoy looking through a few of my essays, photographs, and dabblings. This site is dedicated to Ralph. Alice doesn't live here anymore.

When you are done touring Cartania, please visit our newly refurbished visitor's lounge and marvel at the world map of visitors. I no longer maintain the guestbook, but you can read comments left by past visitors if you want.

For those who find their stay in Cartania all too brief and crave even more Cartan trivia, here are some links, including more recent ones.

My NFTs. I like making quirky, eye-catching animations, each one unique. You can see more of them on my Instagram Portfolio.

Trip Through the Starmaze. Jane Frauenfelder's mathemagical journey through my maze was chronicled in Boing Boing!

My Courtship. The unusual and romantic way I met my wife landed us on CNN (literally 15 seconds of fame) and the front page of the Houston Chronicle.

NodeBox Forum. I do all my creative coding in the visual language NodeBox and volunteer as their forum admin. Highly recommended.

Mapping the StarMaze. In June, 2006 the popular MetaFilter site hosted a lively discussion of my sanity - or lack thereof.

Quora. I answer questions from the masses. What do top UI/UX pros know that amateurs don't? is my most popular answer.

The AppsLab. I actually got paid to write a bunch of off-beat, techie blog posts for the merry band at the AppsLab.

WIRED Magazine. WAY back in the mid-90s I wrote a few blurbs which appeared in early issues of Wired.

About.Com. On March 14, 2000, Cartania was named "Site of the Day." They also interviewed me and wrote a profile about me and why I do this stuff.

Holly Lisle. Dozens of other sites now link to Cartania, but this link by fantasy writer Holly Lisle is my favorite. Thanks Holly!

Bean Omelette. My father's much maligned recipe is preserved for the ages at Recumbo, the elegant website of my friend, Maggie Law.

The Birdhouse. Some of my essays are STILL on display at The Birdhouse, once a gathering place on the web for artists and writers.

Sarah and the Sealion. My daughter made her first appearance outside of Cartania in 2001 at an Alaska Photography website.