site history: The site began as my first attempt at creating a homepage in my salad days as a frosh. The earliest material included a site map featuring the anime character, Sailor Moon, and a spoof of an Aaron Kwok video. I started with PICO on my CSClub UNIX account and verified my HTML 1.0 code using the very first release of Netscape.  (Starting a homepage back then was perceived as geek-worthy, but nowadays, everyone and their lint collection has one.)    

site name: The original name in 1996, "The Site for Distinguished Tastes," was so called as to poke at the laughable state of webpages at the time and was created to be a page to aid the discerning surfer in finding well-constructed webpages.  It was contracted to "The Distinguished Dabbler" in 1999.  I should clarify here that the "distinguished dabbler", in the tradition of the original page, refers to the visitor, and not the author.  (But I guess I wouldn't mind being distinguished too!) 

current direction: The dd has become my on-line scrapbook, sketchpad, screened diary, and bulletin board. It remains my favourite creative outlet. 

web awards: "Waterloo Website of the Day" (16 July 1997) awarded by the UW Bulletin.

system: "Happy Clam" (PII 300, 128MB RAM, ATI Rage 128Xpert, 6GB HD, Creative 24X CD-ROM, Creative 6424X CD-R, 17" OptiQuest V775, D-Link Ethernet, Creative AWE64, ATI-TV Wonder, USR Sportster 56K, MS IntelliMouse, et al.)    

coding: MS Notepad, Netscape Composer to clean (but I surf with Internet Explorer)   

graphics: Vector designs in CorelDRAW, bitmaps tweaked in PHOTO-PAINT (v. 7 & 9), Mustek and HP scanners for photos