About This Site

I've been doing this site since 9 August 2001 now, and oddly enough I haven't got bored of it yet. It started out as a lowly Tripod site called Whiggles.da.ru (da.ru because that was the URL of the redirect service I used - gotta love those free Russian domain names). For some time the site then became known as Whiggles.tk, before finally getting to play with the big boys by becoming Whiggles.com on 4 May 2005. As of version 3.00, and until December 21 2003, I was kindly hosted for free by my friend Graham who actually paid for a domain name. Lyris and I did the same eventually, and thus we gave G back the web space we had stolen from him, and Land Of Whimsy was born!

Normally, I do the layout and coding for my web site myself, but from June 21st 2005 to September 17th 2006, I moved to Blogger.com, which provides pre-designed templates for web logs. On September 17th 2006, however, I moved back to designing my own layouts for the ninth major redesign of the site (or eighth, if you don't count the Blogger version).

As of the site's tenth redesign, I abandoned the "Whiggles.com" moniker and relaunched it as Land of Whimsy, finally officially inheriting the name of the domain where the content is hosted. The site is now in its second incarnation as Land of Whimsy, and the "Whiggles" subdomain has now been dropped for everything except archived content.

For graphics, I use Adobe Photoshop Extended CS5 (Student and Teacher Edition), with HTML editing done by hand in a neat little freeware program called Notepad++. For my news posting, I use a professional (but free!) publishing platform called Movable Type, which I believe offers the best trade-off between ease of use and flexibility.

A lot of what I do with the site, such as maintaining a DVD database and reviews, along with general design quirks, is achieved with the help of a handful of useful Movable Type plugins. The significant ones are:

  • Paged Archives: Alden Bates' plugin allows me to paginate my category and monthly archives to keep the general size of each page from getting too unwieldy.
     
  • Custom Fields: Although, as of Movable Type version 4, this plugin has actually been integrated into Movable Type proper in its Professional incarnation, Arvind Satyanarayan deserves a great degree of kudos for developing this plugin, which gives users the much-requested ability to create any fields of their choosing beyond the traditional "title", "date" and "entry" options that come as standard with blogging software. The DVD and review sections wouldn't have been possible without his hard work.

To view the site, you basically need any XHTML 1.0 Transitional compatible browser and a minimum resolution of 1024x768. The site looks as it should in properly compliant browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Safari. The current incarnation of Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 8, also renders the page correctly, which is a turn-up for the books. Older versions of these browsers, particularly Internet Explorer, are likely to have trouble rendering certain aspects of the site properly.

 

Other Questions

How can I contact you?

m.r.mackenzie[at]gmail[dot]com - don't bother looking for an AIM or MSN name, because I don't use either of these.

What computer/modem/ISP/etc. do you use?

I have two systems.

Main rig

The first, the one I use on a regular basis, resides downstairs and is the more powerful of the two.

HP Pavilion DM4-2000EA

My other system, which usually resides in my bedroom, is a laptop - an HP Pavilion DM4-2000EA.

Notable software:

  • Operating system: Main PC: Windows 7 Professional (64-bit edition); Laptop: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit edition)
  • Web browser: Google Chrome
  • Others: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Student Edition (graphics), Notepad++ (text editing), FileZilla (FTP), ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 5 9.0 Ultra (Blu-ray/DVD/HD DVD playback), Microsoft Word 2010 (word processing), Windows Media Center (TV recording)

What films and TV shows do you like?

I'm probably best off directing you to my My Movies page on IMDB. That should give you some idea of my tastes, although the list should not be considered complete by any stretch of the imagination.

Favourite directors?

I like just about everything from Dario Argento, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Alfred Hitchcock and John Kricfalusi. I also like some of the work of Mario Bava, Luc Besson, David Cronenberg, Lucio Fulci, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Krzystof Kieslowski, David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Ridley Scott and Quentin Tarantino, although with them I'm considerably more selective.

What system do you use to watch movies?

I'm lucky in that my brother is considerably more knowledgeable than me when it comes to the technical aspects of such endeavours. As such, broadly speaking, he provides the hardware and I provide the discs. His current setup is:

  • Projector: JVC DLA-HD750 (DLA-RS20 in North America)
  • Screen: 123" Da-lite Cinema Vision Perm-Wall
  • Receiver: Onkyo TX-SR876
  • Front left and right speakers: Monitor Audio Silver RS6
  • Centre speaker: Monitor Audio Silver RS-LCR
  • Rear left and right speakers: Monitor Audio Bronze BRFX
  • Subwoofer: MJ Acoustics Pro 50

For Blu-ray discs, we tend to use my Region A Playstation 3 (20 GB version) or, for Region B titles, my UK Panasonic DMP-BD35.

Introduction

If you need to know something about me, this site, or what I get up to, this is the place. There isn't too much order here - it's really just a random collection of things you might want to know.