Patrick's artwork


The Fish in a Barrel pond at the 1996 Marin County Fair

Yes, this is the obligatory links page ... I would like to share a few thoughts about ponds, both real and virtual. There are three links here of historical significance: Len's Pond Page, Half-Barrel Pond Page, and Pete's Pond Page. Each of these pages were, to my knowledge, the first of their type on the topic of ponds on the Internet: the link list, text, and graphics enhanced. Visiting each gives a look at the early net when a dial up connection was at a blazing 14400 and there were less than a million pages ...

Link lists were among the first webpages to spring up, search engines were in their infancy, (Lycos was still located at Carnagie Mellon University, ya who?) and so the best way to find your away around was to visit a list kept by early internet (for lack of a better word) guru. Len's Pond Page is an excellent example as it has been in existence since near the beginning in 1994. (HTML 1.2 was the current specification.) Len's list started with only 5 pages, and to quote Len, "Pete's was pretty new and his was the only one nicely done."

Jeff Cook's Half-Barrel Pond Page, first published in December 1995, is a great example of a text-based page. It has great information presented in a basic text format. Most of the information on the Internet looked like this prior to the creation of the World Wide Web in the days of Archie and Gopher. In, fact the early web browsers such as Lynx, were text-based.

In this world Pete's Pond Page blew everyone away. Here was an example of what the web could be: great content with eye-pleasing presentation. It is hard to realize today that Pete's page was one of the best pages on the entire web at the time. It's layout and design was as good as it got, and it dealt with the topic in an entertaining and personal way. Jeff Cook gives credit to Pete for the inspiration to create his page. Many others, including myself, were also inspired to create ponds both real and virtual.

Visit other aquatic environments online (Len's list). Some of our favorites are:

Have a suggestion for a link? Please let us know what you think!You can E-mail us at gjmurphy@well.com

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