robbie245NO@SPAMyahoo.com
This home page was published in April 2000 - either the end of the second millenium or the beginning of the third, depending on your point of view. (Personally I favour the former - no "year zero", etc.) Technically the Internet has been around for pretty much all of my lifetime (do a search for some of its history if you don't believe me) but only since the mid '90s has it been generally accessible by the masses. The technology is useful but a lot of the material on there is less so.
When I started this site I found quite a few topics that I wanted to include. So I have covered a variety of subjects... I hope they have been entertaining and/or useful. If you've checked out a few other sections already then you'll know that I've concentrated more on editorial content than flashy graphics and so forth. This site isn't modelled on any particular style since I didn't have too many pre-conceived ideas when I started building it about how it should appear. Anyway you've read this far, so thanks for your interest.
If you have any questions, comments, encouragement, criticism, random thoughts or suggestions, want more information about any of the subjects on this site or would just like to get in contact with me, then please send me an email. Feedback is always appreciated and I will reply to emails, but please be patient as I'm not always online for very long or every day for that matter. The Internet is great fun but there are other things to do too! If you want to email me (please read below first):
If you click on the "mailto:" link to email me - just remove the capital letters so that the address matches the one shown in the graphic below. Unfortunately a genuine email address contained within the text of a web page can be harvested by low-life spam merchants...
Now for a few bits of trivia about me. I was born in Queensland and I've lived in a few different places around Australia. My current job is in the electronics industry (wholesale/retail technical sales and spare parts), and I moved back to Queensland's Gold Coast in 2002 after living in Sydney for quite a number of years. Of course you already know some of my hobbies and what sort of car I drive. Generally I'm a fairly conservative person with a sometimes-warped sense of humour. I enjoy lots of different stuff but I don't care much about things like latest fashions, yuppie behaviour or general "me-too" mentality. I will also do things the hard way sometimes just to prove a point! Also I don't mind the odd beer or two (as you will see from my "Beer Page"), but you might have to twist my arm...
Now, just a reminder for visitors. This home page is not commercially based or sponsored in any way, except for its host Yahoo! Geocities and the additional features provided by the host. So in other words I don't receive any remuneration from this site or any of the companies mentioned in it, nor do the opinions expressed herein represent those of anyone except myself. Robbie's World of Hobbies is purely for personal interest.
It has been useful (and sometimes amusing) to learn how some visitors have found this site, apart from direct links of course. Some of the searches leading here have been pretty much spot-on to the material contained here, and others have been quite unusual to say the least. It seems that Google in particular looks at all words contained in the pages including text bodies and picture captions rather than the supplied keywords. Anyway, in response I've written a rundown on what to expect from my home page:
Similarly, if you are looking for more images of things I've mentioned in the other pages then I may be able to email them to you or direct you to another suitable source. New pictures will be added to this site from time to time - thanks to everyone who has responded with suggestions for more photos.
Please keep in mind, too... this site is Australian and hence so is most of the subject matter. I don't have information, for example, on overseas retail sources for model rocketry supplies or Hemi funny-car models or fuel injection kits for your Plymouth Duster. Nor do I know about obscure things like "oil capacity for 4-cylinder Jeep Wrangler". (Hey, go look in the workshop manual!)
Firstly a big thank-you to my friend Tiffany who sadly passed away in 2001 after a long battle with cancer. This woman was totally amazing and her many contributions to this home page included photography, content and promotion suggestions, video footage plus a whole lot of encouragement to make it all happen. She ran her own ever-changing web site for quite some time as well. Check out her story at these two sites:
http://www.sportbikegirl.com
http://www.tiffanysmelanomafoundation.org
Also thanks to my buddy Sean for various pictures on this site as well as all the technical help and suggestions. (And assorted pithy comments!) Not to mention collaborating in various rocket-launching and photography experiments, plus all the bike rides... His web site is full of information about the Kawasaki ZX-7R plus great pictures, tech tips and plenty of other material. Have a look at his home page at:
http://www.geocities.com/zx7_pilot
Steak is a neat, slick-looking website with a wealth of great material about Chargers and other Chrysler models in Australia and New Zealand. The webmasters, Chris and Mat, have gone to a lot of effort to compile useful info and plenty of pics on their site. Mopar or Nocar! Check it out at:
http://steak.freewebpage.org
If you would like your link on my page and vice versa - or if you just have some interesting material you want to send - then please email me and I'll check it out. All contributions are welcome. From time to time I do work on some new site promotion ideas so I hope my home page will be seen by a wider audience. Thanks to all the visitors to this site so far, and especially to those who have taken the time to provide feedback.
since 8 April 2000.
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