Welcome to Paradis Alternativ, #.

Old slogan...

If this is not your first time browsing this part of the muddy information pathway of life, you might already have noticed the look and feel of the new and improved PA. It's very different, yet still much is the same.

So browse around. Press some buttons. Look at the graphics. B free.

New slogan...

Suck it down, biatch!

BitStream:

This website is best viewed in 16 bit colors, at 640x480 resolution and with a frames-capable browser, or better. You are browsing with , which is good...I guess.

Click here to see the most powerful woman on the face of the planet, El Presidente Virginia Chung! (Not exactly...I just used to have a crush on this girl in high school. )

Ever wonder why Fred doesn't make up for the lack of content in PA with refinement in the form and style of presentation of what measly "stuff" he does have? Well, he does try, but just not in the right places though. To wit, check out the Gallery, a showcase of those annoyingly beautiful banners all created by yours truly.

Try my brand spanking new pages at the Freak Show and Synchronized Fluidity. For the freak shows, try reloading if the image doesn't appear at first. (The problem here has to do with background image caching and I'm working on it.) Don't forget to also take a look at the test pages Rated Z and Bookmarx.

Don't like mainstream pop music? Hmm... Me neither. But if your taste for music is more like mine, then you'll love the MP3 Music Collection here at PA. Tune in!

Don't like what you see? Tired of the Republicans (or Democrats)? Want a real change? Leave your blurb at "Tactile Feedback" and give Fred (me, PA's creator and editor-in-chief) some pointers on how to run this place.

HandShaking:

Sacha Karya Peter. A name I heard only so long ago yet had received so much attention from my mind. But who the heck is this guy, you ask? It's hard to explain in a few lines, but this much I can say: he likes to blow things up and shrink things down -- all for the benefit of mankind. (Aww...)

One day the mouse-clicking masses will rise up against the tyranny of digital powers-that-be whom has provided them much content and style, and on one silent night, it will be over... See the evidence for yourself as Vincent demonstrates that mainstream mediocrity lives in everyone's subconsciousness, but it's how you act upon it that changes everything.

Do you understand Chinese? Haven't figured out a use for that Big-5 character set in your Chinese Windows 95? Why not make a packet request at Eric Wei's homepage. Yes, content IS a rare breed in Wei-land, but check back once in a while for updated material.

03/31/00 14:03:55 PDT:

     Surely a sign of the Apocalypse, this homepage has been updated!!!!
     Three and a half years ago, I set out to create the best damn piece of homepage this side of the Internet, and I damn near accomplished that. Looking at the garbage that's being littered around the net now, I'd have to say I'm ashamed.
     Now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm back. In the last four years or so, I've become older, wiser and even more cynical then ever. How is that possible you ask? Reading something like www.somethingawful.com helps. Like they say, this is the first day of the rest of my homepage's life!

03/13/98 08:50:20 PDT:

     Okay, I think it's painfully clear that I can't possibly maintain two websites at the same time, so please visit my new one at http://www.ee.ubc.ca/~jzhao/. Thank you.

07/11/97 23:07:11 PDT:

     One word: WoW! No...I can't believe it either. This is the first time in over 4 months I have updated this page! I simply CANNOT believe it! Anyway, I decided to take some time out from playing five different computer games alternately for the last two months and put some effort into the improvement of this page.
     First of all, I just want to say that buying a monitor from a store at a price below the street market COST is highly NOT recommended! Even if the monitor is a brand name...like a SONY! Aww...shit, what's the use?!? Anyway, the problem with mine is the bottom-right corner of the screen is darker than the rest and the misconvergence on this piece of junk (which cost me 12 big ones after tax) is unbelievable!
     Secondly, I've finally found the perfect ftp space to stash my petabyte upon petabyte of mp3 music fun! Wherelse better than the very place I work at! This Power Mac 9600/233 is hooked up to a T1 via Ethernet and boy, is it fast! And since I was able to obtain a nice shareware copy of a WWW/FTP server for the PPC (which incidentally installed under 2 minutes), the scene is set for a very nice ftp'ing in da background! It's hidden! Can't find it if you tried!
     And finally, I'd just like to thank Sacha Peter for bringing to my attention the wonderful musical talent of Eric Serra, the enigmatic composer of the Fifth Element soundtrack. I bought the CD right after a listen of the mp3's dl'ed off the 'net, and man, was it good! Anywho, I made a few of my own files and decided to go with a lower bitrate. Won't make the files any smaller, but...oh well... Enjoy!

03/08/97 18:01:56 PST:

     Thanks to my ever-so-inquisitive English prof, I was forced to choose between an unpleasant grade on my essay or documenting sources of evidence that could support my "controversial" claims I made in the essay. So it became both the first time for me to experience book loaning at the university level and, incidentally, the re-discovery of my long forgotten interest in psychology. If you think I should start to orient PA towards that field of study, ie, present more meta-physical content and thoughts and their analysis than the "stuff" I have here now, then please leave a comment about it in the Feedback. I'd appreciate it.

03/04/97 22:38:41 PST:

     Yes, even Fred gets the blues sometimes. Anyway, I've added a background color fader to Page One. If you don't like it (or do like it), comment about it in the Feedback. Thanks.

03/01/97 18:01:23 PST:

     If you have recently visited the Life-Your section of PA, you've probably noticed there's really not much offered on those pages, especially in the Music part of Life-Your. This lack of links is really all due to my reluctance to manually process the 1 point some megabytes of music links HTML files I pulled off the net. But since I also have a nice collection of MP3 audio files (all made from my own CD's), I thought it would be nice to share that with you. So check it out. (Link's in BitStream if you missed it.)

02/23/97 17:38:54 PST:

     Alas, the 10th Paradis Alternativ Banner/Logo/Whatever is completed. I took a rather mundane picture found in the Eaton's makeup and fragrance catalogue, scanned it, then transformed it into an objet de art! (Yeah, right!) Anyway, since I find myself spending more and more time screwing around with Photoshop and drawing these stupid banners, I've decided to put up a series of pages showcasing them called Gallery. The link's in the BitStream section. Check it out. Also, I've finally created a "temporary" page for Pulp Fiction in the Movies section. A link to the script (which I've had for more than two years now) is included.

02/21/97 22:12:43 PST:

     After hours of hacking Javascript, I think I've at long last fixed the "background image caching" problem I mentioned about the Freak Shows pages. The problem I believe is caused by the Image object constructor in Javascript which basically told the browser agent to download ALL of the pictures before they are even displayed (hence, caching). So if the bandwidth isn't broad enough, the caching isn't very effective. Anyway, I think it's fixed. (The images are now supposedly called up on demand.) So try 'em Freak Shows again!

02/19/97 19:51:23 PST:

     Mid-term is now over and I still haven't done much updating of PA. I'm way too lazy to make any major changes or additions. But to show that PA is still being regularly updated, I've added to it an article written by me and a scanned picture of "someone". The links are at the top of the BitStream section above. (Very small addition here: a map showing the location of the city Shanghai, my birthplace, is now linked to the My Dossier page.) Make sure you check out all of the above.

02/01/97 22:33:47 PST:

     During the course of fooling around with my "new" scanner, my fingers slipped and the 4 new Freak Show segments became the result of it. (Yeah, right...) So check out the extended Freak Show. Also the Bookmarx section got updated with some new links to sites that I personally think are worth a look. I'll probably just post (and then rotate) 3 "My Fav's" links every week or so, to conserve storage space (those ad gifs take up a lot).

01/29/97 22:35:16 PST:

     As my previous bulletin suggests, not much progress has been made in almost all major sections of PA. However, I have been working on many smaller, more modular, parts of PA that doesn't dictate as much design to them as the flashier sections yet more than made up by their "rich" content. Anyway, take a look at those four or five newest additions to PA. (Rated Z's for mature readers only.)

01/24/97 22:49:50 PST:

     Although I'd like nothing better than to criticize other people's web pages and meanwhile glorify my own, still I have to admit that I've been avoiding some major work in the "Life" and "Movies" sections (not that "Games" couldn't have used some plastic surgery as well). Anyway...as you might have noticed, the Paradis Alternativ banner has been constantly redrawn over the last month or so and now in its fourth edition. I'd like to know which one you prefer the most; the "Tactile Feedback" form is updated to accept your vote. You can also submit your own idea for the banner in the comments seciton.

01/21/97 21:44:32 PST:

     All work and no play makes Fred a very, very, psychopathic boy. If you think working on calculus questions all night and day can help to nudge that grade, then absolute insanity awaits you in the dark corridors of the Math building. Anyway, some links to my close friends' homepages have been added. They're nothing spectacular (compared to my page, heheh...), but you will find uniqueness in each and every one.

01/16/97 23:13:41 PST:

     I just finished adding the first version of the "Tactile Feedback" page to PA. It allows you, the browser, to have a say in what should and should not be on this page. Try it. It's still in beta though, so not much in way of depth.

01/06/97 21:16:53 PST:

     University sucks big time, especially when you find out your term 1 marks at the beginning of the second term. About PA, I've just updated the entire web-site. Although extensive testing was done through Microsoft Explorer v3.01, layout errors still occured when the same pages were loaded using Netscape Gold 3. Damn the two browsers! Why can't they come to an agreement about the HTML standard? Anyway, everything is more or less fixed now. All pages are now made to look a lot better on Netscape then MSIE.

01/04/97 14:46:30 PST:

     There are only 44 hours approximately as of writting this before the Second Term of First-Year Engineering officially begins. Frankly, I'm scared. I'm afraid that this page probably won't receive any much-needed attention anymore. I'm scared that, due to my recent realization of how poor my mathematics skill really is, much more studying and much less FA'ing around will finally be in order. Well, come whatever may...

12/18/96 19:51:18 PST:

     Today I decided it was time for an overhaul, a "Great Leap Forward" in my web renovation process. Yes. Putting together the Quake pages was a real treat. Right now though that section of PA is pretty pathetic. But more additions will be forthcoming very soon now.

12/15/96 15:45:14 PST:

     Yesterday was the Day of Reckoning, more widely known to UBCites as the day the academic discipline of Mathmatics screwed them over. Needless to say, I totally fucked up on that final. Oh well... At least my web-page stands glistening shinily in the cyber solar rays...
     On a lighter note though, my "web-zine" is taking shape quite nicely (speed- and shape-wise!). It will be up very, very soon now.

12/13/96 14:47:22 PST:

     On this mild 13th day of December, a stroke of uncommon sense suddenly made me decide to revamp my entire set of web pages. (That and the fact I have an upcoming math final to worry about.) I've decided to steer the theme of the previously very unorganized and often half-finished pieces of work towards a more of an e-zine format. So far, it's only been the first page (dubbed "Page 1") and the side-bar that goes with it that are done. Progress is slow. (But at least they're not as slow as my non-existent modem connection!) More updates to come...