Disclaimer
The events and characters depicted in these web pages are entirely fictitious.
Any similarities between these and living characters is purely coincidental.
And anyway, it could never happen this way: in fact, you probably imagined
the whole thing.
Very few engineers were harmed in the construction of these pages and they
had it coming.
Let's be frank.
This site exists because it does, so there. It contains lots of information
because it's difficult to remember lots of information. Most of it is
interesting, or helpful, to me (not you) - I wrote it for me (not you) - if
you can't find what you're looking for, that means you haven't written it
for yourself yet.
That said, you're welcome to use this info secure in the knowledge that it's
1) mostly accurate, and 2) almost, but not quite, entirely useless to anyone
but me. This is reflected in the site title 'Utility Muffin Research Kitchen'
which, as mise-en-scene, is a quote from Frank Zappa.
The Kitchen has existed, in some form, since the early 1990s co-incidental
with the introduction of the world-wide web and HTML (remember Mosaic?) as a
place to experiment with geeky technologies whilst ostensibly engaged in
research activities.
About that time a colleague asked me what its ultimate goal was. In absurdist
mode, I replied, "I'm going to develop the Triple Chocolate Muffin!": a couple
of months later she emailed me an advert for a confectionery company
boasting their new product. Yup.... there are some cultures you just can't
parody. That didn't stop me trying, of course, and there followed a whole
succession of obscurely muffin-related goals, each more outlandish than the
last and often based on the current technological fashion. The running joke
was really about the pointlessness of technology for
technology's sake: it was stoked for some time and provided much innocent
diversionary amusement..... you know, I think it still does...
This is the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, and you're welcome to it.