THE idea for this website originated as a scribble on a map I was drawing in Tunis in summer 1996. My tools of the trade at the time were Cumberland  pencils and Ozalid  reprographic paper. Possibly it was the heady combination of ammonia and snowpake that persuaded me it would be amusing to use Leopoldo as the launch vehicle from which to rocket into cyberspace. In the intervening years the ascent of my pilot webship has been less than meteoric. I think I've probably lost first-mover advantage, at least in the Tippex  trade. However in keeping with the zeitgeist at the turn of the twenty-first century my new paradigm is  that-there'll-always-be-another-one-along-in-a-minute. And in the same spirit of optimism I present what is at least the running gear of my boulevardier of the cloud. If you like it - great - if not, well OK we tried.

SINCE I wrote the above brave words the dawn of the bright new millennium was derailed by events. In the early two-thousand zeros the internet bubble burst, the tech juggernaut hit the buffers, the stock market went through the floor and the banking sector went into meltdown. Happily in the two-thousand teens the transformative shock of the internet was ameliorated somewhat. And my perception of where this website's going has also evolved. My design criteria are now inspired by Adaptation out of Being John Malkovich. The sole intent is to walk a random thread through an arbitrary field of strands of silicon. A thread which ravels in cyberspace, and which weaves only as the shimmer of a page of HTML script. Like the immediacy of a telescope, quite geophysical, rather subjective, and varyingly percussive for the viewer.
You could say this represents a worthwhile exercise, an interesting prototype, a novel platform. You could say it's a complete waste of time. For you to decide!

• National Lotto at a glance.
• Looking for a Basset-Lowke waggon? Click for details
• Need a geophysicist to unravel your seismic?  Contact our specialist team for details.
• Interested in Scotland's fishing heritage? Read about the restoration of  Pedro
• Are you a tractor afficionado? Find out about the  Grey Ferguson  heritage.
• Oscar Marzaroli:  One Man's World 1955-1984
• SS's Card Collection:  view here
• Train Classics  from the annals of Locomotive Publishing.