What is this place?
You have stumbled into the magical and mysterious land of *A (read “asterisk A”), which belongs to ... well, it belongs to me. I’m a creature who identifies itself simply as “Arimah”, which is of course merely a pseudonym, an alias, a fictional name I created and gave myself.
This is primarily intended as a personal website for me, whose main function is to provide a documentation of my constructed languages – and, to some extent, their associated cultures. For completeness – and somewhat for fun – this website also contains various other stuff I’ve made, and related matters. Have a poke around and see what you find.
In case you’re curious, I chose to do a very minimalistic design because I wanted to convince myself I could make something pretty without cluttering the page with unnecessary stuff. As such, just about every single design element on the website actually has a purpose, which is usually either to define an important area (e.g. the decors around the content area), or to provide some functionality (like the menu on the left).
Speaking of design elements, another thing I wanted to do for this website was to have it seem very freeform and sort of “floating”. On most other websites, when the content area does not cover the entire width of the page, the side margins often either contain some form of useful information/content, or a background of a different design than the content area. I very deliberately chose not to do that, but to rather have only the squiggly lines (dubbed “vines”) define areas of interest. I found that if you have an insanely high resolution, expanding the browser window to cover your entire screen makes the content area look like island in the middle of a vast, empty whiteness, which I thought was cool.
This design was completely and entirely thought up by me and me alone – however, I owe thanks to my friends, who have provided me with constructive criticism and have helped me improve on the design. Also, the website is almost entirely greyscale because I thought the extreme contrast between black and white looked sexy. The only things on the website that I didn’t make are the icons in the top-right corner, which were made by UK developer Mark James; many thanks to him!
Who the hell are you?
Having already given my name as Arimah – and that is all I will tell you here – I shall herein describe my personality... to some extent. Sort of. I’ll try to outline it for you.
Actually, no.
Instead of doing a traditional bio along the lines of “When I was growing up, I always had an interest in this and that and blah blah blah”, I’m going to simply give a list of adjectives and nouns which I feel describe me. Ordered alphabetically.
I am: {{TODO: list of me-words}}
Aren’t you the one who hit me over the head and tied m—?
That’s disturbing. I don’t do that kind of stuff.
I hire people to do it for me.