The Offline years - 1996

Albino Blacksheep started in 1996. I could say 1995, but the phrase wasn't coined until 1996. It happened in high school guitar class. A class taken by people like me who already knew how to play guitar, but took the class in order to boost grades.

Albino Blacksheep was the production name for my music and other projects.

I produced music under the name Albino Blacksheep since 1996 and always planned to post my music on the Internet as well as my lyrics and related photographs.

I kept a few binders with all the content printed out. Originally, the music notation was written by hand and the recordings were made on Metal Cassette tape. The binders also contained the original logo made with a graphite pencil.

[Music notation]

1997

By 1997 the notation was transcribed onto the computer using Noteworthy Composer. This allowed for the creation of MIDI music - digitally generated music. A new logo was created using CorelDraw 4 and CD and Cassette covers were also created on the computer.

[Old Logo]

[Old Logo]

1998

1998 was a big year for Albino Blacksheep. I was taking the music seriously and invested in a Yamaha MD8 with the money from my summer job. This allowed the music to be recorded digitally onto MiniData Disc and made multi-tracking much easier. The quality of the recordings were a large improvement.

By the end of that year I had finally gotten a real computer with Windows 98 and would soon discover a whole new world of audio engineering only possible with a computer.

The online years - 1999

I took Albino Blacksheep to another level. I decided to use the equipment I invested in and to use my couple years of audio engineering practice to also record other artists. This is something I continued to do even up to today.

When I was in University in the Fall of 1999 I took my first stab at designing the Albino Blacksheep site and hosted it on Terrashare (now out of business). I found myself too consumed by homework and exams to continue with it at that point. In the Summer of 2000 I focused mainly on recording my music again while balancing my summer job.

2000

It was not until Fall of 2000 when I really began working hard on the site. I was taking a very strict Web coding course that semester and really fell in love with Web design. Everything had to be hand coded. At most we can use Notepad, but we had to prove our worth by coding on pen and paper throughout the course. The course is 60-205 at The University of Windsor. The exams included written descriptions of Web sites, and the student must write out the code to create that look. To prove my passion for this impossibly strict course, the class average was 52%, a D-. I got an A, and this included a 100% A+ grade on my final project, a website about Audio Engineering which I deserved a 99% at most. It had a missing quotation that the graders must have missed to my advantage. I coded Albino Blacksheep at the same time as this project and haven't stopped since.

At the time of coding the website, I was into MIDI music, creative photography, chat rooms (not really, but I did it anyways) and my life on campus. I was also discovering more of the Web since I had high speed access to the Web for the first time in University. I liked what were called E/N (Everything/Nothing) sites. Today, these would be considered blogs. My favourites were the ramblings by the Webmistresses of Electronic Whore and the Webmaster of All Idiots. Both websites do not exist anymore.

So what did I put on my site? Most of the work was coding the design of course. I changed the design just a little bit each day. On top of that I decided to "blog" about the ghosts that haunt my campus building's basement. I also put up some very childish emails I was getting from someone from ScholarStuff Chat. I posted photographs I took with a extremely large and heavy video camera from the 1970s, and I also posted an animated GIF made by my friend Loughlin.

2001

I finally registered a domain name for Albino Blacksheep in Spring 2001. I would have done so much sooner, but I didn't have to worry about anyone else registering any original three-word names that have never been uttered before.

I spent a lot of time in some web site competition called Battle of the Ancients. I was on the Native American team. I also applied to one called Camelot Dreams, but was quickly banned. Soon came the "All your base" trend and I wrote about that on the site too.

I coded a MIDI music player that played a random song each time you loaded it. I also posted a flash by Neil Cicigriega. I thought it was the most amazing thing I ever saw.

A theme of the site was starting to emerge. Images, Music and Flash Animation. I divided the site into categories based on generic file types like "Audio", "Image" and "Video". I incorporated windows icons for these formats into the web site design. I added a Java chat room on the ScholarStuff chat network to help promote the site. I spent a considerable amount of time designing Winamp and ICQ skins based on the site's colours and design and then opened a "Download" section to house these creations.

In the summer of 2001, things started to pick up. I was getting at least a few visitors each day and decided to apply what I leant in my web coding class. That the Internet is for two-way communication. I created an AIM and ICQ account specifically for the website and chatted with anyone that would message me. Then I would post the conversations on the site. I even posted conversations I had with people I knew from University. More and more site visitors messaged me and I added more and more conversations to the site later resulting in a "Text" section. People sent me pictures of themselves and I posted those online too. People, particularly two girls named Mela and Tanja sent me videos of themselves singing or whatever, and I added that too.

Now, here's how Albino Blacksheep came to be what it is today.

From the chatting on AIM with Bunnyavenger discussing a funny incident about his friend Kristin (posted on the site), and from the crazy pictures of Mela and Tanja, combined with the "Animutation" style from Neil Cicigriega came the creation of an original Flash Movie. I animated a flash movie titled Kristin the Bipolar Lesbian and it was poorly animated. Nonetheless, it set the direction of the site. Other animators started to get in contact with me like Jonneh and he even helped me create a second version of my movie with his voice acting added to compliment my animation. Jonneh sent in his Music and Animations to add to the site as others did too, and Albino Blacksheep was growing. 700 visitors a day. Extremely small by today's standards, but I took the time to talk with anyone that messaged me, and it seemed like there wasn't enough hours in the day to speak with everyone.