About Pryzm.net
Pryzm.net is the personal Web site of Tammy (Mallen) Hein, a former HTML hack and Internet
enthusiast turned professional programmer somewhere around the turn of the millenium. :-)
It was initially created purely out of vanity and curiosity about that enigmatic entity know as
"The Web," but it evolved into a tool to help me keep in touch with family and friends, and to
demonstrate my design and programming abilities to prospective clients/employers. Today it continues
to exist as my playground for learning and experimenting with the never-ending stream of new platforms
and Web technologies.
Pryzm.net began in 1996 as "Violet Clay's Home Page," a typical first-timer's ego trip
using an Internet handle borrowed from a favoriet book, Violet Clay, by Gail Godwin.
The site was hosted first on AOL, then on GNN (the now-defunct ISP that AOL bought out back in
the mid-90's), then on Lehigh University's Web servers while I worked at one of the college's
subsidiaries. When my employment with LU ended the site was again relocated, first to Enter.net,
and (if memory serves) I believe it even existed on Fastnet for a time.
Tired of having to announce a new Web (and email) address to all my family and friends each time
I had to move the site to a new host, I eventually decided to register my own domain name. I was
intent on finding a short and catchy domain that wasn't already taken (even back then they were
hard to come by). So given my interest in drawing and painting, I whipped out my color chart and
started looking up the names of the various paint colors in the WHOIS directory. After many unsuccessful
attemps, I finally settled on a slighty fudged spelling inspired by my old 'Net handle and the color
"Prism Violet." And thus, on April 7, 1998, Pryzm.net was born.
Since I can't help but get completely wrapped up in each new version of Pryzm.net that I create,
I decided to keep a running history of all my designs to-date. Explore the links in the sidebar at
right to see from where (and how far!) I've come. The home page of each design has been preserved
although most of the links are broken or disabled. But it still gives you a good idea of what each
site looked like. I hope you will enjoy looking back on the history of Pryzm.net as much as I do....
~ Tammy