About This site

What can I say? I like toys. Always liked them, but only recently started collecting them. Probably because I never had any money as a kid so it wasn’t exactly easy to do when I couldn’t afford to buy anything. I started collecting sometime in 1998, which just happens to be the year my first child was born. I think having kids rejuvenated my interest in toys and gave me something to potentially hand down to them as they get older (I have three now). Unfortunately for them, I don’t really let them play with any of these – well, sometimes I give in, but I try not to. ;)

Updates:

As of December 27, 2008, there are 362 entries in my database (see them all) but I have a lot more stuff that needs to be entered and I also need to add photos to a bunch of them. In fact, I have an entire Star Wars collection that I probably won’t bother enterring because I’m lazy and there are just too many of them. I hope to bring the site up date one day but have no idea how long that’s going to take.

I also recently updated the design of this site using CSS. No changes were made to the core HTML so you can see the old design using the following links:

Navigating away from those pages will take you back to the current default skin.

Am I Seeing Double?:

Why do some toys seem to have duplicates? The answer is quite simple. I have more than one of it. I suppose I could have just one entry, but I keep track of things like whether or not the toy is packaged and what kind of condition it’s in. So each one is a little different. Sure, it’s redundant, but you could also say it’s a more accurate representation of my collection. If only I had the resolve to actually take different photos of each. ;)

Fun With Browsers:

The site is best viewed on Safari, since that’s the only browser that currently supports text shadows in CSS. Of course, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work on any other browsers. I’ve tested the site on Firefox, Opera and Netscape (all for Mac since I don’t have a PC). I’m sorry but Internet Explorer is a mess so it’s not going to look quite right if that’s the browser you’re using. And frankly, it’s too much of a pain in my butt to troubleshoot it so I’m not going to bother, even though I know it’s still one of the most popular browsers still being used today.

Colophon:

Most of the photos were taken with my Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT (aka 350D) using an EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM zoom lens. Some of the older photos were either taken with my Canon PowerShot S400 Digital Elph or Canon PowerShot G1 but I’m trying desperately to phase those out and replace them with newer, better ones. It’s taken a ton of time to put this site together, so rather than waste more time re-doing all of the old shots, I figured I might as well launch the site with what I’ve got and update later.

Everything was created using my Apple 15" PowerBook G4. I used Macromedia Dreamweaver to build the site, but the vast majority of it was coded with PHP. I’m a huge fan of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) so structurally, the HTML is very basic and most of the design is handled through CSS. The site is driven by a MySQL database. The images were retouched in Adobe Photoshop CS and I used Adobe Illustrator CS to work through some of the design issues.

I would not have been able to do this without the invaluable resources found at CSS Zen Garden, A List Apart and 456 Berea Street. The wonderful “Lightbox” script that places enlaged images on the screen as an overlay was written by Lokesh Dhakar. And for those of you interested in digital photography, DP Review is one of the best resources I’ve found on the web for information and reviews on cameras and accessories. And of course, I post the rest of my photos up on Flickr. If you’d like to see some of my toys in action, check out my toys on sets photoset.