The History of Dave's Zone

I began studying HTML in 1997, when I was a sophomore in high school. I built my first web site using only HTML source code in Geocities. The original title was Dave's Zone and it contained information on the hobbies I enjoyed such as: computer games, video games(Nintendo systems), TI-83 Graphing Calculators and programs, among other things. The launch date of the original site was November 26, 1997. This site was created in partnership with my friend Russell's original website, which has evovled into RussellDare.net.

Soon after the launch of Dave's Zone, I wanted to change the name of the site to something more appealling. In early 1998, the site was renamed Potomac Hobby Inc. I also added a section on elongated coins and another section containing photographs I have taken of interesting sites such as skylines of cities, bridges, and other landcape photographs. Potomac Hobby Inc. lasted about 5 years, during which the site went under many renovations. I created a webcam of my room, and another website that contains pictures of my senior high school class trip to Israel.

After moving from Potomac to Gaithersburg and taking a few web design classes at Montgomery College, I decided to eliminate Potomac Hobby Inc. and once again name the site Dave's Zone, which now contains information about me. You will find information about who I am, where I go to school, what I am studying, where I work, where I have been, my short and long term goals, samples of my photography, and videos that I have taken. Also you will find links to my Israel website, Iceland site, and my Flickr Photo Gallery.

-In late April 2001 I started building a site containing Israel photos taken during my senior high school trip to Israel in Spring 2000. This is a collection of photos taken by me and some of my friends. The link to this section can be found in the Geography/Travel section.

-A section containing links to my collection of videos was built and implemented in March of 2003. Videos are added once every few months when something interesting happens or when I travel some where.

-On November 6, 2003 Dave's Zone was moved from Yahoo Geocities, to it's own dedicated server. The original server was a Toshiba Pentium 300 MHz laptop running Windows 2000 and Apache. The server was then switched to an Intel Celeron 900 MHz pc running Windows 2000 and Apache. That server was eventually reformatted, and the site is currently running on Red Hat Linux 9. Click here to see a diagram of my network topology(also known as a network map).

-Frames were incorporated into the layout of Dave's Zone on January 12, 2004.

-A section about Iceland was added after my trip in late February 2004. The link to this section can be found in the Geography/Travel section.

-A section about my camping trip to Spruce Knob, West Virginia was created July 4, 2004.

-My interests in geography and traveling created a merged section containing pages displaying relevant information on July 6, 2004. The link to this section can be found in the Geography/Travel section.

-A section on various mushrooms found in this area, a project my friend Geoff Gould and I are working on, was added November 2, 2004.

-A section containing photos and videos of my trip to Chicago in 2003, was created on January 19, 2005. The link to this section can be found in the Geography/Travel section.

-A section containing photos of my trip to New York in 2002, was created on January 23, 2005. The link to this section can be found in the Geography/Travel section.

-Mushrooms of the Mid-Atlantic United States underwent renovations and was completely reorganized. The new site went online February 24, 2005.

-The Iceland page underwent major renovations to change from frames to templates. The project was completed on May 17, 2005. The following day, Dave's Zone also changed from frames to templates, giving the site better navigation and helping search engines by not confusing the spider. The conversion of the Israel site was completed on June 21, and all of the Dave's Zone sites are now frames free.

-A section about my camping trip with my friend Russell to Virginia Beach in 2003 was added to the Geography/Travel page on April 1, 2006.

-A section about biking at the C & O Canal was added to the Geography/Travel page on June 2, 2006.

-I submitted some videos to Youtube.com. They impose a restriction which limits videos to be 10 minutes or under in length. Therefore it is recommended to view all videos through the video section of Dave's Zone. This is the complete collection and the quality is a little better than youtube.

-A Picasa Photo Gallery was set up on June 11, 2007. This online gallery contains sets of themed photos which cannot be found anywhere else on the web, including here at Dave's Zone. I will add photos periodically, however all travel photos will only be located here at www.dpodgor.net.

I hope you will take this time to get to know me, and travel through my site. Thank You for visiting.