(Pre)History of the Stove
Long ago, when giants strode the earth and the gods still lived, two guys were born and made a doofy page. This is their story.
The prehistory of the stove is unrecorded since it's the prehistory. Recorded history begins when Evk set up his music server, running a FTP-like client called Hotline. Starting with just the Final Fantasy 4 soundtrack, Evk built a mighty server full of MP3s and other goodness. Eventually a fat bitch hypocrite fellow MP3 collector reported him to his ISP and he got his service shut down for copyright infrigement. After a warning and putting his ISP on his shit list he was back in buisness!
Then stuff was quiet for a while until Backward Z and Evk found the Temple of Time, a rather bare-bones videogame site with - guess what - a FTP server that solicted videogame music. Eventually Evk and Z both joined the staff, with Z as a article-guy who never wrote articles and Evk as super duper music uploader guy. Then the Temple of Time went through some shit. One of the head guys left and the other head guy fired everybody. I used to have the mail but !$^(!#$*( Ho-mail automatically deletes messages that are too old. Supposedly he did it because Z didn't contribute and as for me just uploading gigs and gigs of music isn't enough. (cough)
Next, Evk went to visit WrexSoul in Oklahoma. WrexSoul had seen the failure of Temple of Time, and thought he could do better. What about a page about video games, done with our distinctive brand of off-color humor? So, that was when the idea behind Salamando's Stove was born. Next, someone had to pick a name. Evk suggested "Salamando's Stove", after the stove that Salamando is trapped in in Secret of Mana. WrexSoul thought this was a pretty stupid name, but he couldn't think up anything better, so Salamando's Stove it was.
So, finally, the stove was born. The early period of the Stove was marked by more comics than anything else, and also poor writing by some of our staff members who will go nameless. After a while everyone except Evk and WrexSoul drifted away, and Salamando's Stove entered the current period of a lot more articles and not as many comics.
What lies ahead? Probably some sort of gayness, that's for sure. Please tip Hobo Chocobo on your way out. It's the only way he can make an honest buck in this filthy country.
Because it's relevant, though not necessarily interesting, I will include a rather long rant about the creation of the Stove I put on the first day of the Stove's existance. It goes into a lot more detail than the above description, but amazingly enough doesn't really cover any more than boring details. But for the boring detail crowd, we are more than willing to please! And didn't I ask you to tip Hobo Chocobo you cheap bastard?!
About Salamando's Stove - why we did it and where we're going with it... Some time ago there was a Hotline server run by Evk. It was a pretty respectable place, with dozens of regulars, and dutiful contributers and leeches. But he had very lax rules and nobody really cared if you downloaded whole albums at a time. The news was huge and frequently posted to, so much it was almost like a chat room/message board hybrid. But Evk's server wasn't without it's blemishes- certain people and malicious script kiddies decided it'd be fun to post virii and use hotline hacks. Yet it kept going... until at last an unnammed person who participated in an unnammed site was angry because said person wanted people to be able to download mp3s that she supposedly ripped only from her site. Of course, she was the only one who could have ripped them, and as a result she's the only one who can distribute them, because she put a CD into a ripper and churned out mp3s. We weren't even leeching off of her server- they were on Evk's computer, and sent using Evk's bandwidth.
Anyway, Evk didn't even uploaded them himself. Like I said, this was an anonymous FTP server, and many people would just upload stuff out of the goodness of their hearts, and apparently some people didn't like what they uploaded all the time (this happened more than once). Well, going back to this anonymous bitch, she took it upon herself to see that Evk pay for his injustice of allowing people to share files she too was sharing. She had sent several threatening letters, consorted with so-called "hackers"/crackers, and eventually got Evk's ISP to threaten discontinuing of service if he ever run file distribution on Hotline again. So the glorious server regrettably died. But it left him with gigs of VGM, which he uses even today on Salamando Radio (previously Wrex Wradio).
Meanwhile, sometime later, there was a page called Temple of Time. It wasn't much at first, but then it eventually drew a handful of regulars who posted on the message boards and went to the great FTP site. The FTP site, which was pretty mediocre at first, later became the huge site it was because Evk uploaded his previously accqured gigs of VGM. Funny how this all ties together. Well, this was the main pull of the page other than the five total articles released, which looked like it could possibly be a regular attraction but quickly grew obsolete as nobody wrote them. Anyway, the creator of the site, Squall, left and Intendant quickly took over. Then he decided that since "nobody did anything" (like upload half the FTP site), he would remove all of the people on the "staff" except himself. Then his ISP went under, and in the time searching for a new server (we still don't know if he's found one yet), he decided that he was going to radically change the site so it would revolve around him. Then Squall made a new site which is exactly like the old Temple of Time, only with the original design (and a new name slapped on it), and to boot, was constantly "under construction." Well anyway, we got the idea that the site was a good idea when it was the Temple of Time and could have been great (with a little bit of work). The articles seemed like a promising idea if anyone gave enough of a crap to actually put more than a single one out.
Anyway, even later, I was reading an article on Salon about Shoutcast. I thought it sounded like a cool idea and thought how fun it'd be to have a radio station, even if online. Well, there were disappointingly few VGM servers (like none), assuming I could even find any at all. So I started a stream that was relayed through Evk's cable modem as Wrex Wradio. And when I couldn't keep up he'd relay his own playlist. So we eventually renamed it WrexEvk Wradio or EvkWrex Wradio or someoddwhat (we never really decided). Well it didn't get very many listeners by chance and yp.shoutcast.com alone, but we thought it would be good if we got a user base from a page, kinda like a message board or chat room gets its user base. Well, since we wanted to have a page that was like ToT anyways, we thought we could put them together.
Later still, I decided it would be fun to make cartoons like Jerk City since they're made by little more than MS Chat panels pasted together. Well hopefully it's a good idea and will catch on. It is easy and hopefull well-liked content to use regularly. At least weekly, maybe more often.
Well, my main vision or goal was that we offer something to keep people coming back. Message boards, shoutcast radio, daily updates, and daily original content. I was quickly reminded how lazy I (and everyone) tends to get, but my dream still stands. My hope was people who want to help could have the opportunity to do so, and be made regular contributers. That almost happened with ToT and with work it could happen here.
Well, sorry if this was a little long winded. I was just told to put why we wanted this site, and feel that if the story be told, the whole story need be told. I wish if nothing else that this page provide amusement to some people sometime. If nothing else to its creators. Thank you,
- WrexSoul
