Buenos Dias! Greetings from Lord Alfonso del Corazon Negro. It is with great pleasure that I announce that I have created an Isles Scriptorium, in which many projects of writing and illumination are ardently being created. Historically, a monastic scriptorium would be a place of research, creation, duplication, and illumination. It was the ancient world's publishing house in which written works were reproduced and spread. This practice preserved ancient texts for later generations and it helped to spread written works so that knowledge could be accessible by more and more persons.

Today's version of the scriptorium seems to be the Internet. There are a great many persons on the Net, like myself, who take pleasure in finding obscure bits of knowledge and bringing them to a place where all can see and learn from them. The Internet provides a means for a great many people to research an electronic library for nearly any type of information imaginable, and for any person with a means of posting a web page to publish information for a great many people to see. It is for this reason that the Isles Scriptorium Project has gotten underway. At this time, I am the sole "monk" reproducing and illuminating these pages. Several more in our shire have taken an interest, though. And, of course, a great deal of credit goes to those authors whose works we peruse for tidbits of information which we feel would be interesting to others.

Our first project is one of illumination. It is the electronic reproduction of our Shire's newsletter, the Uncharted Waters. You are looking at the first issue to be completed. I hope to enhance the electronic version with links to other interesting sites, music, animations, graphics, and other niceties which take advantage of the power of Internet programming. I strongly recommend that you use the Netscape 2.0 (or later) or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 (or later) browsers to take full advantage of the features of this site. I will be using animated .GIFs, Java, Javascript, embedded MIDI, and other features which as of June 1996 are only fully supported by those two browsers. You will also want to use a fast modem, 14.4k baud or higher. I strongly recommend getting a 28.8k baud. They're around $100 these days.

How do you like this on-line version of the Isles newsletter? Please e-mail me at vikman@silcom.com with any constructive criticisms.