Area256 is hard to define. You could say that it is just a website, however it is much more then that. The idea to make a site called Area256.com came to me about two years ago; at the time I needed a testing site for work I was doing on VirtualProperties.ca. However I did not what a simple boring site name, i.e. VirtualPropertiesTesting.com. So I decided to register a site with a more interesting name. Just what inspired me to choose Area256 I do not know for sure, although I think two factors were involved. First I have a fascination with powers of two (256 = 2^8), and secondly the abstract idea of calling a site “area” was appealing. While I do not know exactly what I was thinking when got the domain name, I do know that it had evolved into far more then a domain name.
When I started using andre@area256.com as my e-mail, people could not understand how I got such an odd address. Thus I had to explain how I came by it, and it became of part of who I was. Later I started using it to identify things that I owned, for example I would label my moving boxes “area256″. From there it grew to the point that I started adding it to creative school projects and any other project that I had the chance to work on.
So Area256 has almost become a personal seal, my signature if you will. I know that it likely does not make much sense, but then again it was never meant to make sense. The idea was abstract to start with.
