Attack of the Graphic Designers (2004—2007) Sporting new dark glasses, which reflect a Spitzer Telescope image of galaxy M81, the Blind Chihuahua has leapt from the clouds to the cosmos. His long-repressed Jungian Shadow has returned from Primo Levi's Gray Zone. He stands on his religious authority, which has faded from insubstantial to invisible. Our maroon and white color scheme is that of the Pooper Scooper's elementary school, high school, and college. Blue, of course, is the default color of hyper-links. (Nascent psychologists in Berkeley believe the colors indicate pro-American bias.) The original Mistral font is back, contrasting jauntily to the more formal Copperplate. A simplified, frameless navigation scheme with JavaScript "bread crumbs" was in use, along with a Tool-Tip augmented Floor Plan. This logo's flexibility has spawned unique variants in VCBC, our user-purchaseable Chihuahuaware, and our now defunct Amazon Honor System donation page. There is also one specifically for links. In 2006 we re-launched our Forum with new software, a stricter privacy policy, and some data loss after a DoS attack. It has since been dismantled after server changes made its software inoperable. Here is our home page from this period.
The Web Expands (1997—2004) This logo was smoothed and air-brushed from the original (below). Desribed as the "Blind Chihuahua standing atop glowing clouds with the sun shining out his anus," this rare image appeared on now collectible Chihuahuaware of the so-called "Middle Period." Note the drop shadow on the Orator font, and on Monotype Corsiva, which displaced Mistral. This period saw the replacement of the Guestbook by the Forum, and the hit-counter by web access log analysis tools. Frame-based navigation with JavaScript graphic rollovers, along with a clickable Floor Plan, was used until Spring, 2004. Early in this period VCBC moved to its current URL.
Foundation (4 July 1996) Our original logo displayed a silly, hokey hauteur that a viewer found charming. Digital clip art, cameras and scanners were virtually non-existent, so we had to hand-paint in the glasses. The oval cutout was considered a technical achievement, and no one cared that three fonts (Mistral, Orator, and Times) were mixed haphazardly. VCBC was launched in webspace that had been the Pooper Scooper's personal homepage.
Our mascot is Photoshopped from Tito, in the CHIHUA-L Photo Gallery, by kind permission of Sara Dillon and Dan Levine. For why we chose a Chihuahua in the first place, see our FAQ.
| Year | 96-97 | 97-98 | 98-99 | 99-00 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hits | 5,100 | 20,700 | 34,800 | 51,400 |
who grokked Samwise. As if you cared.