Internet Nostalgia

In the first episode of Brite Cast, we briefly talked about Rainbow Brite's history on the web. It left me feeling super nostalgic, and I wanted to share a bit more of that nostalgia with you :)

In 1996, when I first searched for Rainbow Brite on the Internet, I recall coming across two pages. The first belonged to Jessica Silva (or Sylva? I think. I'm completely going by memory here). It contained this image:

and a rant about her BEING the one, and only, Rainbow Brite. Honestly, I was a bit turned off by it, as I didn't think the Rainbow Brite moniker should belong to only one person. Rainbow Brite, the character, would be happy to have a multitude of people identify so strongly with her, I believed. And, it was a nickname friends had given me at the time. So it spurred a tiny competitive spark within me.

From her page, I discovered the Rainbow Brite Webring, and followed it to the next page in the ring. That page belonged to Vincent Wales aka. Cardigan, who had created the webring.

It was certainly unexpected to find a man 15+ years my senior who had any interest in Rainbow Brite, but I was intrigued as I read his story. In fact, I contacted him recently and he still has the file! You can read it for yourself right here :)

Vincent and I became fast friends and the following year, 1997, when I created my first webpage, I showed it to him. Now, I was VERY new to making webpages. There were no courses in my high school on how to build them, so I had to teach myself. With the help of my brother, Jeremy Cartee, our mutual friend, Brian Cape, and many Internet searches, I was able to put a very basic Rainbow Brite page on the web.

I submitted it to Vincent's webring and asked his opinion. He was very supportive, and taught me how to do a few more things - such as how to rotate an image. And thus my Rainbow Brite page was born. I actually went diving through old backup discs recently and found the files for that original page. Would you like to see it in action? Just click here to be transported to the Internet of yesteryear ;)

So I want to give a big THANK YOU to Jessica Silva(?), Vincent Wales, Jeremy Cartee and Brian Cape, without which RainbowBrite.net may have never existed :)