This — late 2002 through 2005 — is an era of Lyza.com that I look back on with a condescending but genuine sense of affection for my enthusiasm, youth, dumbshittery. Basically I wrote a bunch of blog software. Again. But I still wasn’t calling it that because I was intent on reinventing a galaxy full of wheels. Tada! It’s Celeste. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
The summer of 2003, WITH CELESTE
I recall my friend P.H. asking “What is Celeste, after all?” and — this is glorious — it’s treated as a defined term throughout the three years it blazed forth from the header. You're supposed to just know. It’s like an inside joke, but without any humorous intent on my part. I made some blogging-software-avec-yet-more-photo-database-hoohah and I wanted to call it something. The sibilant, refined-sugar sounds of Celeste appealed, and were a nod to the heavenly elements of the site’s design — it looked different depending on time of day and weather (in Portland, Ore., my hometown). See?
Hubris, maybe, bike-shedding and twiddling, definitely, but there was one thing I was doing unambiguously right: I was still making my own website, and holding all of my own content and data. Unfortunately, that was about to change.