Welcome to FittsWorld!
"Serving the internet for most of a decade"

Please update your FittsWorld bookmark to http://home.houston.rr.com/fittsworld/.

FittsWorld Internet Theme Park is a personal website devoted to computer games and other recreational activities.  This site began as a project to learn HTML, and soon got out of hand.  The "theme park" features individual content modules ("attractions") that were developed as independent projects.  Many of these attractions are timeless monuments to activities that have captured my interest (and free time) over the years.  The attractions now have a common interface and layout, but a few special pages have been preserved in their original state.

Please start your tour of the park by entering the attraction of your choice from the site map on the left, or select an item of interest from the classic attractions menu on the right.  The body of this page contains general information about the history and content of the site.  We hope that you enjoy your visit to FittsWorld, and please follow all safety rules.

Warning:  FittsWorld contains high-speed adventure attractions designed to be
viewed with a version 5+ browser at 1024x768 resolution and 16-bit color.
Management is not responsible for injury and/or incidental damages caused
by the use of viewing equipment that is obsolete or improperly installed.

FittsWorld News & Events Message Board
This site was last updated on March 4, 2006

New Gadget
My latest new toy (and hobby) is an iPod.  Yes, I know the rest of the planet already has one.  I was really not interested in a portable music player until Apple finally released a version of iTunes that was Windows-based.  Yes, I know that other brands (like Creative and iRiver) use Windows software, but iPods have a 75% market share for a reason (and it is not price!).  Once you have used an iPod, you will fall in love with the streamlined interface and outstanding sound quality.

Anyway, I could no longer resist when I saw the new video iPods, and I bought the 60GB model in classic iPod white (plus a whole load of accessories).  I have spent a lot of my free time recently ripping my CD's and organizing my library of approximately 2,000 songs.  What's on my iPod?  There's a lot of classic rock, plus a few country, folk and jazz selections.  My favorite artists include:  The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who... but I also like David Bowie, R.E.M., Stevie Ray Vaughan, Cake, and Talking Heads... and I even have some Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, Joni Mitchell, and David Gray.  As you can see, I have a wide variety of music on my iPod and I listen to all of it depending upon my mood.  It all sounds great on my Ultimate Ears super-fi 5 pro earphones!

Current Games
I have recently started playing Civilization IV.  Long-time Fittsworld visitors will no doubt recall my obsession with Civ3, and a similar outcome is to be expected this time.  I should emerge sometime around Memorial Day.  In the meantime, you might want to investigate this game for yourself, especially if you are a fan of historical simulations or strategy games.  Imagine a combination of chess and Risk and you begin to get the idea...

The other new game that has captured my attention has unfortunately been delayed.  Oblivion, the sequel to Morrowind, is the latest in the Elder Scrolls series.  It will undoubtably be the biggest and best single-player RPG to date, and it should keep me busy for much of 2006.  Hopefully, it will arrive in the spring, but for now the delay will only give me more uninterrupted time to play and enjoy Civ4.

It appears that my days of playing MMORPG games (Everquest II & City Of Heroes) are declining to an occasional spurt.  I finally admitted to myself that these games just do not suit my lifestyle and tastes.  I enjoy parts of the experience a great deal, but other parts are annoying at best.  I decided that I did not want to spend my free time annoyed and frustrated, and pay for the privilege to boot!  Maybe I will try again at some point if I find a game that can be soloed and is suitable to play in short bursts, but for now I will stick to single-player titles and the occasional week or two of leveling Orcin, my Everquest II Paladin.  It is good to have one of these characters available when the urge to smite evil strikes me.

Site Updates
Diary of a Gamer was recently overhauled, and entire sections are either new or substantially revised.  It is now up to date with my current game selection and preferences.  In addition, the Diablo Page was updated to add my characters from the 2003-2004 ladder season and more recent information about the game.

Computer News
Nothing new since this update from last summer...

I decided it was time to get that flat panel LCD monitor that I have been craving, and Dell obliged by putting the 2001FP 20" on sale.  This monitor has a very good response time (16ms) and is perfect for gaming.  The native resolution is 1600x1200 and I love the extra real estate.  However, I soon learned that my ATI 9800 Pro 128mb graphics card would not handle games like City of Heroes and Doom 3 at that resolution with all of the eye candy turned on.  So I was shopping for a high end video card, but I had some trouble finding one in stock.  Best Buy finally came through with the ATI X800XT Platinum Edition 256mb card on sale for 10% off.  This card has brought my XPS back up to near state-of-art specs, and runs the new games comfortably at 1600x1200 resolution.  See my Computer Page for the detailed specs on the upgraded XPS.

Best Of FittsWorld
I am no longer changing and updating this site on a frequent basis.  I am quite happy with the format now, and I have no interest in learning new HTML techniques.  The content of the BG & Diablo pages is no longer changing, and many of the other pages are finished products in their current form.  This doesn't mean that the site is dead; quite the contrary.  However, I sometimes go for months without an update if there is nothing new to add.  Don't be alarmed, the park has always been designed to function completely unattended :-)

I have written a brief description of my favorite FittsWorld attractions below, in order to assist any first-time visitors who want to go directly to the best content on this site.  This is only my opinion of course, and your mileage may vary, so please feel free to click all of the links!  The most popular attractions probably consumed the majority of my time, but they are not my favorites and probably don't represent my best original work either.  I prefer the attractions listed below, in no particular order.

The BG and Diablo pages are still of interest to people who are just discovering those games, and ~25 hits per day is proof that there are still some new fans out there.  However, I believe that my Diary of a Gamer page is a better place for the casual game fan to visit.  This page is a chronology of one gamer's path through some of the best games of the past 25 years, and I am sure that you will find some of your favorites listed among them.  I do still update this page when a game really captures my interest, and proves itself to be worthy of inclusion in my personal hall of fame.

I am always excited when the Baseball Simulation page generates an e-mail.  You would be surprised how many people are still searching for that perfect simulator, or want to know where to get a copy of the old games (sorry, but I don't know), or just want to tell me how similar their story is to mine.  If you have any interest in baseball and/or are over 40, you will probably like this page.  Please don't ask where to get that Earl Weaver Baseball code wheel though, because I really don't know!

A few years ago, my son and I produced a page, called Eric's Sports Den, to showcase my baseball card collection.  Eric gained an appreciation for the rich history of baseball during this project, and we spent some quality time together in the process.  Eric included statistical highlights of the player's career in his content, and I provided some insight into why I chose to collect that particular card or player.  It was a lot of fun to do, and I am still quite proud of the result.

And, last but definitely not least... Once upon a time, my daughter had a page to showcase her art for family members who were far away.  Alas, she grew older and had no time for such a project, and the site was soon covered with digital dust.  One day, I decided to resurrect it in a manner of speaking, and The S.Fitts Gallery was re-born in a timeless format that allowed me to wrap a new story around the old content.  I still think that it is one of my best ideas.

FittsWorld Facts and Figures
A bunch of other stuff at the bottom of the page

FittsWorld Internet Theme Park is located on the World Wide Web.  The park occupies over 10 square mb of cyberspace, and operates completely unattended 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.  FittsWorld is proud to continue its policy of FREE ADMISSION with Children Half Price!!  We encourage all patrons to place a comment card in the mailbox before exiting, and don't forget your free Slushee!

A brief site history
FittsWorld opened June 1, 1997 to a small but happy crowd.  The park doubled in size in May 1998 when it moved from AT&T WorldNet to PDQ.net, but maintained the original layout until the spring of 1999.  The park entrance (you are here) has been renovated several times since, and nostalgia buffs can view the older layouts via the "Archives" links in the left column of this page.  This latest layout has now survived the third move of the site (to EV1.net) in January 2002, and the latest move to the Road Runner Houston address.  The site history page chronicles most of the major content additions and format changes that have led up to the sprawling park layout that we have today.

FittsWorld Attendance Records
Largest crowd for one day:  Baldur's Gate Page - 424 unique visitors, 10/15/2000
Most visitors in one month:  Baldur's Gate Page - 9,118 visitors, October 2000
These dates coincide with the release of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn.

FittsWorld safety rules
This site is designed to be viewed using a version 5+ browser at a minimum of 1024x768 resolution and 16-bit color.  If you are still using 640x480 resolution or an outdated browser, well... it probably doesn't look very good.  Please notify the webmaster if you have any problems viewing or navigating this site.

FittsWorld primarily uses Tahoma and Verdana fonts.  These fonts were chosen because they are easy to read.  If the specified fonts are not installed on your system, the pages will default to Arial.

A statement on hit counts
The visitor tally shown on this page is a cumulative total of all page views on all FittsWorld attractions.  The total includes visitors from previous layouts that were not recorded on the sophisticated turnstiles that are in use at the park today.

My E-Mail Address
I love to get my mail from people asking about the content of my site.  But I LOATHE AND DESPISE SPAMMERS!  So I do not intend to EVER put my e-mail address on a webpage or forum post again.  EVER.  I'm really sorry that I have to do this.

For those who wish to contact me about using materials on my site, here's the deal.  You are NOT permitted to publish anything from my site on the Internet in any form.  Do so, and I will hunt you down like the thieving dog that you are.  BUT if you wish to use my content and/or images for a school project and the product of your work is not published on the Internet, feel free to take what you need and use it as you see fit because you hereby have my permission.

Please link to FittsWorld using this official logo button.

Thanks for visiting FittsWorld!  Please come again soon.

Baldur's Gate is © BioWare Corp.  Diablo & DiabloII are © Blizzard Entertainment.  All original content and HTML code in FittsWorld is copyright © 1997-2005 Ken Fitts.  No materials from this site may be used or reproduced in any form without the written permission of the webmaster.