Domain Facts
Insanity Sandwich was bought on July 2, 2005 from Toasty Host. The site itself was launched fully on August 8, 2005, though some sites in the network were up before this.

As of July 2006, both site and domain registration were moved to Dreamhost who have proven themselves to be much more reliable that Toasty Host.

This is version 5.0 featuring Sam & Dean Winchester and Bobby Singer of Supernatural fame. The image of Sam & Dean was scanned from the cover art for the Season 3 DVDs, while the pencil drawing of Bobby is taken from issue 6 of the Supernatural Magazine.

Version 4.0 also featured Dean Winchester (or rather a shapeshifter impersonating him). It used a texture by grrliz and the font the bends. Version 3.0 of the site featured Constable Benton Fraser from due South. Screencaps used were taken from Pipsqueaky and Pulsar4529. The header image also used a texture by Gender, a brush by TrashGraphics and the font Georgia. Version 2.0 featured two images of the X-Man Jamie Madrox, both by Ryan Sook, while version 1.0 featured a photograph of Jeff Buckley taken from Merri Cyr's book A Wished-For Song:

Insanity Sandwich, Version 4.0 Insanity Sandwich, Version 3.0 Insanity Sandwich, Version 2.0 Insanity Sandwich, Version 1.0

Insanity Sandwich actually has a longer history than this though, being the result of the merging of my previous domain, cacophany.com, and my previous fanlistings collective, Insanity Sandwich. You can read the individual histories of both sites below.


cacophany.com
cacophany.com was born in February 2004, the result of a long-running desire for my own domain. It was preceeded by many efforts, beginning with a Geocities website which ran from the mid to late 1990s, alongside a site at Esatclear which ran for much of that time. I took a break from webdesign for a few years before re-emerging in 2002 with a redesigned Esatclear site. As I passed my limits there, my various sites were expanded into space at Eircom. This is where the idea of cacophany.com began to form.

Cacophany was originally a site collective, hosted at Eircom. It wasn't great design or content wise, but it served its purpose. For simplicity's sake, I've termed the Eircom version of Cacophany, version 1.0. It looked like this:

Cacophany, Version 1

The next version of Cacophany, version 1.5, was both domain and site collective. It began in February 2004 and was constantly under construction. The name was not chosen for complicated reasons. I just happen to like the word 'cacophony'. You'll notice, that the site is called 'cacophany' rather than 'cacophony'. This is simply became I don't particularly like the way the word looks when it's spelled correctly, so I altered it to something that I do like *g* Version 1.5 featured a simple enough layout, featuring an image of Susan from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books and looked like this:

Cacophany, Version 1.5

The next version of the site, version 2, retained the format established by version 1.5, but sports a spiffy new layout and image. Sticking with Terry Pratchet, the new image features Death, also from the Discworld books.

Cacophany, Version 2.0

Version 3 of Cacophany, moved away from Terry Pratchett illustrations and used the cover of New Mutants # 11 by the talented Chris Bachalo. The layout was completely different from the last and colour-wise had returned to something similar to the purples of version 1.5. The format was largely unchanged from the previous two versions.

Cacophany, Version 3.0


Insanity Sandwich: The Collective
The fanlisting collective version of Insanity Sandwich began its life as the fairly uninspired Fan-Tabulous. The first incarnation of the collective lasted for a few months before being replaced. I quite liked the design, but I needed something more inspirational. You can view Version 1.0 of the collective below.

When I finally came to my senses and decided that a better name was in order, Fan-Tabulous become Insanity Sandwich, a name indirectly suggested by the wonderful Rissa =) Version 2.0 of the collective featured art from the super-talented David Mack's Kabuki: The Alchemy and was much loved.

Although I was very partial to Version 2.0 of Insanity Sandwich, something new with better navigation and more flexibility was needed. Thus was Version 3.0 of the collective born. It used artwork taken from a print ad for the diamond specialists Van Cleef & Arpels and included several new features thanks to conversion to PHP.