need help? well, you've come to the right place: this is the help section for the dredwerkz website. hopefully we can answer your question here, if not, you can always e-mail the address on the main page for additional assistance. first, a brief faq:

general questions

1. what does dredwerkz mean?
2. who are these guys?
3. where is the dredwerkz?
4. i don't understand...what's the point?
5. how did this all get started?
6. why is your site so ugly? where are the images?

staff questions

1. are those your real names?
2. can i contribute articles/reviews?

section questions

1. the advice page gave me bad advice and now i'm blind/deaf/dead as a result. how can i sue you?
2. why doesn't the news/icing/etc. section work?
3. what is each section about?

general questions:

1) what does dredwerkz mean/stand for?

dredwerkz is actually a reference to a quake3 level. some people are turned off to this explanation, while others have no idea what quake3 is/was. rest assured, despite the odd nomenclature, none of us are really into computer games, or all the appropriate associated psychopathology. it just happened that several years ago, we were playing the game, and i thought it was a cool name. there's no underlying subtext.

2) who are these guys?

that would be telling...although hints are sprinkled liberally throughout. if you read enough blog entries, you'll pick up on who we are. of course, you could always simply come to the house and see for yourself.

3) where is the dredwerkz?

the overtaxed, underepresented district of columbia, which happens to be, ironically, the capital of the united states of america. in the past we were located at 1800 vermont Ave. NW, washington DC 20001; a block south of the U St./African American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo Metro stop, at the intersection of 11th St. and Vermont Ave. right at the end of the triangle formed by the angle of those two roads. it *was* a big white house covered with ivy and surrounded by an expansive rose garden, marble chip paths and boatloads of character.

now, however, we're in limbo. i'd like to think that the 'werkz has moved to 1657 Newton St. NW...but i'm not sure if it has or not yet. only time will tell.

4) i don't understand...what's the point?

one could ask the same question about numerous other websites with equally obscure purposes. weblogs, by nature, tend to be online diaries. the dredwerkz website, by contrast, is more a reflection of dc seen through the prism of our eyes. it's not a personal website by any means, although personal opinion does filter onto it. instead, it has reviews of district restaurants, movies and clubs. it has advice for unrepresented citizens of all sorts. and it has news for those who want the latest scoop on a variety of issues. each of these sections have evolved slowly, and some are only now just becoming fully fleshed out. hopefully we'll reach critical mass shortly and more people will visit, enriching the experience for all.

5) how did this all get started?

for a brief overview of the history of the dredwerkz, click this article. it will cover the past times and dark early days of the 'werkz.

6) why is your site so ugly? where are the images?

I've heard this question quite a bit. Presumably, a website without images is an ugly monster that shouldn't exist, according to this line of thought. To answer simply: images take a long time to load, and provide very little additional information. Once SVG becomes more widely adopted, you can expect some cooler looking images and logos on the site. Until that happens, though, it will remain mostly text. As the main title suggests: it degrades well. In lynx, the site looks great. In phoenix, it looks perfect. In browsers with faulty css implementations, it looks odd. (These are bad browsers and I'm not coding around their problems.) Finally, if information is what you need, whether through reviews, advice or blog posts, then the site achieves what it set out to do. Criticizing a toaster because it doesn't have a cool logo is silly. Likewise, consider the dredwerkz to be made of stainless steel without much decoration. Functional, yes. Aesthetically pleasing, perhaps less so.

Staff questions:

1) are those your real names?

no, of course not. it's a reference to the david fincher movie 'fight club' starring three actors: brad pitt, edward norton and helena bonham carter.

2) can i contribute articles/reviews?

yes. you should e-mail us at the address located at the bottom of the main page. you can either be enshrined in the fun family of the dredwerkz as a full member (heh heh) or you can merely be a contributing person. we'll iron out the details over e-mail.

Section questions:

1) the advice page gave me bad advice and now i'm blind/deaf/dead/etc. as a result. how can i sue you??

let me get this straight...you went to a random webpage, e-mailed a random group of strangers, asking for advice, took said advice and managed to hurt yourself? caveat emptor baby, at least in the marketplace of ideas known as the internet. realistically though, this text is an official disclaimer stressing that no one, under any cirumstances, should follow the advice given in the advice section. we'll probably add some stupid legalese on the page itself to make this clear, but for now, this will have to do. so get over yourself.

2) why doesn't the news/icing/etc. section work?

The site, as of today, is not fully complete. It will probably always have some rough edges, but it's taken awhile to get it to the point where it is now: namely, updated several times a day with information on a wide range of issues. I'm hoping that once the one-year anniversary rolls around things will be more or less set. the icing section, well, check the next question for an explanation of the sections.

3)what is each section about?

The origins section contains...

The news section contains...