Damátir Ando (also known as Raskolnikov) was born around 500 B.C., the son of an Oriental princess, who was imprisoned in a gigantic floating labyrinth, and Apollo, who appeared in the guise of a giant bottle of Asahi Super Dry. After digging through the stone walls with his fingernails at the age of 30, he embarked upon a career in slaying assorted monsters. During the Middle Ages his interests shifted to literature, and as a side project he became the first person to write down the Çomyopregi language. Around 1700 he formed what is, in fact and unbeknownst to most, the world's first speed metal band, Combustible Soul, formerly a klezmer kapelye. In 1960 he was snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize but awarded immortality by Jehovah. He currently lives with his four wives and sixteen angel-wingèd babes, dividing his time between mansions outside of Paris and in Yakima. Currently he is working on drawing, writing, inventing fake languages, and solving all of mankind's woes.

.......

Actually, not. I just like to make up elaborate fictional biographies. I have no life, to the extent that I can be bothered to make up elaborate fictional autobiographies. I write, draw, sleep, listen to music, invent useless languages, and spend an inordinate amount of time thinking.

Visit these pages for more information about other parts of the site:

• The Secret History of the Languages on this Site
• History of Updates to the Site
• Raskolnikov Style - the current version of the stylesheet used on this site

Some frequently-asked questions:

Who are you?

I am one of the lesser gods. My particular kind are sometimes called Nephilim.

Are you doing homework?

When relatives saw me working on Tepat or Çomyopregi, writing all kinds of notes, arrows, and tables of sound correspondences, they often assumed I'm working on a project for class and started asking me about my studying. In fact my work has little practical purpose. I am simply a nerd, and enjoy things other people think are odd. Indeed, when bored I've been known to attempt to reconstruct middle Chinese. (It's fared better than my reconstruction of Proto-Uralic.) I'm not getting a grade, to design and fill a site with elaborate languages. Nearly everything on this site is something I've done for fun, because I love it.

How did you make your website?

People who work with computers professionally probably aren't impressed by this website, but some other people have commented that my website seems very well-designed. However, I'm not actually a tech-savvy person. I've been able to do this website with a few fundamentals of HTML, and a limited amount of taste as well. I use Tripod (and formerly GeoCities) because it's free, easy, and convenient. I usually work on them in SeaMonkey. When I think I've done a decent job, I upload them. I give all the pages the same consistent style by use of a stylesheet. My stylesheet can be found here: link. A link to the stylesheet is then embedded in the "head" section of each webpage.

How do you draw? What do you use?

I simply use what's convenient and what's been shown to work in the past, if not what's appropriate. In the past I used to draw on Xerox paper, the kind you put in your printer. Now I use sketch pads. I outline with a regular pencil, then go over it with a ballpoint pen and / or charcoal. Sometimes I add colored pencils, permanent markers, whiteout, or I wash over charcoal with a wet brush. Not very high-tech or specialized!

You're funny! Have you ever done standup?

No. I have no sense of humor.

What does The Wheel mean?

Originally, it didn't have much of a meaning, it just looked cool. The first wheel image was made by photomanipulating a picture of a protractor. I used it as the symbol for a fictional rock band called Blac Ice. I've thought about different aspects of it and imagined them at different times representing certain ideas, for example, the cyclical, non-progressive nature of time.