Very good question, there is a reason for it...but it's a long story and quite frankly not very interesting, so I'm not going to cover it here.
No really I'm not, so don't ask...okay since you asked nicely.
Well, way back in the mists of time (about 2001) I worked on an it help desk and I over heard a conversation one of my colleges was having with a customer. The customer was confused over the idea of a domain name, so as an example he plucked two words out of the air. These words just happened to cool aardvark. That seemed to me to be a very cool name. One quick whois look up later confirmed that all of the combinations of cool aardvark domain names where still available. A few months later I registered the .net domain (I always use net domains, it just seems to me to be better to be country neutral on the net). It was quite a while after that, before I go around to actually putting a web site there.
This is the second site I've done for this domain, The first was an odd combination of pages about things that I was in to at the time. Everything from the Eurovision song contest to cellular automata. And now this site is part of the Cute and Well Armed network of animal themed t-shirt selling sites! Go there, buy t-shirts now (and make me money!)
In the mean time aardvarks and one in particular had started to creep in to various bits of my life.
Again a good question here might be why?
Well, a friend of mine has a sort of family mascot which he takes on is travels, floppy lion, this seemed to me to be a good idea so, Artemis Aardvark was born. Since I don't really travel, I couldn't take photos of Artemis in exotic locates (I didn't even have a Artemis in a physical form at that point), but I do write, so Artemis started to turn up in my story ideas. He's even got as far as being published (well on the web any way), in my 2006 NaNoWriMo entry, the route.
And as for the page design, well that was done in Rapidwaver, the best visual web site builder there is for the mac (and hence the best there is!) I've used the build in theme called blog pop.
Why the blue grass land theme? Aardvarks are basically nocturnal and they live on the African savanna so it just seemed to fit!
The original art work for the front page was provided Frederick Q Splinge of floppylion.co.uk.
I've now got two actual Aardvarks, one which stands guard over my desk at work, Artemis and his evil half twin Aramis, which I keeps guard by my desk at home (notice the difference in the ears?)
There will be many more Artemis
stories to tell, especially as he now has some friends
(combat wombat and spiny echidna) and a mortal enemy in the
form of his evil half twin Aramis Aardvark.
Watch this space!