André-François Ruaud is a prolific French writer, essayist, anthologist, editor and publisher. These Carnets de bord du capitaine, formerly known as Notes de bord virtuelles du capitaine André-François Ruaud, are composing his personnal space on the net, with archives of his diary, classified and selected bibliographies and other kind of stuff.
During the year 1998, when I was building the first version of the Gang Free Fellowship website, I created personal introduction pages for some members, as André-François Ruaud, well-known captain of Yellow Submarine —a vessel which never been sung by four boys in the wind nor assembled by any English arsenal. When he discovered the weblog system and began his own, he asked me for a entirely personal website, and not only two single poor pages, mainly for archiving his past texts. This fully first version was launched in September 2002.
Two years later, the menu of the Notes de bord virtuelles du capitaine André-François Ruaud had become as long as a month of Sundays and the home page needed a serious facelift. A second version designed to correct both problems was therefore initiated and published online in June 2004 under the new simplified title of Carnets de bord du capitaine, enhanced by a new visual theme using a kind of Victorian style.
Effect of bigger jobs elsewhere, the Carnets de bord du capitaine have been somewhat neglected in recent times, it’s true —but they are now also become difficult to maintain, it must be said. Although the holiday season is over, it wasn’t a reason not to update a number of pages with more current news, what has therefore to be done today.