A Man. A House. A Website.

Originally published November, 2002 in HjemmePC (Home PC) magazine, in Norwegian.

In October 2001, Matthew McClintock bought his first home. He then proceeded to make a record of everything that was being moved into this home with digital photographs. The act took 9 months, and it was all built into a larger framework. The result - mc.clintock.com - is certainly one of the only, if not the only, public records of an entire man's home & possessions online. Now he's waiting for a Norwegian to step up and do the same.

By Scott LaHart

By day, 35-year-old Matthew McClintock is a Webmaster for an arts & communications college in Chicago, USA. In his spare time, however, he has built himself an online home. In fact, his home is the contents of his online home. From his worn-down Converse low-top sneakers residing in a closet on the second floor to the tofu (!) bratwurst sausages taking up space in his freezer to his boxer shorts - it's all there, and there's more to come. When he bought a robe recently, it went on the site immediately.

Mc.clintock.com was initially a way for McClintock to try out some experimentation with configurations for the Open Source HTTP Web Server Apache (as he is, well, a Webmaster). He wanted a place to do this, so he chose his own Linux server. He needed some material to see how Apache displayed directories that lack an index page, so he chose his personal belongings. And once he got going, he couldn't stop. In fact, such comprehensiveness was all a part of the master plan, he told HjemmePC. "I actually started out with the intention of documenting everything, though I'm not sure how serious I was at the beginning; it was more of a running joke with some friends of mine, who considered my love of cabinets and drawers to be a little strange: 'Yeah, great - put it on the Internet, why don't you?'". And he did.

While he's still in the process of adding things - about 80 percent of his possessions have made their way online so far - he hasn't kept things off of the site that would be potentially embarrassing for him. Rather, he prefers to err on the side of caution when it comes to those he cares about, "The things I've held off posting at this point involve other people - photographs of friends or family, or old letters. I think I'll scan them eventually, but I feel like I need to get permission from a few people. There's nothing revealing about the photographs (no nudity, for instance), but it's not just my privacy I'm playing with at that point, and I would rather be conservative."

The other thing that isn't fully updated is his food inventory. While he claims that he buys the same products every time he goes to the store, if the leftovers from a dinner make their way into the refrigerator and are eaten the next day, for example, they're not added on the site and then taken away after their consumption. But he's toyed with the idea of linking an account on the online grocery Peapod.com to his Website, so that the information regarding the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry is always updated.

McClintock's - Over 2 Million Hits Served

The site went online in June, and after a few postings on popular Weblogs like MetaFilter and achieving status as a Yahoo! What's New pick, the minimalistically-designed, yet elegant and information-packed site gained steam. As of the middle of August, the site had experienced a total of over 75,000 visits and close to 2 Ω million hits. When questioned about the reasons for the Website's popularity, McClintock gave HjemmePC a manifold answer - and, yes, his boxer shorts were part of the explanation, "I'm sure that the first reason people visit is the 'Well, he couldn't have put his underwear online... Hey! There it is!' kind of thing, but for some it seems to change to a voyeuristic feeling, a pleasant snoopiness that's completely safe. And beyond that I think people head in all directions, and start to consider the nature of ownership, of consumerism, privacy, narrative, or history; they compare my belongings and experiences or memories with their own."

While the site has reached many people at this point, it's far from changed his day-to-day life. Read: he won't be quitting his job from the dollars flowing in. But he has earned a little bit of money from it. A company called CafÈPress (www.cafepress.com) has an ingenious little service - you give them the designs, logos, etc. that you wish to appear on the products, and they'll place them on mouse pads, short and long-sleeve T-shirts and mugs that they keep in stock, amongst other things. One can link oneself to their own little domain on the site, and CafÈPress' infrastructure takes care of the orders and shipping. Of course, they get a monetary cut of every product sold from their venture, but then again, if you're a small Website being run as something of a joke on the side during one's spare time, it's probably just worthwhile to think, "Wow, someone's drinking cafÈ latte out of a mug with my site on it. Cool."

So, yes, McClintock has a space on CafÈ Press, and he's made money. A whole three dollars and three cents. The reason for that: his brother Will has bought one of each item.

Though the project has taken quite a bit of McClintock's free time - he estimates that he's spent a little over 400 hours on it so far - he doesn't regret his dip into the pool of Internet semi-celebrity, "The Website has taken on a life of its own, but in a very pleasant way. I've enjoyed the attention (from Japanese radio stations and Norwegian computer magazines to the New York Times and the BBC), but even more I've enjoyed hearing from 'visitors' to my site from around the world. So it's ended up feeling like an extended conversation, really, and all I have to do is take a couple of snapshots of my stuff every once in awhile."

McClintock does enjoy his visitors from across the world, but would possibly enjoy visiting like-minded sites around the globe even more. When I asked him what sort of advice he would give to a Norwegian who was planning to lay out the entire material contents of his or her life online, the Webmaster's inherent interests in sociology and anthropology came shining through, "Please, won't some kind Norwegian document their own house? I think it would be fascinating to visit - the comparisons and contrasts would be great! I want to know what Norwegian toothpaste looks like! I want to know what kind of underwear Norwegians wear! I want to know what books you read! And I'll bet the rest of the world does too! It's not the radical differences that interest me, it's the subtle ones, the differences you've never even considered before. But as for advice: don't worry about the whole thing - just one little piece at a time."