The House of Ice is a website maintained by one man, James Edmondson. The House of Ice was originally intended to provide information about inadequately discussed historical topics on the internet (when the Erwin Rommel page was initially begun, there were less than two dozen webpages dealing with him, and these sites generally contained little more than a few paragraphs about his North African campaigns). Later, the site took on a more controversial topics like the 'Rape of Nanking', and comparisons and contrasts of Napoleon and Hitler, who some people consider as antichrists according to what they see in Nostradamus' Quatraints.

The House of Ice was designed for optimal page loading and printing (for reports). In fact, the front page of the House of Ice comes in at under 16 KBs, nearly as small as Google, and is perfect for just about any modern modem. However, some pages have so much information that the load time could not be helped. For example, the Erwin Rommel page has over 150 Kbs of information, and 40 Kbs of images for aesthetically pleasing site flow. Most pages in the House of Ice have been optimized for slow modems and report printing, as well as work in all browsers. If you find a page that is not in compliance with some browsers, please email the webmaster.

On March 20, 2002, the House of Ice's original hoster decided to let us go because of pictures that were viewable in the 'Rape of Nanking' image gallery. Although it is regretful that the House of Ice was removed from the Tripod servers, we were still able to communicate with them respectfully, and as a result, we were able to reactivate the House of Ice. If you are thinking of hosting a site at a free hoster, please take the following into consideration:

1. Most free hosters do not really care if your site does well or not. Their philosophy is "I'm offering a free service, and if people come and join my service, that's all fine and well." They have a business model, and your site is just another ant in the anthill, no matter if you're getting 1 hit per day or over 500 hits a day. If you make any problems for them, they have the right and power to terminate your account.
2. If you have even slightly controversial material, you should not host your site on a free hoster without keeping backups of your files at your home or somewhere reliable. Free hosters WILL delete or prevent access to your files, and some of them do not care if you are right or wrong, as long as their newly drafted Terms of Service say you are in the wrong.
3. Be sure to read the terms of service.
4. Make sure you back up EVERYTHING.
5. If you register your site with a search engine, try buying a domain (cost from $10.00 to $25.00, depending on where you go), and submitting that domain to the search engine, and not your free hoster specific url (like houseofice.tripod.com). If your site is removed from the free hoster and you did submit your own domain (www.houseofice.com, for instance) to the search engine, and not houseofice.tripod.com, then the search engines will go to www.houseofice.com, or whatever your domain was, and reindex your backup pages, even if the site is taken down (and you make the pages accessible at your own domain.

About the webmaster

My name is James Edmondson. I've been an amateur historian ever since I picked up my first book on the American Civil War. Although I try to keep the articles in the House of Ice as historically accurate as possible, I may sometimes add incorrect, misquoted, or controversial material to the indexes. If you find any errors, or believe that aspects of one of the webpages on the House of Ice are in error, feel free to email me at eastsidesmalls@yahoo.com. Please try not to rant in emails to my account. I say this for two reasons: 1) What goes around comes around, and 2) more often than not, I will make you feel like an idiot (which, contrary to popular belief, I do not enjoy doing).

I administer several other sites, including the following: