Dylan and UK University?

I know we had a conversation about Dylan and College here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

But I came across some information I hadn't really taken much notice of before and I found it pretty interesting. This could be something or nothing but I thought it may be worth a new thread. I was looking for something in the Columbine Documents section and came across a list of web pages mentioned by Dylan pg(26430) specifically. I had seen these before but hadn't really taken too much notice.
(I say these are Dylan's notes as it looks more like his handwriting and i believe we discussed who wrote the lists back on SBB and I made a note that the general consensus was they were Dylan's notes)

Alongside web addresses for playboy, penthouse, ESPN etc there were two websites that caught my attention. They were web addresses for UCL Department of Computer Science which is a University in London England. Also there is a web address for The University of Birmingham in England.
Firstly Dylan writes "http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/students/zcacaeslmk.html" (I'm not too sure what this last part is supposed to say) But today "http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/students" takes you here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
I had a quick look on the wayback machine and the link "[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] between 1997-99 takes you to the homepage for University College London Department of Computer Science: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Secondly Dylan writes "wcl-rs.bham.ac.uk" the actual link doesn't work but Google asks me if I meant to type "[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] which is the web page for Birmingham University in England. I also searched the exact web address Dylan wrote down on the wayback machine and between 1996-98 the link was for The University of Birmingham Wolfson Computer Laboratory:
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So my question here is has anybody come across this information before? Obviously as we know the Columbine Documents don't seem to have been put in any particular order so it's not clear when these web pages were written down. I just found it very interesting that there seems to be two web pages for UK Universities that related to Dylan's interests. Does anyone think at some point it may have been a possibility that Dylan was thinking of attending College / University abroad in England?
As I said this may be something or nothing I was just interested in what others thought.

Yes, I noticed this too! I don't know if Dylan was thinking of applying there (obviously), but both are very good universities (at least the overall ranking, I don't know about comp sci department specifically). I'm not sure if there was any point in applying with his grades, which, if I remember correctly, weren't that great.

Btw, I don't know if you noticed, if you go to the UCL site with wayback machine [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
at the bottom of the page there are a lot of links that start with "zcaca" and similar, but none of them are archived

maninthebox wrote:

Yes, I noticed this too! I don't know if Dylan was thinking of applying there (obviously), but both are very good universities (at least the overall ranking, I don't know about comp sci department specifically). I'm not sure if there was any point in applying with his grades, which, if I remember correctly, weren't that great.

I'm glad someone else noticed this too. I don't know too much about what grades specifically Dylan would have needed to attend either of these Universities, maybe he would have tried harder in school if he had intended to graduate.

maninthebox wrote:

Btw, I don't know if you noticed, if you go to the UCL site with wayback machine [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
at the bottom of the page there are a lot of links that start with "zcaca" and similar, but none of them are archived

That's great I didn't notice this before, the whole list just seems to be a list of students but none of the links are archived as you mention.
The nearest match I could find to what Dylan wrote was a link that says: "zcacaes" next to it the 'last modified' date is recorded as 26-September- 1995 at 16:13. So i wonder if Dylan viewed this site all the way back in 1995 and why he was interested in the student list  

I didn't notice this, perhaps I've never come across it while reading the docs yet - it's interesting though, good research!

I'm not sure about him wanting to study so far away, but maybe he found something particularly interesting in those websites, detailed course infos that weren't on other universities sites or stuff like that that might have been useful to get a general idea (it might sound weird, I say this just because I did it myself when I couldn't find anything on the proper site) and about the student list, maybe he knew of someone going/wanting to go there and that triggered the visit

Laeda wrote:

I didn't notice this, perhaps I've never come across it while reading the docs yet - it's interesting though, good research!

I'm not sure about him wanting to study so far away, but maybe he found something particularly interesting in those websites, detailed course infos that weren't on other universities sites or stuff like that that might have been useful to get a general idea (it might sound weird, I say this just because I did it myself when I couldn't find anything on the proper site) and about the student list, maybe he knew of someone going/wanting to go there and that triggered the visit

I'd seen the list of web pages before in the Columbine Documents but never really looked at them properly and i wondered what some of the .uk links were. I thought the same about the student list, i know it's purely speculation but i thought maybe he could have spoken to someone online who attended this University or knew someone from CHS that was going to this London University.
I know it sounds strange but i wondered why he had notes written down about two Universities in England especially as the links take you to information related to computer science and a computer laboratory, things he was interested in. I do wonder now if he ever had any kind of intention to attend University in England, and if so when this crossed his mind.
The only other English connection i could think of with Dylan was that he seemed pretty into the English / British electronic music scene, i'm mainly thinking of the Chemical Brothers, The Orb, Orbital, Future Sound of London etc. Again I know this is purely speculation here and sounds a little far fetched but would this be enough to make him want to visit England and perhaps attend University there.
Maybe the links could just be very innocent and someone had told him about the computer related courses at these Universities and Dylan decided to check them out.
I wish there was some way of knowing when he wrote these web pages down a i think it would be extremely interesting if these notes were made in the 98/99 school year.

queenfarooq wrote:

i think it would be extremely interesting if these notes were made in the 98/99 school year.

It would be indeed, it would raise a lot of questions aswell - Did he think he was actually going to go on studying and having a normal life? Did he think the massacre was going to be only a fantasy till the day he found himself going through with it for real? Or was he just trying to convince himself he could go on like everyone else does while deep down he thought it was impossible? A lot more are coming to my mind now

Btw, not that it solves anything, I think he wrote zcaca/mk.html. Slightly OT- on the same page he writes sparkie.riv.net/fetish. It's a shame that site isn't accessible anymore.. Some people speculated that maybe he had wiped out his hard drive because of his weird/violent sex fantasies (he did after all write about his humanities having a foot fetish and extreme bondage liking lol - the fact that I can quote this from memory is actually quite scary haha). That would explain a lot. Although he also writes down "conventional" sites, like penthouse and playboy, so maybe not...

Oh, I think I found something. His Birmingham link has /gamesdomain at the end. I googled it, and look what came up
"http://ricedesignalliance.org (alternate title Games Domain). The site, originally located at the Wolfson Computer Laboratory at the University of Birmingham (UK), has evolved into the well known Games Domain, a site mirrored in Europe, South Africa, and the United States. It contains hundreds of demos and patches, and thousands of links to download sites in various platforms, as well as Games Domain Review, an 'independent online magazine written by gamers for gamers.'" at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
So probably the UCL site also had some gaming content..

maninthebox wrote:

Oh, I think I found something. His Birmingham link has /gamesdomain at the end. I googled it, and look what came up
"http://ricedesignalliance.org (alternate title Games Domain). The site, originally located at the Wolfson Computer Laboratory at the University of Birmingham (UK), has evolved into the well known Games Domain, a site mirrored in Europe, South Africa, and the United States. It contains hundreds of demos and patches, and thousands of links to download sites in various platforms, as well as Games Domain Review, an 'independent online magazine written by gamers for gamers.'" at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
So probably the UCL site also had some gaming content..

Yeah I tried searching the "games domain" bit but couldn't find anything. That's great to know though good find.

I don't know what the etiquette is for bringing back an old thread, but this caught my attention, so I dug around a little.

I found the UCL student the link referred to. His name is Antony Espindola. A student at UCL who graduated in 1996. This guy apparently ran the first Mortal Kombat fansite (that's what the 'mk' in the old link stands for). There's even a copy one of his old Mortal Kombat II FAQs online (http://videogamereview.tripod.com/genesisfaq/mk2.html). In this, he provides his email and the link to his Mortal Kombat website which.. yes, you guessed it.. matches the site Dylan scribbled down (http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/people/zcacaes/mk/mk.html). Here's a screenshot of this from his site:

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Unfortunately that original page no longer exists. However, looking on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] the earliest 'saved' dates are back in April 1999 - although I'm not entirely sure what that means. It just struck me as strange.

So yeah, in summary, Dylan wasn't looking at a university course in UCL at least, but rather, a Mortal Kombat fansite.

froggy wrote:

I don't know what the etiquette is for bringing back an old thread, but this caught my attention, so I dug around a little.

I found the UCL student the link referred to. His name is Antony Espindola. A student at UCL who graduated in 1996. This guy apparently ran the first Mortal Kombat fansite (that's what the 'mk' in the old link stands for). There's even a copy one of his old Mortal Kombat II FAQs online (http://videogamereview.tripod.com/genesisfaq/mk2.html). In this, he provides his email and the link to his Mortal Kombat website which.. yes, you guessed it.. matches the site Dylan scribbled down (http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/people/zcacaes/mk/mk.html). Here's a screenshot of this from his site:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Unfortunately that original page no longer exists. However, looking on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] the earliest 'saved' dates are back in April 1999 - although I'm not entirely sure what that means. It just struck me as strange.

So yeah, in summary, Dylan wasn't looking at a university course in UCL at least, but rather, a Mortal Kombat fansite.

Interesting. Makes a ton of sense! I do think Dylan had backups in case Columbine didn't go down. Thus the whole trip to Arizona but great find!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Oh yeah, I definitely agree he had backups.. just maybe not UCL.