July 2004 Archives

Last weekend I traveled to Portland Oregon for the first time in my life. I was there for a few reasons, but mainly to go to the WebVisions Conference put on by Hot Pepper Studios and Nick Fink (publisher of Digital Web magazine). I haven't enjoyed a short trip this much in a long time.

I've gone and done it. After starting on this venture at the end of April, I finally have my new site design up for the world to see. Its not going to blow the socks off of anyone, especially CSS gurus in the standards design community, but I'm happy with it.

So what's different? A number of things. First and foremost, a standards based design that validates for both XHTML and CSS. Obviously a new look and feel, and a couple of new features (Worth Your Time, and Recommended sections).

Its still needs a few tweaks and some modifications, but its good enough for me. I'll be closing down the development log and starting a change log. Time to move along and start writing again!

My life in the past month has become a sitcom. I have every intention of accomplishing something, but a comedy of errors and obstacles have prevented me from reaching my goal.

You see, I had a plan. I was going to finish both my portfolio and the redesign of this site before I went to the WebVisions event, so I could stand tall and be proud of my personal site when meeting all of these great people on Friday (Nick Fink, Keith Robinson, Dirk Knemeyer, Jason Fried, the list goes on). Alas, the world had other plans for me…

To keep it short, after many late night parties (I know what your thinking, but this is actually required as my wife is the local nightlife writer for 3 publications), some freelance work, a big case of burnout, and finally my computer catching some sort of virus that required a complete rebuild, I'm not going to make it.

I spent last night thinking of ways to squeeze in an hour or two of work at the airport and on the plane to try and hastily finish up, when my wife tells me she's going to co-opt my laptop for the night to finish up her writing! Well her use of the computer is going to pay more than mine, so I'm going to come up short.

I'm kind of sad in a way, because I really wanted my new site design up before this conference, but I can think of worse things. Either way, rest assured that the new site is coming soon.

With that, I'm on a plane today and off to Portland to absorb copious amounts of knowledge from some great minds. I'll try to keep good notes and draft a write up next week. Till then…

Been working hard the last couple of weeks trying to finish up the new design for this site.

I anticipate putting the new look (and content) up next week , and also switching the domain name away from the subdomain into its own domain (inspirednonsense.com).

I really, really, really want to get this done before I trek to the WebVisions conference on July 16th so my portfolio is in place and I'm not embarrassed by my site's lack of "design"!