"If you're such a wonderful designer and developer, why is your personal website so... plain?"
Thank you. Thank you for visiting. Thank you for asking.This is my personal site where I deposit a whole lot of rambling thoughts, crafty ideas, creative projects, and whatever else suits my fancy. It is hosted in a portion of the Google-verse called Blogger - a service I have my domain directing to. I also use this site to keep a list of links that I find interesting and want to look at from time to time. My Bookmarks are many - I just find a page full of links a bit more convenient for links I don't hit all that often, but don't want to forget. (Guess how many tabs I have open as I work on this page?)
I could get all fancy and customize code or break the Google-verse by making Blogger templates. I'd rather put my energies toward other things at this moment. Blogger is a sufficient way to serve content about my personal self I would wish for the world to know. Simple as that. Browse this portfolio or my Behance profile for glimpses at works through the years.
As for the design of this blog, I have a story to tell you, if you have the patience.
When I was a little girl, the patriarch of my family used to tell the silliest jokes to his growing brood of grandchildren; the "Dad jokes" everyone loves to hate. You know them...
And we will never forget the one with the finger, will we?
But I digress...
There is one joke my grandfather said that really stuck with me has helped to shape my career.
"What is black and white and red all over?" he would growl; because he had to be a gruff old man.
We kids would stand there, confused and gawking over this intense question.
"This newspaper I'm trying to read," he would bark at us before shoving a quarter our way. "Now here's a quarter to leave me alone."
Of course, "red" was not "red" but was "read" unless you read it, right? Ahh, the English language!
That joke had me just as confounded as any other six-year-old. I would look at the newspaper after Grandpa was done reading it searching for the "red" color all over. I didn't 'get it' until I was about thirteen and my interest in printing processes dawned. I helped with some cut-and-paste things in newsletters and pamphlets for high school functions to get a grasp of the work processes. I even got to play with MacDraft, MacDraw, and MacWrite on the first Apple computer at the high school (of which I promptly broke, but that is another story).
And well, the rest is here.
"But what else is here beside another blog, and why so... plain?"
I had a rather prolific blog here once. I then got "creative" and bought hosting services for over a decade where I tinkered with and managed several WordPress installations. One install was live and where I built my blog. Other installs were used for testing plugins, creating templates, mocking up sites for potential customers, and just plain old playing. Even for a "typical blog" I had a development instance and a testing instance. Best Practices are embedded deep in my mindset.However, times change, as did I; as did my financial situation. I couldn't renew my decade-long hosting plan, and some of those best practices were forgotten as I hadn't downloaded the backups of my live site. I also lost a whole lot of personal files and data which I had up there "in the cloud for security". As much as I had made sure practices and procedures were followed in my professional life, I just let them slide in my personal projects. No bueno.
A precautionary tale and lesson hard learned. A girl gets to decide real fast just what is important and what isn't when it comes to personal internet data. I now have backups of my backups from the cloud housed on my 'sacred cow' tera-drive sitting right here next to me. It is not the best system that money can buy, but it is the best system I can afford (right now). It still stings - losing so much data - all because of finances.
Onward...
Now with a clean slate - I begin again with a new blog back in the Google-verse via Blogger. What I will populate this blog with is up to the future. I will post musings and writings. I may even find backups of content from my older sites - as I still have several spools of burned CDs I need to collect out of storage. I may have found some of my earliest poetry on the Wayback Machine when I used to be a pure HTML code warrior! Turn-of-the-century stuff that is! (I think it is so cool saying - 'turn of the century' - how many people can say that?!) |
| OMG! Wayback has some of the oldest works on my original domain! I wonder if it is available again? Hmmm.... Nah. |
I must thank the Google-gods. My very old blog template still sat in the 'verse', patiently waiting for my return. A few tweaks and I realize that I really like this design. It is clean, direct, precise... with just a splash of color.
You know...
Black...
White...
And I hope it is "read" all over - the world.
(Har! Har! Har!)
No. I'm not giving you a quarter to leave me alone.
"Okay, we get it now!"
Thank you. Thank you for visiting. Thank you for asking.And I thank you for a small personal message letting me know you get it. You can use the handy-dandy widget on the right to send me that message. Or clicky that Amazon button and send me a gift! I like gifts. Gifts help to make me smile.
Oh, if you're interested in learning more about my hobbies, crafts, skills, and career - or have an opportunity you think I may be interested in, drop me a note about that as well.
Other notes on this site's style
- My favorite sans-serif font, Trebuchet, is used - a lot. Yes, it is a standard font; it is not Helvetica!
- I like the Dancing Script font as a header, lends a bit of class.
- I did some CSS tweaking to get things to work how I want between Explorer and Chrome; this site is optimized for both. It even looks "okay" on the iPhone.
- I also test on Firefox and Opera, but noticed their usage is dropping so I don't design specifically for them anymore in my personal stuff.
- I personally use Chrome for almost all of my browsing - all hail the Google-gods.
- Apple hates me.