Thinkcage

I have had my Sony Ericsson T-68i with an attachable CommuniCam™ for about a year now but it has been more or less a novelty. That is, until I discovered the world of moblogging.

One of Arthur C. Clark’s three laws of technology states that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinquishable from magic” (Borrowed from Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines). Now certainly that would be an exaggeration when used to describe the technology of moblogging, but it is how I felt the first time I magically sent a photo from my phone directly to my website. Its pretty cool to take a photo with a mobile phone, type in some text on the tiny keypad and then post it directly on the web.

I don’t know exactly what I will use it for long-term, but I plan to use it extensively next week when I travel to the east coast to visit my newborn nephew! Take a look at my first moblog.

I’m sure the serious members of the “blog” community would scoff at my silly little web site that talks about itself. And I realize there is little value in it for anyone but the most regular of visitors here, but that also is the appeal of this kind of publication. The Internet lets me publish to any audience, regardless of size and/or commercial feasibility. There are some issues I wish to sound-off on here, but I will likely not address them until I feel the site is finished.

Though this is really the 4th or 5th distinct version of the site since 1997, when I created my first personal site on a University server (it’s since been removed but I wish I had archived it), this is the first one I would consider robust enough to label version 1.0. For the first time, I have a journal, resume, a decent portfolio, and some information about myself on a fairly complete site. It’s mostly valid XHTML/CSS and even has a nice content management system that permits me to add blog entries and portfolio items through a web-based system.

The content management system is my own design. It is a modified version of what I’ve been doing for clients for over a year now. I’m not really a programmer, thought I am getting a good handle on PHP, so I am certain it could be better. But that said, it is 100% mine. I wrote every line of code and every feature so that it would work the way I want on this web site. I was very tempted to try a tool like Moveable Type, which so many talented people are using to do amazing things, but I really wanted the control and pride of doing it myself. Furthermore the complexity and robustness of Moveable Type really turned me away; I would much rather start with very limited functionality and add features I need than be overwhelmed by things I don’t use.

The funny thing is I am primarily a designer. I have been an artist my entire life and earned a BFA in Visual Communications. I have since really added a lot of technical skills that allow me to do XTHML, CSS, PHP, ASP, SQL, JavaScript, etc. But more and more I find doing those things repetitive, time-consuming, and uninteresting. I am most happy when I am doing design, even after all of the technology I have learned.

Recently I began to do some identity design work on contract from an agency. It has been delightfully refreshing to do just design. No worries about how I would make my ideas work in HTML, no concerns about browsers and PHP errors. I just make beautiful designs and then move on to the next one.

That is what is funny to me about this web site. I have spent so much time creating clean code, semantically-correct structure, and custom functionality that to me the design got lost in the process. Certainly, it is useable and clean, but it lacks the visual look and feel to set it apart from the rest of the web. To me it looks like a database site.

So now I am going to focus completely on the visual design for awhile. I want to make the current content beautiful and then I am considering a second version of the site that uses a Flash interface to access the same content. Already the weblog and portfolio content is stored in a database and I think that if I move the static content as well, I can use the same data pulled into Macromedia Flash™ to present the same content in a different way. That’s really what the whole idea of separation of form and content is all about, right? I hope to detail my process here at a later date.

Since the re launch, I have been paying special attention to the web server logs looking for broken links and missing files. In my redesign I really paid little attention to what came before, despite the fact that many of the items are crawled by the various search engines.

That said, there were a few items that were the main source of 404 Errors on the site, primarily my resume which is rather well indexed. So I quickly restored it and added some custom error pages to help anyone else that has an old link find something useful.

This has been a busy year in all the realms of my professional practice. At Advanced Academics I have been busily working on a brand new web site. This effort was a complete overhaul in content and strategy. Furthermore, the site has been cast completely in XHTML/CSS and Macromedia Flash. Its not 100% but its close. Some of the content is unfinished (in my eyes) and not every page validates 100% XHTML/CSS, but I think it’s a world better than the previous version. And more importantly, it launched last night. Visit the site now »

This has also been a busy year for me in my freelance work. Sometimes it feels like I’m too busy, but the work is rewarding and gives me a much-needed break from the single identity I design for in my day job. Now that my weblog is working properly, here are a few of the site launches that I failed to detail here:

Oklahoma Golfer is the online companion to Oklahoma Golfer Magazine, a new publication for golf enthusiasts. The site, like nearly everything I do these days, is all XHTML/CSS with data driven by PHP and MySQL. I can’t say enough about how powerful and easy it is to develop with PHP/MySQL. The syntax makes sense to my visual mind and the support of the community is fantastic. Any web developer with some familiarity with basic scripting (like javaScript) and access to PHP.NET should really consider PHP/MySQL. With OkGolfer, the site can accept and manage subscription requests and output them to a format compatible with the mailing house that ships the magazine; plus, it uses an open-source polling system to track reader poll answers —all via PHP. Take a look »

Pine Cone 66 Ranch is a very small company in Shawnee, Oklahoma that deals horse trailers. I built this site for a client that I had worked with in the past on Trailer Depot. The concept is the same, its a very basic site that lists current inventory along with lots of detail photos for online shoppers. While you can’t really buy a horse trailer online, you can get pretty close. It wouldn’t seem that horse trailers would be a logical online product, but Dave Mattern over at Horse Trailer World boasts over 6,700 visitors a day. The great thing about it is that Pine Cone 66 Ranch, via their web site, has the same access to customers that Trailer Depot and Horse Trailer World have. He can expose his inventory to shoppers all over the world. Furthermore, the site features a pretty robust content management system. The owner of Pine Cone 66 Ranch, who is a grandfather and lives out in the country, bought his first computer a month ago. Today he is updating his web site. The CMS allows him to type his listing and upload pictures from his new digital camera to the web site where they are dynamically re sized and displayed. That is what I love about what I do.

The site is more or less launched now. The design is really minimal until I work it further, but it’s functional. I’m pretty happy with the new logotype but the design is still too plain and the typography needs work. The weblog is woefully neglected, but now that I have a brand-new content management system things should really start to pick up. That said, I’ve been working too long already today so I’ll detail the nuts and bolts another time.

Look for many updates to the portfolio tomorrow.

Can you believe it? Two updates in one week? Ok, not exactly in the same week but they are technically only seven days apart.

Anyway, the reason for this update is the launch of Butter Boardwear. Ok, got me again. It’s the launch of the coming soon page. But it is coming soon. This is a cool company doing gear for wakeboarders. I’m working on their web site which will let you buy their gear online. Additionally I’m working on some designs for said gear. Those of you fortunate to both read this page and live in or around Edmond, OK might have seen me sporting a Butter t-shirt this weekend. But probably not.