…and I’m back, with a sizeable update. Some f…
Permalink | August 22, 2005 by John in Uncategorized
…and I’m back, with a sizeable update.
Some friggin little punk managed to hack Tom’s server about a week-and-a-half ago. I’ve been making posts to Blogger but until just a few moments ago it was not able to upload to Tom’s server. Enjoy.
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winterson.com: episode iii, the backstroke of the …
Permalink | August 18, 2005 by John in Uncategorized
winterson.com: episode iii, the backstroke of the west This is too funny. Way better than “All your base.” Thanks, Mikey…
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Kung Fu Monkey: I Miss Republicans.: “Please. Plea…
Permalink | August 17, 2005 by John in Uncategorized
Kung Fu Monkey: I Miss Republicans.: “Please. Please. Bring back the real Republicans. Bring back the science guys. I miss you.” Funny rant.
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David Galbraith: “I have a new theory - Unintellig…
Permalink | August 11, 2005 by John in Uncategorized
David Galbraith: “I have a new theory - Unintelligent Design, which is the same as Intelligent Design, except that the creator is either a moron or Satan.”
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Realigning Perspectives Well, I got what I wanted…
Permalink | August 10, 2005 by John in Motorcycle News
Realigning Perspectives
Well, I got what I wanted. I have official “permission” from The-Powers-That-Be to do web design as a hobby. I’ve got it in writing (well, e-mail) that it is not a conflict of interest with my company, since I don’t really do web design at work anymore. I offered up a few caveats to clarify what I was looking for: I won’t work for the public sector (our core business); I won’t do any personal work at the office; I won’t do any application development projects (mostly because I don’t have the full expertise to develop something like that from scratch, though implmenting and “skinning” an open source application is not out of the question); and my personal work will not have a negative effect on my work at the office.
I’d be lying if I said I was totally enamored with the type of work I’m doing now (working with XML, XSL, RTF, Javascript and a smattering of Java). Some days it’s just so much drudgery. I slog through the work, pretty much joylessly. I don’t want to paint it as all bad - there are certainly bright points. I mean if there wasn’t I’d have to quit and move on.
I like designing interfaces for web applications. I liked working on a system I worked on previously that used XSL to format XML and output PDF files with XSL:FO. That was kinda fun (It’s no secret that I’m not happy with the hand-coded Rich Text Format (RTF) documents I’m working with on my current project - I much more prefer coding XSL:FO for the PDF output of the previous project). And of course, there are fulfilling traditional print design projects like the annual hospital gala that we sponsor.
But what really makes me happy, from a professional perspective, is creating clean, attractive, validated, tight designs for web sites. Now I can do that without fear of losing my day job. Now I get to rediscover the “joy of web design,” something I’ve steadily been losing over the past couple years. First up, a web site for my motorcycle dealer followed by a portfolio site for myself.