trav.270labs.com

Now in effect - new server!

-edit, update 2/20/2008

So, you may wondering about this server upgrade. My hosting company WiredTree offers great service, and they just offered their VPS hosting at a great price, so I had to upgrade. I’ve certainly noticed the improvement in speed, and we’ll see how fast the disk space gets used.

I really can’t thank the folks at WiredTree enough for the great support they offer, and I’ve been really pleased with the actual server. 5 thumbs up!

Hey now, it’s just about time to ring in the new year!

It’s been a pretty busy year, particularly since summer. The high points:

• Dave and Amy’s wedding
• Starting with POP
• Moving to a new house with partner

There were some really awesome low points as well:

• getting ‘laid off’ a week after Christmas
• moving out of my favorite SF household ever

and of course

• the four months of uncertainty that accompanied my unemployment

One of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, has this phrase he often uses: so it goes. I’m particularly fond of this phrase because it often does seem to sum it up. The story just keeps going on.

I’ve been working on some fun new things in web-land, including a flash-based thumbnail viewer, a javascript-based random image and quote generator, and more SEO reading. Most of this is related to my work at POP, but I’m also working with my good friend Todd on getting a portfolio site together.

The next few months will most likely see a ramp-up in my freelance client work, notably Ana Nitmar’s full flash-based site, and some updates for APN/EPIC. I’m also hoping to do some work with Jason for the Amber’s Portal site- animated with an audio gallery.

My goals are becoming more and more aligned with integrating modular OOP-based approaches to the planning, coding, design and development of the sites I work on. Really it’s just become more and more apparent that in order to be efficient and make the most of the available time, it’s essential that I make the most of what computers do best: repeated simple tasks.

That all sounds great, but on the last weekend of 2007, I’m still a novice at programming and animating. If past experience is a guide though, it’s just a matter of time before I gain a pretty thorough and working knowledge of these skills. The bottom line is I’m still deeply interested and curious about these things- and willing to screw it up as much as is needed. That’s really the only requirement for success, at least in my experience.

So here’s to ‘07, and happy new year!

This is my first post in a week, hence the title. It’s been a busy one, so I guess that’s the way it goes. Shouts out to teerok for swinging by and commenting…… more to come….