Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
Jun
06
2011
at 12:53pm
As most of you probably know, I recently left my position at the University of Waterloo. I wanted to post a little bit here about how that came about and what I’m doing now.
What happened, in a nutshell, is that the University decided to transfer the technical part of my job (including all coding), from Communications to IT. There is often a battle over who “owns” the web in higher ed. The same goes on at Waterloo.
The problem for me was that the job I had was probably about 70% technical. And that’s being conservative. I was responsible for the front-end code and back-end applications that supported the University’s communications efforts. Read more…
Posted in Personal | No Comments »
Apr
02
2011
at 9:09pm
I’ve always been a generalist at heart. It’s often hard for me to choose a favourite, whether it is a favourite colour, favourite school subject, favourite fitness activity, or favourite discipline in web design. And yet this sometimes become a problem. Can you become great at something if you don’t focus on it exclusively? Or is it enough to be good? Will someone pay you to be a generalist?
So how can I contribute? How can I combine my interests into a meaningful, fulfilling, successful career? Do I have to pick a speciality? Am I asking too much of myself? In web design we are frequently faced with the work of experts in our field. Is it unfair to compare ourselves to them? Surely, yet sometimes it’s hard not to. Read more…
Posted in Personal, Web Culture | 1 Comment »
Jun
04
2010
at 12:21pm
Running a webmaster forum is a difficult thing to do. I’ve been running The Webmaster Forums for almost 5 years, and moderating for 6 years before that. It’s a part of me. The problem? We get a lot of spam. In fact, I spend at least half an hour every morning taking care of spam. The outright spam needs to be removed. Links pasted within posts need to be edited out. User IP’s need to be checked to make sure these spammers don’t have multiple accounts. Some users need to be sent a private message with a warning about breaking the rules. Our moderators spend time on this too. It’s endless.
This takes up time. Time I could be spending with more valuable contributions to the forum. I could write more valuable posts. I could add more functionality that would be helpful to users. I could write more blog posts. I could write more articles for A Padded Cell. I could clean my house. Read more…
Posted in General, Personal, Web Culture | 2 Comments »
Nov
16
2007
at 1:31pm
I’ve had about 4 posts in a row now with no comments. No, I’m not really counting but it does tend to get discouraging. If I’m writing this blog, and nobody reads it, does it matter? Should I even bother writing it?
Sure, getting comments isn’t a true sign of readership, but I think it’s at least an indication that people are finding my posts to be interesting. But I don’t know if it’s really about that for me. If nobody was reading, would I still write?
To be honest, that’s not the main reason why I started this blog. Sure, its nice to share knowledge and insight with others. But it’s also good to get things off my chest. Sometimes I tend to over think things and can’t get them out of my mind. Writing them down, even if nobody is reading it, gets it out of my head. And then I don’t have to think about it anymore.
But don’t get me wrong, I do really appreciate and value any participation I get here. It’s amazing to think that there are people out there who are interested in what I have to say. And I do really want to engage with you, if you’re reading. Thank you for being here 
I could take a different approach with this blog, and write more linkbaity type stuff, although I tend to save that sort of content for A Padded Cell. I don’t really want this to be a place where I’m just trying to get more traffic or more readers or more comments. I want it to be authentic. I know I need to try to draw out the readers more than I do. I also should be linking out and participating in discussions more than I do now. Maybe those can be my goals for 2008.
So that’s why I blog. For any bloggers who happen to be reading, why do you blog?
Posted in General, Personal | 5 Comments »
Sep
26
2007
at 10:38am
Well, I can finally break the news! I’ve accepted a new position here at the University of Waterloo. For the past year and a bit I’ve been working on web sites for the Housing and Residences Department. My new job is in the department of Communications and Public Affairs, which handles all public communications for the University, including the University Home Page. I’ll basically be the lead web designer for the whole university!!
I’ll also do some consulting on other web projects for the University, work on some web apps they have developed, and do some outreach to other web designers and site maintainers. I might have a blog there as well (the last guy did), but I haven’t talked to my new boss yet about it so I’m not sure. That would mean that I’ll be spread a little thin, with writing here, at A Padded Cell, and the new blog. However, the new blog would have more of a focus on super beginner-level stuff while I would continue to focus on more advanced topics here. The new job will definitely open me up to a lot of new ideas which I could write about here.
Another great thing about the new job is that they use Macs — bye bye Windoze!! Well, obviously I’ll have to test on there once in awhile, but I won’t have to use it regularly!
This is the "other things on the go" that I was referring to in my previous post — I spent much of the end of August and the first part of September preparing my resume and portfolio to apply for the job. I designed my resume using Scribus, which I might post about later (it has an option to align text to a baseline grid — I’m not sure if other page layout programs do this but it was a godsend!)
Posted in Personal | 5 Comments »
