SOME RANDOM DUDE

I have been talking about the blog redesign for a while. A long while. Considering the scope of the project I created for myself, I knew this process was going to take a while, but frankly, I vastly underestimated the effort is has taken so far. All that said, real and significant progress is being made. If I really wanted to push it and launch the site as soon as possible, I could probably get something ready in a week. However, that is not the goal.

I have mentioned many times that I truly want to finish this project in the correct manner and get everything in a place where I can just concentrate on generating content. I not written an article in what seems like forever. In the meantime, loads of work and ideas have piled up that I desperately want to show. All that said, once the new blog is up and if it delivers as I hope, creating content will take less effort and allow me to concentrate on the purpose of a blog - posting articles and media.

This whole redesign is not just a run-of-the-mill Wordpress theme. So far, with the help of some very generous friends, we have added on to at least 3 plugins and are creating a couple custom ones on top of it. A new icon set will be created for the design, custom javascript widgets have been created and a few other doodads here and there. All that said, it is not too impressive in and of itself. However, when working fulltime and trying to manage all other pieces of life, it becomes a significant effort.

All that said, big progress is being made and I truly cannot wait to get this thing launched. I hope the few readers that read this blog have more patience that I and hold on a little longer.blog, patience redesign

It has been around a week since I wrote that this blog was going through a redesign. Unfortunately, until then, I was most likely be writing about the its progress. Still, I thought it may be interesting for some to read snippets of where it is in the process.

At this moment, wireframes are around 80% complete - which sounds good - however, because of the 80/20 rule, that means that I am still a long way off. I have tried to scatter my work around so as to diminish the potential for tunnel-vision on some aspects of the design, so I took some time to begin on some necessary icons. Up to this point, the vast majority of traffic to this site funnels through two icon sets I made a while back. Ironically, those sets took all but 2-3 hours to make whereas this set is taking much longer.

Here’s a preview of some icons:

(more…)bitcons, blog, icons, launch, personal project, redesign, sansons, small pieces, snippets, traffic tunnel vision

As I mentioned not too long ago, this site is in the process of being redesigned. I really did not go into any details about what to expect from the new site, so I wanted to drop a few ideas of what I am working on.

Here are a few things to you will be seeing from the new blog:

• There will be tiered content - large scale, medium scale, small scale and (possibly) micro scale.
• Each tier will be viewable separately or together.
• Publishing will be decentralized with content siphoned into this blog.
• Posts will be much more frequent because of the tiered, decentralized nature (and yes, I have been testing this to make sure it is the case).
• Daily blog statistics/metadata will (hopefully) play a larger roll in the general experience.
• Comment Love will play a larger roll and be more integrated into the blog.

I could get into the design and other details, but frankly that is not too important in the big scheme of things. The content is what really separates the mediocre blogs from the good ones. The way I see it, if I can make creating content excruciatingly easy, there is a much better chance that I will do it more often. Since I already do in fact “publish” a lot of content outside of this blog, I might as well take advantage of that.

But enough from me, the reason why I posted this is because I want to hear about any ideas you think would be great to see in the new SRD. Ultimately, I will only be able to do so much, but I am certainly still in the “open to new ideas” stage. I have been looking at other blogs to see how this site could improve, but at the end of the day I am only one person with limited knowledge. Please lend me your experience and thoughts. I have no doubt it will make the new blog better in the end.blogs, decentralized nature, love, micro scale, opinions, redesign, srd thoughts

This post will have been the 8th blog entry in two months. To put that into perspective, in the month of March 2007 this blog had 34 posts alone. Frankly, this is not surprising - updates have slowly trickled downward for the past 3 or 4 months now. There are a few reasons for this - which I can get into in a later post. However, it has been clear that the current model of how I have blogging up to this point on Some Random Dude is not sustainable, nor is it smart. The effort/reward ratio is just not high enough - and while I was willing and able to a year ago, I am no longer.

The thing that has gotten to me the most is the amount of manual labor it takes to publish frequently. I would post 3 or 4 times a week and the traffic would frankly not reflect what I think it should have. Make no mistake, I am not in the camp that believes traffic is the sole measure of success and value - however, it is important. About one year ago, I started setting goals for what I would like to achieve with this blog - goals that I concluded would only be possible with a relatively high frequency of postings. That notion then put me into the pattern of regular weekly posts which became more of a chore than it should have been. I do not think that there’s no coincidence between the fact that some of my most popular posts were written before I started posting weekly content. In retrospect, I sold-out quality for quantity and I am kicking myself now for that.
(more…)blog, blogging, cms, goals, redesign, some random dude traffic

The week is closing up, so it is about time to drop some links. It has been a while since I broke 30 for the amount of links - time opened up a little more this week, giving me a chance to post a little more. I especially got a kick out of the wall of shame for Fox News - quite a bit of laughter and nausea all at the same time. I may have one more post up my sleeve for today - otherwise, have a good weekend.

Enjoy the links.

(more…)300, aircraft, airlines, america, article design, attorney firings, baby boomer, branding, climate change, computer programming, corporations, corruption, css, depression, dick cheney, Disney, dubai, evangelical christians, evil, eyetracking, font detector, Fox News, future, global warming, green anger, green grid, haliburton, hallwaytesting, hollywood, human rights, identity, internet, javascript, Karl Rove, law, links, media, monolith, neocons, net neutrality, npr, Photography, polar bears, political parties, politics, rebrand, redesign, riaa, right wing propaganda, scientists, showtime, sparta, spore, this american life, torture, usability testing, video, war, web, weekly xtrace