It’s ALIVE! Well, okay, it’s actually DEAD, but it’s HERE.

I’ve been tempted to do this for a while, but have resisted until now.

Once upon a time (2005-2006 to be more precise), I was the executive editor of an open source enterprise magazine called o3.

It was an interesting trip and I got to speak with a lot of cool people because of it. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.

The readership was good (500,000+ people in over 140 countries not counting the numbers from the internal distribution at IBM, which I don’t believe we ever got), but the ad revenue just wasn’t there.

It was sort of a classic catch 22 – the advertisers didn’t want to pay until we’d been around for a not inconsiderable amount of time, but I couldn’t exactly keep going without getting paid since it took up so much of my time. Sadly, this sort of thing happens in life.

You learn from experience and try to come out better for it on the other side.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

The magazine has finally been declared officially dead.

It’s been rather zombie-like for quite a while (the site even disappeared for a few months at one point), but every time I thought it was all over, there was some new stirring over there. Now, however, it has been stated that the company that bought the magazine isn’t going to continue funding.

On its twitter feed, it was stated that, while the site was not going to be updated, it was going to remain online. However, given its past disappearance and the fact that the site, in my personal opinion, looks *horrible* after the redesign, I’ve decided to host the issues of the magazine on my site.

This is, largely, I think, just to prove that it really existed and that I had a part in it instead of it simply being an entry on my resume and a couple of pdf printouts of the articles that I authored.

So, with all of that said, if anyone actually wants to see the magazine issues, you can look under the “Writing” section of my site for the link, or you could just click here =]

It was released under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to pass it around to your friends if you want.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Loreena McKennitt - Marrakesh Night Market

It's ALIVE!!!!!!

In case you haven’t noticed, the redesign of the site finally went live about a week ago.

I’d planned to have it rolled out about a month ago, but things kept coming up. Since it wasn’t a huge priority, the redesign kept getting pushed back. Now, however, it’s up and running.

I admit it. I was bad and rolled it out at around 3pm instead of waiting for the middle of the night, but I didn't think there would be much of an issue. Besides, I'd gotten sick of it not being up yet heh

The frames are gone (huzzah!), replaced with CSS and XHTML so it makes everyone’s lives easier. It’s easier to update, easier for search engines to index, easier to navigate, etc.

You should also notice that there are a number of new graphics on the site in order to provide visual cues and break up the flow of the formerly all-text content.

Everyone seems to agree that it looks quite a bit better than it did before.

The only page that wasn’t touched in the redesign was the html version of my resume. That will still be done in Front Page because laying it out otherwise is a pain in the rear, but I can live with that. It opens in a new tab anyway, so it doesn't interfere with the rest of the site's design.

I should mention the resources used in the redesign:

The basis for the site’s CSS came from Stylin With CSS, which has all of the files available here

Most of the icons came from here

And my South Park-like character (which I’ve been using forever) came from the South Park Character Creator.

If you run into any problems, please let me know and I’ll see what I can do to fix them. It’s been looked over by a few people, but there’s always a chance that something got overlooked.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Def Leppard - Hysteria

Just A Reminder.

This Saturday, May 9th, I will be out for part of the day. Seeing as how it's my birthday and everything, I thought I'd take part of the day off.

You can still contact me via email. I'll get it that day, I swear (unless something untoward occurs, of course).

As always, in case of emergency, I may be contacted via phone. Friends and those with whom I have fallen out of regular contact are also welcome and encouraged to call, no emergency required. The number is on the contact info page of my website as it has been for quite some time. =]

Current mood: somewhere between calm and restless
Current music: Seal - Don't Cry