Rebirth
Welcome to the rebirth of my personal homepage. Some of you may have stumbled across the earlier iteration that was simply a Wordpress install. Several factors have caused me to decide to recreate the site. Unfortunately for you since you are here now reading this (I assume you are reading this. You may be some kind of lexical parsing robot…), the transition is clearly not complete.
Note: Content is not being sorted by date and bares the wrong posted date. All of the content posted so far is old (some of it quite old).
I figure that a brief introduction to what was here, why it isn’t here now, what will be here, and what my goals are, will make for a fairly decent placeholder while I fill in the rest of the content.
So, what was here? Not a whole lot of value. I acquired this domain name and some el-cheap-o shared hosting early in my post-secondary college career. To say that I didn’t have a particular goal in mind would probably be an understatement. What came was a sort of slow evolution and experimentation process. I wasn’t exceptionally familiar with blogging or blog software, so I went with the obvious choice and tossed a Wordpress install on the domain and just started. The first problem I encountered was that I had no idea what I wanted to be blogging about. A minor problem no? It quickly became a dumping place for half-baked commentary on various links/pages/articles/news postings that I stumbled across in my journey on the ‘tubes. Occasionally the commentary/link spamming would be inter-spliced with actual first-party content that I developed. Some school assignments, miscellaneous scripts, etc.
As time progressed I came to have more content that I was writing, researching and developing myself. Furthermore, I realized that the whole “blogging commentary” thing was really not for me. The stuff that I had was at least 90% fluff. These days I try to hold the commentary for the odd piece that matters, and the link spamming is mostly happening on Twitter (where it seems to be much better suited). These realizations made it more and more apparent that what I wanted was a more traditional website that could be a “portfolio” of sorts and less of a blog. It was also becoming clear that the bloat of Wordpress and it’s ever growing popularity was making it more of a maintenance/security nightmare than I was willing to submit to. The final push in this area was when I acquired more reliable personal server space. Moving the old site would have been more work than it was worth.
So that covers the past, what about the future? Well, as I said I envision this space becoming half portfolio, half my home on the web. Certainly a window into the stuff that seems to keep me occupied these days. At any given time my mind (either idly or in a more conscious fashion) seems to be spinning on a large handful of projects at various stages of completion. I plan to document these as I can. Likely much of it will be rough plans, general thoughts, and future aspirations. I do occasionally enjoy writing infosec pieces, development/programming articles, and other obscure documentation like content. A previous exploration into this space led to a 2600 article. There is currently another such article in the publishing queue. Supposedly it’s been accepted, but I do not have a firm issue number that it will appear in. This site will also be home to these pieces as they come.
If the past site taught me anything, it’s that I am not able to keep any sort of firm schedule on updates. I believe that trying to push myself into that mould was a large contributing factor in why there was so much fluff. The guilt of not posting seemed to push me towards getting anything put up just so that there was something there. I am firmly trying to avoid this for the current iteration of the site. Updates will be likely be few and far between, but I hope that their intrinsic worth will be much higher. I recommend exploitation of the RSS feed if you are set on knowing when things change. Subscribing to my Twitter feed would also be a good way to stay on top of things.
It is worth noting that I am not a web designer. Web application developer? Sure, I can probably accept that moniker. Making a “pretty” site is not a goal I have in mind. I understand CSS well enough to get things the way I want, but unfortunately aspiring for “pretty” means having a sense of colour, design and general artistic skills I do not possess. Function over form for me. I express my creativity in more abstract means (see: code). When the dust has settled, I hope to provide some information on the way I constructed the site and what I found worked/didnt’t.
That’s all for now. Tune in as the content that was worth saving falls into place and (hopefully) new stuff appears as well.
- Dan
Transmissions:
Go with a “light” white on black. While I can appreciate the green-on-black monochrome look, it’s hard on the eyes.
— Adam · Nov 19, 01:38 AM · #
I think I’ve aligned myself with the fact I’m better off using a pre-canned CSS theme. I can’t make things pretty.
— Daniel · Jan 31, 05:02 PM · #
Hi Dan,
Nice site you have here! I am going to show it to my class today, hope you don’t mind. I have a couple budding programmers who will appreciate what you have done since you left ND.
Sincerely,
Adam the founder of Pie-Day
— Adam - pie day founder · Mar 9, 01:29 PM · #
Hi Adam,
Feel free! I’m glad you like it. Let me know what your class thinks. I’m always willing to hear from ND students, especially anyone interested in Comp Sci.
I’ve seen a good number of perspectives now having worked full-time in the industry, done the college approach, and enrolled in the more “ivory tower” academic side.
Thanks!
- Dan
— Daniel · Mar 10, 12:36 PM · #