Misc. Thoughts
I Have 284 Friends March 14, 2008
…at least according to my Facebook profile. I looked through all of them the other day as I wanted to send out a message about this website. You know what? There are people in there I can’t even remember, I have no idea how I know them! And there are a lot of people who I haven’t talked to in years. We were acquaintances at best.
Social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook came about so that you could connect with people. I certainly see some amount of value in keeping up with people from far away; it’s not a bad thing. But it’s interesting to me that as we’re able to connect with people easier and easier, it gets harder to maintain all of those friendships that we now have the ability to keep up. Could I realistically keep up friendships with 284 people? Yeah right.
Sometimes I wonder (and I’m sure I’m not the first) if all of these friends, if all of this “easy contact” I have with people all over the world enabled by the Internet, email, instant messaging, and social networking sites has actually made it harder to maintain a real friendship with anyone?
Instead of telling people about an important event in our lives, we post it on Facebook. Instead of calling someone to see what they’re up to, we just Facebook them. Instead of stopping by someone’s place, it’s much easier to send out a Facebook invite.
It’s all about convenience and making communication easier. After all, how often do you have a meaningful conversation through these sites? Even our face-to-face conversations may change; we are so used to having these little snippets of friendship that we are not used to conversing about the deeper and more important things in life.
Friendship is a two-way street, giving and taking. These sites are all about the taking, we post only what we want to post, and we read only what we care to read. When all we do is take, we find that no one wants to give back. I’m not sure I believe that you can maintain a friendship through a social networking site, at least, not fully.
Why am I dissin’ these sites? I have no idea, truthfully, I have nothing against them. I’ll continue to use my accounts and talk to people through them. I guess my challenge is to continue to build real friendships with those around me and to not let the “bad habits” of online contact seep into my everyday life.
New Website, Finally March 1, 2008
This new website is a long time in coming, in fact, I designed the last one in less than a weeks timeframe for a class in my junior year of college. It was pretty rushed and it was never fully thought out. After I graduated and had a bit more time on my hands I started to want to design a new site.
That was almost 2 years ago now! I’ve worked on this project on and off during that time, but its always a challenge designing for yourself. I’m never completely happy with what I’ve come up with. In fact, I think that I went through 14 designs to arrive at this one. (My wife thinks I’m insane!) At some point, I just had to say, “this is the one, be happy with it.”
My goal with this site is to keep it more updated. I’ve made it pretty easy on myself to add new content to it, so I have no excuses now! I’m hoping to be able to add new designs I’ve created, new photos I’ve taken, and some varying thoughts from time to time.
I call the blog section “thoughts” because I hope that it will be more than the occasional “Hey, I just saw the coolest website” or “I had Macoroni and Cheese for dinner last night, boy is that good!” I hope to bring something new to the blogosphere, from design commentary, to advertising ideas, to thoughts on Christian spirituality. Join in the conversation with me and let me know your thoughts as well, I welcome the feedback.
This is definitely a work in progress, I may add sections, or change how things work, so don’t be too surprised. Feel free to let me know if you have any comments, thoughts, or questions.
Small Updates January 5, 2005
Awhile ago I switched this news portion so that the background was white, but that complicated the link colors, and everything was all messed up. So I finally got around to fixing it tonight. I’ve made some small changes around the site, probably nothing that you’d notice.
Currently I’m in the process of looking for an internship this summer. It’s been interesting so far, and I have a few good leads as well. Andy is also keeping my busy working on stuff for BitSplash including a new logo for Exact Mouse, and the new website design. That should be coming soon.