Five months from Foundation
My former Web identity Ideography came offline a few years back, removing my presence from the Web. True, I’ve been creating various wikis and I have my conradiator blog, but they are not quite the same thing as having as a standard Web site.
In mid September 2010 I started the construction of this site. My first goal was to post as many PDFs of my old conference papers and monographs as possible, and they are available under the ‘Download’ tab above. Since then I have added a number of Web essays, but there is still plenty of scope for expansion, and some areas of the site remain relatively underdeveloped.
What’s the purpose?
Bloggers are often accused of vanity publishing; isn’t a personal web site pretty much the same thing? I suppose so, but what the hell. I have some things to say, stories to tell, ideas to put about, things I’ve learned that I want to share, and I want to talk about campaigns I’m engaged in, organisations I belong to and so on. I also have some work that I’d like to showcase, and documents and podcasts to distribute.
Method
I have resolved (at least for the time being) not to create a site based on a Content Management System (CMS) like Wordpress or Drupal. I have nothing against such systems, but with my current level of knowledge I find that I cannot to my satisfaction control how such CMS-based systems present information. For now, therefore, I am creating XHTML pages and CSS style-files in a text editor: (BBEdit 8.7.2 for Macintosh. (I can also recommend the free NotePad++ for Windows.)
Why not a blog? Firstly, because I want to control the presentation closely. I use templated constructions for my pages, but need to swerve away from them when the occasion demands.
Also, blogs are built on the assumption that the most recent postings are the most relevant, which doesn’t fit my vision of what I am constructing. I am more of an essayist and writer of explanatory articles, and I have a whole list of them which will appear in the coming months.
Changes coming
In retrospect, I am no longer quite happy with the ‘taxonomy’ of this site — the division of the subject matter between ‘Audiovisual’, ‘Design’ and ‘Informatics’ in particular. Somehow my interests in media design and production, human factors, knowledge and information management and the use of computer technology will have to be divided according to another schema.
So if you wish to make links to pages on this site, you are welcome, but be advised: the directories and URLs may change! I shall try to retain a legacy structure of forwarding links, but if you wish to be kept informed of when the changes are made, drop me a line via the contact form (see below).
— Conrad Taylor, October 2010
Contact
You can leave a message for Conrad using the contact form