After many long years of not really publishing anything here, I’ve decided to write more and keep up with my thoughts by using this area to provide updates on what’s on my mind. The past decade+ has brought a lot my way. Becoming a father to two beautiful young ladies has consumed my time and emotional bandwidth. I’ve been focused on their growth and the health of my family since 2016.
I wouldn’t trade my time at home with them for anything. Watching them blink and see the world for the first time was one of the most profound, if not the most profound moments in my life. Without a doubt, I have enjoyed being a father.
Along the way I’ve stuck with web development and have definitely grown in ways I didn’t think would be possible as a stay-at-home father. My wife has taken great strides in her professional life as a result of the flexibility my work has provided us. After 8 years of dedicating myself to these kids every day, I think it’s time I came back.
Now that they’ve reached the age of both being in school full time, a huge amount of time has opened up for me. Graynoise Media has been a sustaining feature in my life since it was a punk rock zine, publishing up until around 2007. When I decided to convert the site over to my web development trade name, I was entering a world I thought I would be able to focus on with 100% of my time.
Having kids took much of that time but, now that they’ve reached this stage in their lives, I am rededicating myself to the field. Working on gaining new clients is my main goal at this point and hopefully I can get this off the ground once again. It really has been a “take-off, land, and take-off again” pursuit.
This new design is a new birth for me and hopefully I can take it where I believe it should go. None of this is to say I haven’t continued developing. I have. Since 2016 many of my clients have given me the chance to update and maintain their websites. I’ve learned a lot about server deployment / management. The Linux command line has become second nature for me. I’ve gone with the flow of the industry and kept up with many of the seemingly daily advances and changes that have taken place even over the last ~5 years.
After 25 years, many of the things I’ve grown accustomed to have changed. It’s amazing where web development is today. A lot is the same but there’s so many details that have become more refined. There’s so much more focus on security and efficient deployment today. When I started, the standards were HTML table designs and ftp uploads. So many things were easier back then, but the capabilities today are incredibly robust.
All that said, I feel I still have a passion for developing and publishing on the web. It’s still as fun as it used to be. There is a joy inside of me every time I’m able to make code work the way I want it to. Clicking the post button still gives me an almost nostalgic excitement that hasn’t changed since the first time I published HTML on GeoCities in 1998. Cranking up music loud and hacking away is where I’m happiest.
With this blog, I plan on publishing information about my current interests as well as updates about current web technologies. Expect updates on technology, gaming, politics, history, and music. We will see where I can direct this pursuit and where Graynoise takes me once again!