bwpdsigns.com

So blogging is obviously not a priority. My trend seems to be one post each year stating “hey I haven’t posted in a year” so why bother posting now? Great question.

Back in the day blogging was fun. Posting random crap about music, life, beer, cars and bitching about work was a pretty common thing to do. Today? Well there’s Facebook, it’s a guaranteed outlet to people who may actually read and interact with something I post, it is far simpler and pretty much a part of every site and application out there. So that’s where many of the things that would appear on this blog have ended up. Not friends with me? Sorry, most likely if you visit this site you are just a comment spammer hoping I approve our comment so you can blast ads on my posts anyway. If you aren’t a spammer, sorry, thanks for reading.

So following the last post here’s where I’m at in 2012, apparently not much further along than 2011.

2012 Goals

1. WordPress
   WordPress is something I should have a much better grasp on, I guess I should make a goal to build up some more knowledge of it.
2. Interactive Development (aka turning my flash knowledge into Javascript and CSS)
   Yeah, I know “Flash is Dead”. Thankfully all the killer skills that I build up coding a nicely structured language like AS3 will apply to other languages.
3. Sites
   I have a few of them. I really don’t have plans at this point. I should do something with them. Hell I said I need some WP experience so why not build it up by building my sites.
4. Learning / Skill Development
   There’s a lot of great tech out there, I use the following at work. HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Grails, NodeJS and a few others. Besides building up these further, I’m going to continue looking at Flash Game coding and iOS.
5. Life
   Stay alive, stay employed and stay healthy. What more can you ask
6. Creative Outlets
   I really need to pick up my guitars more often, they need a good dusting off also. It would be nice if I picked up a pencil occasionally too, drawing MLP with my 6yr old niece is fun but I should try to do something artistic occasionally too.

Are you still reading? Crazy.

See you in 2013.

Does that mean this blog is dead? Probably. Can it be brought back to life? Possibly. Should it be brought back to live? Why not. Does anyone care other than myself? Probably not. Though I’m sure there’s plenty of comment spammers out there thinking the more blogs on the net the better.

2010 Recap.

Looking at the last post from last year, it seemed like I was stumbling over what to focus on and what to learn. I spent quite a bit of time looking at many of the things that I listed, did I master any of them? Hardly. I did make a considerable amount of progress in all areas though. ActionScripting is still my primary skill, HTML / CSS are foundation skills, Javascript is a necessary evil and these days, you can’t expect to be in this field without it. iOS, Android, PHP and so on. Dabbled, made progress and well that’s about it. Quite a bit of time learning about them, quite a bit of time experimenting, nothing really to show for it. Would I sell myself as an iOS, Android or PHP dev… nope.

Looking forward to 2011.

I’m off to a great start so far in 2011, I’m starting a new job the 31st and can’t wait. Focusing on ActionScript at the new gig, though I think there may be a bit more opportunity to be a bit more well rounded at this one. We’ll see.

Sites?

So what’s the status of various sites I have? Good question. Here’s the plan, hopefully someday it will actually work out that they are all maintained.

• bwpdsigns.com – Hopefully I’ll make an effort to blog more about tech I’m working with. There are so many great tutorial and tech sites out there it’s hard to think I’d have anything to contribute. Then again there are equally as many bad sites out there.
• pauluscreative.com – The future home of everything related to the freelance work that I do. Right now it’s in an extremely early stage of development. It’s live but, there’s no content.
• bryanpaulus.com – My old portfolio site and probably one of my earliest examples of a complete XML driven flash site. Painfully out of date.

This doesn’t even start to account for the sites related to my wife’s business. Maybe my goal for 2011 should be to finally get all these sites updated and launched.

Now the challenge is to make sure this isn’t the only post of 2011.

Months later, here I am, once again looking at the state of this site. Progress is null. I wish I could say that it’s because I’ve been focusing on all the exciting projects that are keeping me busy. Truthfully it’s just that I’m still figuring things out for this site. I think the move to WP has helped me refocus the site. I like the structure of the info. The “temporary” template is serving the purpose, I’ve even received a few compliments on it, which is funny and sad all at the same time.

Looking toward 2010…

Keeping with tradition, I’m hoping that 2010 will see a new design and a bit more focus on getting this site rolling again. Also on my list are the following:

• ebonypaws.com
• pauluscreative.com

Both sites have designs but just need to be further flushed out and built.

Stay Tuned…

As you can see, I haven’t made any progress on tweaking this theme. Oh, I changed the logo but that’s about it. I’d like to say that it’s because I’m super busy, but that would be stretching the truth a bit. I think mostly I’m back to not knowing what I want to do with this site and being super critical of pretty much anything i start working on.

Anyway, enough babbling. I’m going home.

Added a quick theme that I found, it’s a decent one, I adjusted the categories and notices what’s either a bug in WP or in the theme. Basically WP wouldn’t show any category names after “uncategorized” alphabetically. Has to be the theme. No way that bug has lasted this long.

I’ve moved hosting and converted to WordPress. So now I just need to either spend some time converting my MoveableType template over or design a new site. Neither seem much fun but hell I need to get used to working with WordPress.

So it looks like this will be the first post of 2009. I’ll try not to let you down.
Where have I been? What have I been up to?
Things are flying by at a pace that’s just unbelievable. It’s already near the end of February. What have I been doing? Well. Let’s see.
Work
Work is good, I’m employed and these days that’s by far the most important thing. Regarding work I spent most of January working on another AS3 site. Good stuff, refined a few things from previous projects and am continuing to love being Flash only.
I’m going to have to get some of my work from here up into the portfolio section. I’ll put that on my list.
WOW
Sticking with the “W” theme, so have I been playing much? Well lets just say that because of the fact that we seem to get a new CC every other week because some company can’t guard their data. I didn’t realize that my account wasn’t active for a good part of January. So no not playing much WOW these days and you’ll see why in a few…
Back to the Gym…
Keeping with the tradition of new years resolutions, we’re back to the gym. This is nothing new for us, we’re usually very motivated the first few months of the year, right up until we start hitting the weekly BBQs. It’s going well so far. Actually I should say that we’re sticking with it pretty well, not sure how much of an effect it’s having. It will pay off eventually…I hope.
Guitars
In the basement getting dusty.
Music
Started listening to a cool band Kataklysm. Picked up “In the Arms of Devastation”, “Prevail” and “Shadows and Dust” from iTunes. Good stuff. Otherwise I’m just letting my iPod play on shuffle. Also have a strange fascination with the song from Devildriver – “I Dream I Died” not sure why, just a great track.
Other
Picked up pauluscreative.com, just because, not sure how it’s going to fit in with the current domains or if I really needed it. I guess it’s the curse of cheap domains from goDaddy.com.
iPod Touch
Did I mention I picked up an iPod Touch? Oh well no one reads this anyway. Seriously wish I would have just ditched Sprint and went for the iPhone. This thing is amazing, a great replacement for my 3rd gen iPod that had to be hard reset every week. A few nit-picky little things but overall well worth the investment. Plus it opens up a whole new line of technology that I need to dabble with.
My favorite apps:
TapDefense – Seriously addicting Tower Defense game ( I just can’t seem to beat medium )
Lose It – Going with the gym theme really great way to keep track of calories
iFitness – Decent workout app, updated really frequently, not too heavy of a download and pretty flexible and worth the $2
MySpace and Facebook – I actually check these now
Hero of Sparta – amazing game, should really play it more.
gotta run, see you in a few months…

I’m looking at this site, cause I’m bored. I’m realizing that it’s old, outdated but it’s working, easy (enough) to update (it’s a blog).
Do I design and build a new site?
Sure I should. It’s a pretty low priority since I’ve got a dozen other projects I should be dealing with, but it still needs to be done.
Cracking the code I see that, with the help of Moveable type, the HTML is fairly well organized and table-less. It should help to restyle the site.
I think many of the categories are still valid. I may drop a few or add a few but in general they seem relevant.
Do I go flash?
Since I’m so focused on Flash development these days, do I go flash? I’m thinking not. Then again who knows. I guess technology will come out of what I come up with for a design.
Do I give in and go with the latest modern site designs ideas?
This site was designed when everything had rounded corners, gradients, gel buttons and reflections. Strange, that’s pretty much what’s still in style. Hmm…Oh well. again I’ll have to see what comes out of that blank Photoshop file when I get started.
Anyway, babbling a bit today, nothing is really kicking off until next week and I’m not feeling particularly motivated today.

Once again it seems that blogging has fallen off the radar for me. It appears that it’s not the only thing that I’ve been taking a break from. I just realized how long it’s been since I’ve listened to any podcasts. A year and a half ago I was listening to several podcasts ranging from Web Design and Development to World of Warcraft. At some point it stopped. I think it started when I kicked the serious WOW addiction I was fighting last year. To be fair I haven’t kicked it so much as just managed to get it under control.
Anyway, the past month…Here’s what’s going on.
Work
Loving the new job. Just finished up the majority of the development of my 2nd AS3 project. A sitelet that will be going live soon. I’ll post as soon as it happens.
Flex
I’ve finally been dabbling with Flex. I know it’s quite overdue but I’m finally diving in and starting to really ramp up on Adobe Flex. So far it’s amazing. I’m really looking forward to getting an opportunity to use it for a project.
Other Projects
I still have a few projects going on. Nothing to much to report there. Decided I’ll never let myself get involved in another ecommerce site build again. It’s just more than I have time for in as a “few hours a night” freelancer.
Music
There’s been some great new music out lately. Rise Against, Amon Amarth, All That Remains, Trivium, Dragonforce, Slipknot…to name a few that I picked up. Nothing really disappointing. I even picked up the latest B.B. King album a few months back, trying to broaden my musical tastes. Rather than trying to do something radical, I’m thinking Blues guitar greats might be a good start for me.
Guitar
Um…damn they are getting dusty again…
TV
Oh way too much of this in my life. Though it helps me out cause I can play WOW while we hang out watching TV.
Anyway, I’m outta here, I seem to be using Twitter much more than blogging it seems to be much easier to throw a few random thoughts out on Twitter than dealing with a formal blog post.