new homepage!
There is a direct trade off between the amount of time one spends in web development and design and the amount of time one spends in web content.
This past week, I invested waaaay too much time in er, pulled together the skeleton of a homepage for…myself:
All this page is good for right now is to send you to my blog (which you’re at already if you’re reading this note?) and my Twitter feed (tweet tweet)….Oh, and I guess you can see what my handwriting looks like sometimes –
– That is to say, what my handwriting can look like…..not that the handwriting ever disappears from the page……Oh, never mind.
There are still plenty of modifications in the works (for instance changing out the blog link, which looks pretty little lame and off-kilter next to its Twittery friend), but, you know: it’s a start.
This project (which includes the still-in-progress blog before you) is a lot like the first “essay” I ever wrote for Spanish class. Sure, I’d done workbook problems before, the equivalent of using content management systems for HTML, but that first essay was a leap. It was my first chance to show that I could kind of, sort of think in Spanish — that my brain had accepted the grammar and linguistic logic and was ready to engage with it. So I didn’t write anything revolutionary — I probably just blathered on about myself as the assignment requested, “Hola, me llamo Laurenellen. Yo estoy una alumna a la escuela de Nueva Fairfield…” — but I got to take off my training wheels. (And mix my metaphors!)
HTML is a language. Attempting proficiency (let alone fluency) is an ongoing (cultural?) experiment, but the payoff is enormous. Besides the immediate increase in skillz, learning one programming language opens doors to learning others (or, at the very least it helps you figure out what questions you need to ask). Additional bonus: ability to speak with future computer overlords and/or my programming friends.
Additional, additional bonus: reduction in the potential Techno-Knowledge Gap between myself and future progeny. I guess that means I need to start learning Flash soon, too…
Categories: Muse
