Welcome to My Personal Blog…

So here’s the funny thing about creating and running Web sites for a living (which is what I do): you end up having really high expectations for each site you launch, and you want everything to be perfectly in place before you launch. Let’s take a brief inventory list here on this site. First, we have an easy to use CMS – WordPress, all set up and ready to rock as of two months ago. Check. Next, we have a killer template, courtesy of Mr. Darius Wey, finished more than a month ago. Check. My matching photo gallery template is also completed, as of two weeks ago. Check. So what was left? Nothing – yet somehow I was obsessing over the smallest details the way I do with a Thoughts Media site. Then I was reminded of a simple truth a few days ago: the entire reason I’m launching this personal blog is to give myself a no-pressure, talk-about-whatever-I-want place that has no connection to my “real” job. So what the hell was I waiting for exactly? And here we go – launched!

I wanted to talk a bit about the template that Darius designed for this site: when I work with Fabrizio (our resident developer/designer at Thoughts Media) on a site design, we strive for maximum usability, readability, brand impact, blah blah – all the usual marketing stuff. With a completely personal blog, I had much more freedom to create something bold, unique, and designed to make me happy, not necessarily everyone else on the planet. I love the deep reds, the bright oranges, and the simplicity of the design. Oh, and not a damn advertisement anywhere. How nice is that? If only all of my sites could be ad free!

The characters up at the top of the page are Japanese kanji meaning “Samurai” – I have a tremendous admiration for Asian culture and many of the precepts of Bushido (with a Christian view of death of course), even if the version popularized by modern thinkers never quite existed that way in history. The characters going down the right hand column are a Chinese characters. From top to bottom, the characters are faith, hope, love, courage, and honour. All are traits I strive for in my life. If you can’t see them all properly, it’s because you’re using Internet Explorer 6. There are some tragic flaws with CSS rendering that IE6 has never fixed, but the site looks great in Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 (which all you IE users should download immediately, though I recommend you give Firefox a try, it’s an awesome browser).

So what will you find here at jasondunn.com? Well, first and foremost this is about my life, the things I discover, the things I find interesting. In the early years of Pocket PC Thoughts, since it was my one and only blog, I quite often talked about personal matters, posted holiday greetings, etc. Over the years as it evolved and grew, the focus also became more defined, and I found that some readers were not very tolerant of things that were off topic. They came there for Pocket PC news, and if it wasn’t about that, then why was I posting it? I don’t blame them for wanting a site that was on-topic, but by the same token I’ve felt a bit restricted in not having a place to post whatever I felt like online. I don’t expect this blog to be updated on a regular basis – more whenever the mood hits me or I have something I want to share – so the best way to keep updated is to subscribe to the feed. I also make no pretence that every single entry will be worth reading – this is a purely personal project that will run the gamut from cool tech tips I discover, to updates for family and friends, to pure ranting and raving on subjects I find compelling – including religion, politics, and other subjects too hot to handle on my professional sites. You’re welcome to join in the fun, but remember it’s a personal blog, so the first person to say “Hey, that’s off topic!” gets a virtual poke in the eye. 😉 And here we go…