Marking time on this site
The pitch
I heard Martin Grunstein at the Institute of Architects the other day, speaking about How architects can make profits in a challenging environment.
Martin made some unflattering generalisations about architects’ websites. He even offered to help anyone in the audience to make theirs better. I sent him an email after the talk and, a few days later, he responded.
He liked this website but he told me—you need to have a stronger selling focus to it because the purpose of your site is to get people to hire your services. He said I should write a list of reasons for clients to hire me, and put it on the front page.
So I thought of six reasons and wrote them down.
Olga Nethersole woodburytype zoomified
Let me decode that headline:
Olga Nethersole (1867-1951) was an actress and a celebrity in England and America. She is a perfect subject to demonstrate the woodburytype.
Woodburytype was a process for printing high quality black and white photographs, used from the late 1860s until about 1900. This Woodburytype print of Olga makes a fine test for zoomify
Zoomify is software for zooming and panning website images.
What you can do with your comments
Please comment on anything you find (or don’t find) on this website, by email, phone or letter—it’s easy enough to contact me. I’ll be pleased to hear from you, and I am very likely to reply. It could be the start of a rewarding conversation.
»more»Website revamped
I resolved to finish an overhaul of this website during 2012. The program slipped a little, but yesterday I asked my web host to change the DNS settings to point to the new site. Last night I went to bed quite late, satisfied that everything was working properly.
I woke early this morning and found that everything had gone bung—the website had turned into an Account Suspended page and my email accounts were inaccessible. Let’s just say that I was disappointed. But it’s all sorted out now, with a gracious apology from the host.
»more»Website revamp
I resolve that in 2012 I will get the long-simmered revamp of this site off the back burner and out onto the web. I have been working on some new material, and a fresh home page. Stand by.
»more»A message to Page-Zone
Since 2002 this website has been hosted by page-zone.com, a small outfit based in the USA. Over the years I have appreciated their low prices, and I have been content with their service—despite (very rare) outages and sometimes slow response to support tickets.
But recently something has gone seriously wrong at Page-Zone. Here is part of a message I sent them today:
»more»Halal gelatin
I have mixed feelings about accepting comments on this blog. In my darker moments I feel like I should just close down commenting, because the comments add so little value to this site, but cost me some housekeeping time. Almost all incoming comments are spam—these are automatically discarded. Of the few that get through the filters, most are childish vandalism (which I remove one by one), there are a few relevant contributions, and a tiny proportion that I find interesting and diverting. I do find it odd which posts attract the comments. The winner is a piece about my interest in obsolete editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with 227 comments.
My 16 April 2002 post about animal glue has also been popular with the commentariat. Until yesterday 79 comments had made it through the filters, mostly from manufacturers seeking markets for their products.
Today I was cheered up by the 80th comment, left by a manufacturer in Malaysia who was offering something new: Halal gelatin. Well, I wasn’t expecting that!
»more»‘Marking time’ as a diagram
My sincere thanks to Marcel Salathe for his websites as graphs applet. I used it to make this beautiful diagram of the HTML tags within the Marking time index page.
The left side of the diagram represents the main content of the page—six blog posts, each made up of a cluster of links and images contained in divs.
The right side represents the right column of the page, with a dense cluster of blue dots (top-right) to signify the monthly archive links. The other dense cluster of blue and orange dots (bottom-right) signifies the subject archive links. The little cluster of yellow dots (far right) signifies the search form.
»more»Google destinations
Whenever anyone follows a link to a page on this website, my referrer log records where they came from. Most of my visitors come from Google searches, and the log shows the terms they were searching for.
It’s fascinating to see what people are looking for (and what they find on my site). During the past week the most popular search was sam sloan, which brought five people to a page about a noteworthy ratbag. The Google search put a link to my page at number 10, right at the end of the page.
»more»Six special places
I have just added websites for the months of July to December to my collection of special places.
»more»Placeholder
Actually posted on 7 February 2005.
Until I posted this, there was nothing here for the month of July 2004. That was the month I came back from a New Zealand sabbatical and I was a bit busy. But having a missing month in the monthly archive just looked odd, and I had to fix it. So, here is a dose of lorem ipsum.
»more»Telling tales: the poster
I have made a poster for the telling tales conference, to illustrate the points I raised yesterday. Its a bunch of pages from this site displayed as if in open browser windows, lined up to speak for themselves.
»more»Telling tales on the web
I’m going to the Australia ICOMOS Telling tales: interpretation in the conservation and design process conference in Sydney.
Conference-goers are invited to bring posters on the theme of innovative concepts and media to communicate heritage meanings. This got me thinking about the ways I use this website to tell stories about people and places, and what makes it a good medium.
»more»Life, documented
An email from Miles Hochstein: Enjoyed your reverse chronological autobio… and listed it here: It’s a little different from the others, but I liked your thoroughness and graphics. Well thanks Miles, I liked yours too.
Google highlights
I have added bells and whistles to this website: Dean Allen’s nifty Google Hilite. Now, when you come here from a Google search, your search terms will be highlighted on my page. To see it in action, search Google.com for dean allen porridge. Thanks Dean, that’s brilliant!
A collection of cartes-de-visite
Instead of sitting in a rustic chair in the company of birds I have spent a little time scanning Queensland carte-de-visite photographs so you can see them here.
»more»First birthday
I began marking time on this day a year ago. I give thanks for the protection of Thomas, patron saint of architects. We need a patron saint for bloggers.
Movable Type
Starting with the chilli peppers a few days ago, Marking time is coming to your screen via Movable Type instead of Blogger.
»more»New web host, again
So far, so good. My new host is page-zone.com, a small hosting outfit in Ohio, USA. The transition has been remarkably smooth. I had excellent service from my previous host, webcentral.com.au, but when they sent me heavy bills for excess storage and data transfer I looked for better value.
»more»New web host
If you can see this message, it’s coming from a server in Atlanta, Georgia. If you can’t see it, you won’t know what you are missing.
»more»Redesign
I have rearranged this page, to test some ideas for reworking the whole site. In the new scheme every page has a right hand column, under the logo, containing navigation links (with a breadcrumb trail) and a search form. Yes please, some feedback would be useful.
Post a comment?
Thanks to Hossein Sharifi of rateyourmusic.com you can now leave comments here. It’s one of the terrific free web services I use for this site.
Update: Since changing over to Movable type (which has comments built-in) I have stopped using the YACCS commenting system.
Another update: I have removed the comment forms.
Testing
Testing the changeover to Blogger Pro. Yes, that worked. Thanks Ev.
Readable text (again)
Jeffrey Zeldman has just argued the case for specifying web type in pixels, in A list apart: fear of style sheets 4. He says only two things always work: (1) Use pixels (not points, not ems, not percentages, not keywords) to specify your font sizes. Or: (2) Use nothing. He makes some good points, but he doesn’t convince me altogether.
»more»Readable text
I wrote to Andy Crewdson in April to thank him for the enjoyment I’d had from lines and splines, his typography weblog.
»more»Anne Donald, this is for you
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetaur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum Et harumd und lookum like Greek to me, dereud facilis est er expedit distinct. Nam liber te conscient to factor tum poen legum odioque civiuda.
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