Easy Reader

While waiting for a large Photoshop file to save today, I decided to play around on Technorati for a little bit. When doing a search for my name, I stumbled upon a music show called After the Polka, based down in Tampa, Florida. Apparently, in observence of Valentine’s Day, they decided to play “Composition for a Relationship,” a song I “wrote” during the height of my interest in experimental and avant garde music while attending New College, in neighboring Sarasota. The song can be found on the 1996 CD New College - A Compilation and, though I’m not really that enamoured of the track, it was nice to take a little trip down memory lane. If you’re interested, you can download an MP3 of the show.

Well, after much debate and deep deliberation, I did it. I quit my job.

Why? Well, it was the confluence of a number of factors, some having to do with the work environment at Cronin and Company, others stemming from my desire to be my own boss, do more training/speaking engagements, and to write more. Mostly, though, I think I needed a change.

I had been working at Cronin for just over three years, both as a contractor and on staff. I was the lead developer in the Digital department and oversaw/had a hand in most of the work we put out. I’m proud of what we accomplished and I am happy to have set the tone for coding there (web standards, accessibility and all that jazz), but I had pretty much gone as far as I could there. I don’t have any interest in project management (I’m nowhere near that organized) and I had no interest in trying to unseat my boss to take over running the department (I find most meetings a waste of time… hallway discussions are much more productive).

I’m not much of a gambler, so shifting to full-time contracting was/is a little scarey for me. Luckily, the good folks at Bolt | Peters were gracious enough to offer me a soft landing. Starting Friday, I joined their staff, part-time, as Senior Web Developer and will be working on ethnio.com and the Ethnio application itself. I’m really excited about working with Nate, Mike, Julian and the rest of the B|P crew. I’m also a huge believer in Ethnio. I think it’s going to revolutionize the usability field.

In addition to my work with B|P, I’ll also be taking a lot more time to focus on my work through Easy Designs. We have a lot of interesting projects coming up—both client work and some stuff of our own—which we will be unveiling over the coming months. In fact, since the word started getting around on Friday, I’ve been swamped with phonecalls about doing new stuff. It’s great to have a lot of people interested in hiring me, but I wish they had projects which started a little later in the year.

I really got the teaching bug in 2005. Maybe it was spending so much time working with Molly on the WOW Web Design Tour and doing training sessions for the EPA and Gartner. I had such a blast spreading the gospel of web standards and seeing the lightbulbs go off above the heads of attendees. I suppose it’s not surprising given that I come from a family of teachers. My hope is that I will be able to do more speaking/training/etc. without the constraints of a day job.

Then there’s the writing end of things. Looking back at the past year, I’m amazed at how much I ended up getting out there. Articles just kept flowing out of me for some reason. Some were self-published, others ended up gracing the pages of Digital Web Magazine and A List Apart, the latter being where I also took the graciously offered position of Production Editor.

Book work was also in the cards for me as I offered my informal assistance/opinions to Jeremy on early drafts of his fantastic DOM Scripting tome and worked side-by-side with Jen Robbins and Derek Featherstone to completely revamp the 3rd Edition of Web Design in a Nutshell to bring it in-line with web standards and current best practices. The timeline was pretty tight, but I managed to bang out three chapters on CSS hacks, JavaScript, AJAX and the DOM in about 2 weeks of evenings and weekends. It’ll be coming out later this month and it’s been really exciting to have been a part of it. It was such a great experience, in fact, that I’m in the process of brainstorming a few titles of my own… but more on that later.

So here I am, making the move to the uncertain/exhilerating/terrifying/fantastic world of freelancing. I am glad I’m doing it and I really appreciate all of the words of encouragement I’ve gotten from friends and colleagues. The web community is truly that… a community. They are a close social safety net who look out for one another and I couldn’t hope to be a part of a better group of people. Many thanks to all of you and I hope I can be as much help if any of you ever decide to consider this leap yourselves.

PS - If you want my old job, it’s available.

Well, I’ve slowly begun the major task of selling off a lot of the CDs I own. At one point I had over 3,000 disks, but over the years I’d sold off quite a few and gotten it down to around 1,200 as of last year. Then began the major task of ripping them all to iTunes. 54 gigabytes later…

I sold off the majority of the pedestrian stuff to the local record shops, but I held on to the really good stuff to sell on Half.com and Amazon. This weekend, I made a solid dent in the list and was floored by how many CDs I have that are worth a bunch of money (being that they are out of print, imports, etc.). Some surprises:

• Shane MacGowan & The Popes - Rock and Roll Paddy EP was selling for $59.95-89.95;
• Sonic Youth (the self-titled EP on SST) was selling for $49.98-79.99;
• the original release of the Revenge of the Nerds soundtrack was selling for $89.99;
  
• The Chameleons UK - Strip was selling for $69.95; and
• The soundtrack to Psycho Beach Party was selling for nearly $50.

My Half.com shop is pretty packed with good stuff, most of which I kept pretty reasonable. My Amazon “z-Shop” has some interesting stuff in it as well (more of the import singles, etc.). For those interested in what’s out there:

• A slew of import singles from Ben Fold Five, Placebo, Portishead, Space and Skunk Anansie;
• some autographed disks from Goo Goo Dolls, Meat Beat Manifesto and Alec Empire (of Atari Teenage Riot); and
• assorted They Might Be Giants, Pixies, XTC, Komeda, and others.

There’s also a lot of miscellaneous exotica stuff like the Beat at Cinecitta CDs, Vampyros Lesbos, The Sound Gallery, etc. I love it all, but am trying to make room for a new office and need the shelf space.

If any of that is to your liking, enjoy, whether you buy from me or not. Also, I still have a lot of rare stuff I couldn’t find listings for on Half or Amazon. Do you know anywhere else I could look to sell them (apart form eBay… it takes way too long to list an item)?

Kel & I got back from our holiday in the UK late last week and we had a blast. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to hang with the Brit Pack as I was attacked by a pretty nasty bug when we got back in to London toward the end of our trip.

I have a mountain of email, but I am slowly wading my way through my inbox and wanted to say thanks for all the great feedback on the game. I also wanted to let you know that I’ve posted some of our holiday snaps up to Flickr for your perusal. The posts should be picking up a bit more now that I’m back and I’v also made the move ofer to WordPress 2.0, but am uncertain how I feel about TinyMCE. Like Molly, I feel it kinda gets in the way.

Anyway, I have to say that even though I’ve got a ton of work to do now (and a ton of blogs to catch up on) to make up for it, it was really nice to unplug a few weeks.

A fantastic new t-shirt from J!NX.