Some of you may have noticed, but I updated my site again last week. This is just another step towards how I see it ending up (I still have something I want to add, but haven’t had the time yet). Anyways, last time I redesigned my site I added some Flash to it–this time I made my whole site in Flash, but gave the option to go to either the interactive (Flash) site or the simple (HTML) site.

The theme of this new site is basically a little tour of my home…not my real home, but close enough. First you enter the front door and you see my work desk, the refrigerator/kitchen, and the nightstand. The desk is where most of my site information is located (portfolio, about me, contact, etc.). The other two places have some random fun stuff that you can look at and interact with.

Leave me a comment with your thoughts. Thanks.

Here’s an interesting story on how I got a steady flow of visitors to my site from an unexpected source.

So last year sometime I was just messing around in Photoshop and drew up a few images. One of the images I made was an abstract background. On the background I just made a bunch of different circles and rounded squares with inner glows and outer glows and then I added a few squiggly strands and called it good. I posted it along with a couple of other Photoshop images on my website. Then I went into Webmaster Tools in my Google account and enabled the enhanced image search. And then I didn’t think much of it.

But then out of nowhere I started getting all these visitors to my website. I looked in my analytics to see where they were coming from and they were all coming from Google’s image search. People were searching for “abstract background” and my image was the #1 result (actually it wasn’t #1 at first, but it was on the first page and soon became #1). I don’t know how it happened exactly, but it was interesting to see visitors finding my site that way.

Now all that has come to an end. I changed domains a little bit ago and thought everything was good because I did a 301 Redirect from my old domain to my new one. People searching for “abstract background” and clicking on the link to my old domain were just being redirected to my new site and everything seemed fine. However, last week the steady flow of visitors looking for my abstract background disappeared. The redirect must not have done the trick after all and Google must have taken my image out as it realized it was on a different site because I can’t even find it in the search results anymore.

Well, it was fun while it lasted and I hope some people got to enjoy my background. You can go to my other page to see the background and other Photoshop and Flash designs.

Welcome to my site. I’ve been wanting to redesign my website for a while now, but with school, computer crashes, being sick, etc., it’s been a long time coming. Now that it’s done I want to share some of my thoughts and motivations behind it.

When I think of websites that I like, the ones I really remember are the creative and interactive ones. Some examples are the sites on the FWA website. My previous site had a clean design, but it didn’t have any interactivity or extra creativity to it. For this site I wanted to integrate some Flash animations and make the site more fun and interesting. This site is definitely a step up from my last one, and I hope you like it.

I also wanted to put some things that interest me into the animations. Let me explain the animation on my homepage. Most of the items in the animation link to other areas of the site, but some of the items are in there just to show some things about me and the things I’m interested in.

There are three pictures in the animation. One is me with my brother snowboarding. Another is me in front of a Buddhist monastary in Mongolia. The third is me and my wife when we got married (you probably guessed that).

The book on the right is a book by Brandon Sanderson called Elantris. This gives you an idea of what I’ve been reading lately. Brandon Sanderson is a very good Fantasy/Science Fiction writer. I’ve also read his series, Mistborn, and it’s the best I’ve read since Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

There are also a couple of things in the animation that aren’t noticed at first glance. In case you haven’t explored it fully, the light switch can be turned on and off. Also, try mousing over the ball of light on the Elantris cover if you haven’t already.

Anyways, I’ll probably be changing the items in the animation over time just to keep things interesting.

Well, thanks for reading and I hope you like the site. Feel free to use the contact page or to leave a comment here with what you think.