In: Projects

About me, this site and all the other crazy web stuff

You’ve probably noticed when you’re viewing general posts that you get some small snippets about me and this site.  Well this post will expand on that a little. If you’re interested read on.

About the Author

I am a British born ex-pat who currently lives in Los Angeles California with my beautiful wife.
I am both a graphic designer with experience in a number of fields; including web, print, illustration and marketing. And also a web coding expert with skills in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP.

I also – like you wouldn’t have noticed – have a healthy obsession with gaming, all things geek and politics.

Enough about me, lets talk about what I use this site for.

This site changes often and is sometimes broken

Why did i lead with that? Well this site serves two purposes; First and foremost it is my test bed. New things I’m producing will usually show up here for either test or feedback purposes and that’s why sometimes things are broken. To that end if it appears on this site feel free to comment on it.

Secondly this site acts as a folder for my thoughts/posts/stuff, collecting together links, images, posts, tweets and other random items I come across or happen to be researching. I guess it also has a third purpose which is to keep friends and family abreast of what I’m doing. But then my ego isn’t – yet – big enough to think anyone cares.

For a long time I used my portfolio as a test bed, which as you might of guessed isn’t the best idea if you are also trying to use that site for work generation. A few years ago I decided to setup paulanthonywest.com to take over that role. It makes sense for a portfolio of work to stay as a single design for at least a year – sometimes I’d change it every 3 months – whereas with a full-on test site I can mess with things left and right, test new ideas and generally break stuff.

Which brings me on to another good reason to separate portfolio space from randomness. Someone looking at my portfolio get’s exactly what they expect. To see my work.  I felt that cluttering my work with either a blog or feeds from sites like Twitter and Flickr actually diluted it’s effect. And when that effect is less work my way it really is detrimental.

Having a site where I can talk about politics, games and the other website projects I’m working on also enables me to generate traffic, not only for this site but for other projects like Deadly Furry Cute. You can’t rely on google alone, you never could. Make no mistake though I’m not in anyway a marketeer who’s just trying to pull you here to throw a load of links at you.  If I make a post about a project I’m working on it’ll explain why I’m working on that project or how I made it happen or work. If I post about games or politcs it’ll be an informed opinion or entertaining – I hope – in the least it will contain something free you can download for your own use.

Basically it comes down to this: If you visit any of my projects while visiting, this site is working for me. If you visit any of the other content, this site is working for you. Either way thank you for coming, you’re welcome back anytime.

Posted: Monday, September 1st, 2008
Tags: About, me, playground, testing, this-site