This week has been absolutely great. I received a lot of good news, had friends over for dinner, got a lot done at work, played LEGO Rock Band… And now I’m ready for a weekend of working for myself.

My first task this weekend is to get the tea@elevensies site up and running. It’s taken too long and I feel bad. But I did have a rough stretch the past six months or so that deterred me from getting it all wrapped up — still, not a good excuse. This weekend is the weekend, however, to bust out this site for Ashley and Char. And then probably see what Ash wants to change (she apparently is over her design now). But at least it will be another project down.

The second issue I’m going to try to wrap up is this site. I’ve got most of a new design mocked up and sitting in Photoshop, just waiting for me to bring it to life in HTML5 and CSS3. So this site will change in the near future. And for the better, I think.

Third, I need get started on redesigning Jessica’s blog. Her new branding is amazing and I want to get it up and running for her, as well as a complete graphics package for her Etsy shop.

It is nice to have some time to work on personal design and coding. Stress is gone, and that goes a long way toward the proper motivation in these sorts of situations. Things are exciting!

Modern Linguist is a WordPress template designed with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) participants in mind.  Based partially on Chris Coyier’s beautiful WPTypo theme, Modern Linguist is an all-typographic theme created with easy reading in mind.

The theme has several pretty cool things built in. First off, it’s custom options allow integration with the NaNoWriMo.org word count API, providing dynamic and automatic word count updates pulled directly from the user’s NaNoWriMo profile. The user enters their ID number and that’s it, instant word count updates.

The options page also provides space to enter in a story synopsis and the option to display that text on the front page of the WordPress site. Read the rest of this entry »

ATTN: Those who have read/are planning to read my novel this year:

Oh some things have changed. Yes, yes they have.

When I thought about how messy the whole noveling on my blog process was last year, I made a rash decision. A decision with so little thought put into it that it is awesome. Instead of noveling my progress here, I have set up a completely new site with a completely new theme with awesome features.

All NaNoWriMo noveling will take place here: nanowrimo.thegoodmanblog.com.

Oh but that’s not all. I have built an entire WordPress template especially for National Novel Writing Month – and more specifically for my fellow WriMos that post to WordPress.

The new theme is called Modern Linguist and is based on Chris Coyier’s WPTypo theme, though with some decidedly drastic alterations. Notably, the theme has these amazing features:

• Built-in word counts pulled from the NaNoWriMo API (as soon as it’s activated for 2009, anyway)
• Clean, minimal interface. Not widgetized as to keep it focused on your novel(s)
• Choose-your-own Font Style with 8 (eight!) different typefaces
• Width optimized for online reading
• Typography based – no images in the template by default
• Optional Synopsis display on the front page
• Yearly category navigation (for easy novel separation)
• Special displays for registered/logged-in users

It’ll not only be a better experience for readers, but also for the person doing the noveling.

I’m looking at a launch date of 30 October, just in time for NaNoWriMo (which starts on the first of November). If you’re interested in using the template, let me know in the comments and I’ll make sure answer your questions and email the theme to you when it’s done!

For all of you that had an account here on my blog, that’s all been moved over to: http://nanowrimo.thegoodmanblog.com – you can login with your same credentials and should be able to read last year’s novel still. If you have issues, shoot me an email.

If any of you check out the new template, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

And for those of you who have no idea what I’ve been talking about, read this post.

This week has been absolutely nuts. I’m hoping I’m not heading toward burnout at work. I’m trying not to. It’s become super important for me to protect my time, otherwise I wouldn’t get anything done.

After a long day of talking to people and trying to explain to them what exactly it takes to provide them with the web stuff they are asking for, I come home and work on freelance stuff. The good part about that is that I should have a new project premiering later this week after a a couple months of work (sporadic, of course).

I have another WordPress template coming out in a couple of weeks. In fact, I completely redesigned said template because I wasn’t happy with the previous one.

Also found out at the beginning of the week I’ve got about $1300 worth of car repairs I need to take care of. Great. I need some more freelance jobs to pay for the fixes.

Couple other exciting things coming up including National Novel Writing Month in November. If you’re participating in NaNoWriMO, make sure you add me as a writing buddy!

These are the slides for my week 2 class. It’s all about stylesheets and how to use them this week.

I’ll use these slides during my class on 07 September 2009.

Wow. It’s already been a busy week.

We released the new Athletics site at work that I have been developing for the last few months. That was Monday. I have gotten far fewer comments than I expected. And no news is good news as far as I’m concerned. Overall I’m pretty happy with it. Everything at work just seems to overwhelm me right now, so it’s good to have a major project out of the way. Check it out if you want: http://www.gcpanthers.com

I did a project for Randall a couple week ago. I’m only going to say this: I coded the design as a WordPress template in about 2.5 hours.

I’ve got a few projects on deck now (freelance speaking). One of those is a new WP template for a friend from back home. It’s a fun project. And I feel kind of bad because it’s not going to take that long to code, I just haven’t had much time the last few weeks what with work and preparing for my class. But it’s coming in the next couple of weeks. She’s got a really great blog and I’m excited to be a part of getting this design out for her. Check out tea@elevensies »

I start my first bout with teaching college students on Monday evening. I’m really excited about it, but have a bunch of work to do. I need to put together a better keynote presentation and finish up the first assessment for them. I need to get a feel for what they already know about web design. So I’m going to “test” them the first evening. They’ll get points just for taking the assessment, no matter what they know or don’t know. So hopefully the students will forgive me for a test during the first class.

If you’re interested, I could still use help creating questions for that initial test. Check out my previous post and leave the question you think I should ask.

In a couple of weeks I will making my initial foray into college-level teaching. Last week I signed my first adjunct contract to teach Web Page Design to a group of Sophomores through Seniors. I am really excited about this job, to tell the truth. I think it’ll be a lot of fun and a good experience for me as a designer.

The class is once a week on Monday evenings for three hours. It’s an introductory web design class, so I’ll be teaching the most basic of XHTML and CSS. But I am hoping that this group of Digital Media students will catch on quickly enough that we can really get into the cool stuff.

Beyond markup and stylesheets I will be teaching them some design. Some actual design. Because I think that’s part of what the class has been lacking (from the students I’ve known in previous classes). The students in my class will be following good design blogs and hopefully learning some trends.

As a new teacher I think I’m lucky to have such great online resources available, in the form of so many design blogs.

Is there anything specific you would want to learn in a class like this if, of course, you were taking it? I’d be interested to know what you think is important.

Wow. What a couple of weeks it’s been.

First, we launched the new site at work. And overall the response was good, until it got bad. So my “team” and I had to hustle to get more content up and certain features working. There was a lot more drama than that, and if you work in Higher Education you’ll understand the true weight of that statement. But in the end, it’s up and we’re really close to being content complete. Once that happens we can put our focus on developing features that are on deck. Check out the site here.

That’s taken up the bulk of my life. But, with the stress and all, I managed to take a day off in the middle of it for some sweet mental respite. Jess and I went to Six Flags St Louis (I got cheap tickets over Twitter) and had a great time. It’s a small park but has some fun coasters. It seemed kind of like a miniature Magic Mountain (SoCal). My favourite Six Flags coaster, Batman: The Ride, has a version at St Louis — in fact, it seems to have all the same features, it’s just slower and smaller and shorter. Six Flags St Louis also has a ride called Ninja (not the same as the Magic Mountain Ninja) which is a miniature Viper. Same elements just on a smaller scale. It’s also, again, slower but just as jerky and rough as Viper. Overall we had a great time though and even were able to go get me a new pair of trousers for work as well as a new polo shirt.

It was a great break for me and left me a bit more energized and ready to get back into the site.

This weekend — a long weekend due to Independence Day — we’ve been trying to relax a bit. I got a haircut and shaved my beard today. The results:

Shaved and Cut

And I’m happy with it this time. Figured, my hair is short enough, it’s effing hot outside… might as well shave the beard. So I did. Last time I wasn’t so happy with the shave.

I made chicken tacos for dinner and we are watching Leatherheads. I also have been working on a new design for a church I’m working with here in town. You can take a look at their current site and then look at what I’m putting together and make your judgement. So far I think I’m pretty happy with the new design. And I think they will be too.

The goal is to get the design done this weekend and to start the coding for the site. Huzzah.

And for the Fourth we are going to hang out with some friends and watch the fireworks in St Louis. Should be a lot of fun.

What have you been up to? Anything fun? Any good barbecues planned?

I didn’t have an incredibly great week last week. It started out pretty good but got increasingly poor as the days went on. This weekend was a blessing of a break. Even though we did a lot of driving I was still able to get away from here and that was good.

Saturday we drove to Poplar Bluff in Southern Missouri for my friend Ryan’s wedding. It was a 3 1/2 hour drive, but entirely worth it to see him get married. I also got to see my good friend Rod who lives on the East Coast now.

And we slept in. That was really nice. Today we went to the bookstore and I picked up Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue which I’ve been eyeing for a while. I’m excited to start reading it tonight before bed. I think it’s going to be really interesting.

But I am not excited to have work tomorrow. I need a break. I need an extended vacation. I need some time to recover. I haven’t had any time away from work since Christmas and I am definitely starting to feel the effects. I was going to take Jessica to Six Flags last week but didn’t feel I was able to after some things that happened at work and with Kevin taking Friday off. So hopefully I will be able to work out a long weekend this week and we can take care of these cheap Six Flags tickets I have.

And today was Father’s Day. Looks like I will finally be starting on a design for my dad’s site which is good. He needs it and I have a good idea for what I’m going to do design-wise. Hopefully  I’ll have some more freelance coming my way in the near future.