Happy Birthday!

Posted on 5th April, 2005 at 8:01pm by joel

If we completely ignore the fact that I’m writing this post at roughly 7:00pm on April 5th, then we can all celebrate the official (though rather “soft”) launching of joelschou.com as well as my birthday—both of which took place yesterday. I promised myself that I would put this forever-in-development website online on 4/4, whether it was done or not. And I did. And it isn’t even close. Whoops.

So I turned 24 years old yesterday. I’m not sure what that makes me in web designer (or artist) years, but I know it makes me “mid-twenties” in human years. Fortunately, my website is much, much younger than I am, as it is now a whopping 20 hours old. ‘Tis a baby. And, like any good baby, it has a lot of growing to do. You’ll discover that if you go and click on “about” or “contact”. It isn’t that I’m lazy, I just prioritize. And as of this past week or so, the most important things to get online all reside in the portfolio.

So, here is a short list of some of the things you can find on this very young, very immature website:

• Paintings › I’ve got [decent] digital pictures of a few of my paintings. Six to be exact. If anyone knows of a great way to scan slides, please let me know.
• Websites › Roughly a year ago I went through a “web standards revolution” within myself and have been exuberantly embracing valid, semantic XHTML/CSS web design and development. As of today, I’ve posted five such sites to the portfolio.
• A theme switcher (kind of) › In true designer form, I could not decide which theme to go with on the new site, so I went with both of them. The default is called “tate” and there is another called “capri.” The former is mostly finished, but the latter has some bugs and some many laziness problems.
• A journal! › You are reading it right now, of course, and over the past month or so, I’ve been posting on the test site so it wasn’t completely devoid of content upon launch. This will be my… seventh post. (Eighth if you count the automatic WordPress post.)
• Lots and lots of empty or missing pages › I told you, this is a work-in-progress that had to get online sooner or later or it would never be finished.
• Both ears › explained.

Here’s another short list of things to expect in the next week or two:

• Lots more portfolio pieces › I am going to be adding a bunch of printed pieces to the graphic design gallery and whenever I get those slides scanned, there will be more paintings, too.
• Portfolio explanations and statements › The paintings all have artist statements written already. The websites have detailed descriptions (in my head). I’ll be adding both to the portfolio pages.
• Bug fixes › for the most part, both “tate” and “capri” work great in Safari 1.2+ (my browser of choice), Firefox (Mac and Windows), Opera 7+ (Windows), and IE6+ (Windows). MacIE doesn’t like a few things on either theme, but they are not deal-breakers. I have not tested this in Opera pre-7, WinIE pre-6, or Firefox pre-.9 and don’t intend to. Here is a great article that I am throwing around to support my position on those browsers. Feel free to flame away.
• &#^$*%@&#$@!! › A wrap-up of my NCAA Tournament bracket and reaction to last night’s game.
• An honest-to-goodness webdev article › I have noticed some very interesting things about web browsers while putting this site together. I’ve got a few interesting bits brewing as a real article. I swear.
• Lots o’content in the other parts › The other sections will get filled in, I promise.
• More links › Yes, I realize the linklog is wimpy. I’m working on it. See my comment about priorities way at the top.

So there you have it. Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday to me! Happy Birthday to my website! Happy Birthday to me!

Filed under: meta, ramblings

12 Responses to “Happy Birthday!”

1. 1John Pennypacker sayeth:

   6th April, 2005 at 9:04am

   Happy Birthday to you! Though belated. And HB2your site! I know that the perfectionist in you wants it to be more, but I think it’s fantastic. Great job!

2. 2Shawn sayeth:

   6th April, 2005 at 9:45am

   vry nce

3. 3Max sayeth:

   6th April, 2005 at 8:04pm

   Wow. All I can say is “wow”. It’s amazing. Gorgeous design.

   Well, now that yours is up, I have no excuse to procrastinate working on mine…

4. 4Max sayeth:

   6th April, 2005 at 8:05pm

   Oh, and I like the “sayeth”.

5. 5Max sayeth:

   6th April, 2005 at 8:14pm

   Okay, this is going to be my last comment:
   I love the paintings! I especially like the music one (because I’m into music) and Waves.

   And why are so many of the sites you’ve designed related to dentistry?

6. 6AmyO sayeth:

   6th April, 2005 at 8:15pm

   Great work. I really like the blue and brown default theme. Then I switched to the green. And now I can’t say which I like better. They are both well done.

   And Happy Birthday.

7. 7joel sayeth:

   6th April, 2005 at 8:36pm

   Thanks Max, thanks AmyO, thanks Shawn and John. I ‘preciate it all.

   Max, the sites are all for dentistry because I’ve done them at work. Curtis Group is my current employer. We specialize in dental marketing. Hence, I do a lot of designing for dentists 🙂

8. 8Robin sayeth:

   7th April, 2005 at 3:28pm

   Happy birthday! I just checked out your website and I think it is great! Good luck in all your endeveors (sp?). Awesome portfolio!

9. 9Alyssa Allison sayeth:

   8th April, 2005 at 11:13pm

   Hello My Dear Friend . . . .
   Well first I must apologize for forgetting your b-day, but I won’t fully admit I forgot. What I will say is that I KNEW someones b-day was the beginning of April, and it just hit me yesterday that it was my good friend Joel Schou’s . . . . so here I have found myself exploring your web-site. I bet you are suprised I even found it! HA HA! Well, it is WONDERFUL — I can’t even say that I am suprised you have developed something so amazing, as I spent those many years with you in HS . . . . I merely expected something great from you . . . and here it is!!!! Congrats to you and your web-site and Happy B-DAY . . . I will continue the my LONG message through e-mail . . .

10. 10Matt N sayeth:

    9th April, 2005 at 3:06am

    Hey, I can leave a message here. I didn’t notice that right away. Then you went and mentioned something about it, and so I decided to check it out, and whatdya know, it works! Bravo.

11. 11Titania sayeth:

    14th April, 2005 at 4:01pm

    Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

    The way you use vertical and horizontal elements gives this site a truly unique feel. Not to mention the rest of it, which is also great ;). Some of the best work I’ve seen lately.

12. 12joelschou.com v3.0 › ?p=74 » HB2Me sayeth:

    4th April, 2006 at 4:25pm

    […] No, I guess not. I’ll just take this one in stride like the last one. Hm, now that I reread that post, I can see that I was far more ambitious in regards to this web site a year ago. Whoops. I guess I’m just getting to old for this […]