posted
Farmgirl: You have a good point. But I built that over a year and a half ago, and I've learned a lot since then.
(And besides, looking back, while it may be sloppy, my old portfolio site still has unity and gestalt. )
Posts: 353 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
1) No one is paying me to do it, so I don't take it seriously. I have not run any usability tests on my site, or made any attempt to keep it ADA-compliant.
2) Because I'm not taking it seriously, I can play around with it all I want. (I often do this completely behind the scenes; in the last year, I've installed two different CMS packages and three different image galleries, just to see how they all differed.)
3) Because it's a nice chance for me to indulge all those impulses I have to do something "quirky" and "nifty" and "creative" -- like a completely unfriendly, slow-loading imagemap splash page with unlabeled links, which in itself breaks around seven or eight fundamental rules of web design -- so that when I get the itch to make an icon that bounces or squeaks or something when someone mouses over it, I can do it on MY site and not inflict it on someone who paid me money.
4) So I can be all self-effacing when I talk about web design, and not have to even PRETEND that my personal website should be used as an example of professional work.
5) I'm really, really fond of Entre les trous de memoire, and haven't been able to bring myself to part with it over the last decade, which was when I scanned it in -- in eight parts -- from a crumpled poster I borrowed from an old girlfriend and stuck it on the web. It's deeply unnerving to think that the picture of me in that mirror is ten years old now. For the same reason, I have a Goth page with revolving skulls and dripping blood bars -- remember the age of the animated horizontal dividing bar? -- still on the site, although it's well-hidden.
posted
I am responding here primarily to the initial post, the "eye-crushingly ugly" comment by Tom Davidson.
Let's see ... the site is still under construction. Do you know which elements are place-holders? I didn't think so.
The art was commissioned BY ME following MY INSTRUCTIONS. I like it. And guess what - I own it, I'm paying for it, and I'm the only one who has a vote.
Don't like the fact that the pictures depict scenes from my work? Here's another fact you seem to forget: I can use images depicting my work without getting any author's permission. To me, it's free. Wow! Cheaper magazine! And guess what else: I'm proud of those stories. Isaac Asimov's magazine had his picture on every single cover. In my magazine, I have wonderful, imaginative cut-paper depictions of scenes from my stories. So at least you don't have to look at my face.
But getting back to Tom Davidson, let me ask you your motive in starting a thread to hatchet my new magazine to death before it even launches. At present I can only speculate on what twisted hunger inside you makes you come to my site and regularly attack me and all my works. Do you wish to make sure that my magazine is a failure? Encourage people to treat it with contempt even before we've launched it? Deprive the writers and illustrators of another market for their stories? What exactly is your plan?
If you really wanted it to be a success, you wouldn't trash it before it even opens. You wouldn't take special pains to create negative buzz. And it's hard to imagine anyone with a shred of courtesy using the magazine owner's own site to try to kill his magazine project before it's even born.
If you hate me and everything I do and everything I believe in so very much, Tom, as you have made abundantly clear in every post I've seen from you, despite pretenses to like this or that little bit here and there, why do you keep coming to my site? Stay away, and you don't have to look at anything so offensive again.
Meanwhile, I will try to struggle manfully on and create a magazine that pleases ME (the only standard that matters when I'm paying for it) and then hope I'll find readers who will forgive all my ghastly mistakes and still buy the magazine and read the stories and enjoy the illustrations.
But maybe you'll win, Tom. I'll give this a year, and if it's a failure, I might well have lost about $30,000 in payments to writers and artists and time spent by salaried employees. But there's this compensation at least. I'll know one person who'll be happy to see such an "eye-crushingly ugly" thing removed from the net. Someone will be happy if I fail. Makes me feel warm all over.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote: But I'm a bit concerned that the page, as it now stands, hovers at the very edge of eye-crushingly ugly -- which is a shame, because I'd really like to see it be a success.
posted
Yes, I did. It's hard to fathom the soul-crushing hypocrisy of such a ludicrous oxymoron as the one you quoted.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
| IP: Logged |
Topic Closed
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
But I built that over a year and a half ago, and I've learned a lot since then.
![[Blushing]](graemlins/blushing.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
