(no subject)

Well, the allergies are under control. More story ideas are bubbling around--and still failing to get written. And, I'm wondering if I need to make a "spiffier" demo website for resumés that I'm sending out. There's a fair amount of buzzword-compliant work on this website if you know what you're looking for: the journal system is written in PHP and is, at least for me, as easy to use as something like LiveJournal (I just drop a new text file in a weblog/ directory and poof, new journal entry). Most of the site uses style sheets extensively. And the "web design" section shows off some work with XHTML, PHP content management and Perl/CGI form processing. But there aren't any graphic intensive sites with too much Javascript here, and I've only played with Flash. I don't particularly like Flash in most cases, because it generally hampers people who are going to websites to find information quickly. My web designs are clean, very responsive and ultimately more usable than the typical ad agency job that uses graphics for all text, Javascript rollovers for all buttons and huge animations on the front page. But, if you've been trained to equate "graphics everywhere" with "professional," my stuff doesn't look that impressive.

Speaking of LiveJournal, I'm finding more friends and acquaintances popping up there. I'm beginning to wonder if Maggie and I are the only people left on the web using our own code for journals. Granted, LJ's system does allow BBS-like conversation to spring up, something my simple system doesn't. That'd be kind of interesting. I could move this journal to LJ; or, I could rewrite it to use an actual database back end and put in a reply system. Scary thought.

I sent out another resumé to UC Berkeley earlier this week. Amusingly, one of the people I "refound" on LiveJournal is Scot Hacker, author of The BeOS Bible and the editor who accepted my only published technical article (which thanks to the immolation of BeNews is no longer available on the web). Just a couple months ago he got a full-time job as... a webmaster at UC Berkeley.

As I've commented before (I think), I'm finding myself drawn more toward the public sector than private. Every time I do something cool around Tampa, I think how difficult it'd be to leave this place. Unfortunately it's remaining difficult for me to find public sector jobs of any interest that are in this area. Federal jobs that I'm qualified for and have interest in rarely show up anywhere in the state, and checks of advertised local, state and university positions are coming up mighty lean. There aren't any national labs or "high tech" universities south of Atlanta. (The University of South Florida tries, but, well.) Granted, it's toward the end of the year and agents get budgets annually; it's possible there'll be new hiring rounds in January.

Or, not until summer....