I launched my new port­fo­lio to show­case some of the work I have accom­plished over the past year. I tech­ni­cally launched it at the begin­ning of the week, but didn’t add the last item until today. I put it on a sep­a­rate domain so that I can brand myself and have a site focused on my work, plus any vis­i­tors would not be dis­tracted by my blog posts.

It’s built using Word­Press, but you wouldn’t know it by look­ing at it. This way I can add and remove sam­ples eas­ily. I opted to go with a (mostly) single-page site. There’s a sec­ond page for a con­tact form. jQuery and var­i­ous plu­g­ins han­dle the dynamic fea­tures. I def­i­nitely pre­fer this over what I had before.

Feel free to check it out by click­ing the Port­fo­lio link above.

Some of the reg­u­lar read­ers of this blog might have noticed that the design has changed. When I orig­i­nally setup this blog, I of course chose one of the many ready-made themes avail­able for Word­Press. I set­tled on WP-Andreas01 and mod­i­fied it for a two-column lay­out, swapped out the header image, and adjusted the col­ors. It was clean, it was light, and it was min­i­mal­ist. Even­tu­ally I grew tired of it and wanted a dark theme, instead. I even­tu­ally set­tled on Never End­ing Dark­ness which again was clean and min­i­mal­ist. In the back of my mind, some­thing both­ered me even after I made the req­ui­site changes to the lay­out, col­ors, and graph­ics. I finally deter­mined that the design was cliché. So if I was to be happy with the design, it would have to be a design of my own mak­ing. This is a post-mortem analy­sis of that design.

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So yes­ter­day (Fri­day), my job and my part-time free­lance con­tract both ended at the same time. The pub­lisher I worked for finally suc­cumbed to the eco­nomic pres­sures of the credit freeze after hav­ing made a poor invest­ment. It’s sad too, because the com­pany was finally head­ing into the black after hav­ing a major dip in sales post-9/11. Unfor­tu­nately, the bank was threat­en­ing to call in the loan unless dras­tic mea­sures were taken to curb the spend­ing and to get some cash. So myself and another coworker were let go, and the com­pany will be liq­ui­dat­ing some assets.

Now, I’m just one among the many listed in those dis­mal unem­ploy­ment num­bers you hear dur­ing the evening news. Thank good­ness I got that part-time job to give me some cash to float on. Unfor­tu­nately, that means some of my planned pur­chases will be delayed. I’ll be spend­ing part of this week­end brush­ing up my resumé and read­ing about unem­ploy­ment claims.

I watch animé. That, Lego blocks, and video games are the three child­hood vices I never out­grew. It’s just that my hob­bies have matured along with me. I now pre­fer games that are rated M even though I still enjoy those that are rated E. I now pre­fer Tech­nic sets over LEGOLAND Space sets. I now pre­fer animé that deal with mature themes (e.g. Say­onara Zetsubou Sen­sei, Seirei no Moribito) over those that are juve­nile (Poke­mon). I wish more ani­mated shows in the US were more like those from Japan.

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