stevenclark.com.au

It’s January and I’ve got a particularly involved two years in front of me with the Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a Specialisation in Journalism and Media Studies. So the natural thing to look at was where my time was disappearing into positive areas and which sink holes were stealing potentially valuable opportunities. The first step in realigning is reassessment – the second is restructuring.

On and off for the last four years I’ve maintained a links blog. It moved from the original pigpen over to nortypig about a year and a half ago. The links blog, when I’m working, often pays for itself as an archive of articles, techniques and fixes that I can summon up during work. However, work isn’t going to factor in very highly in the next two years of an MBA, particularly not web design or programming work. The entire point of the MBA is to shape shift me from a computer guy into a business guy. I’m not sure where I lost my zeal for web design but it was somewhere between working with abusive designers unwilling to take anything on board without personal implosion and the people who phone with big ideas and bigger promises that wind up being some lonely ex-footy player living the IT legend in his head (world read-write-execute access on a Unix server is a WTF moment, for sure).

So, cutting through the crap, the Nortypig links blog is gone. In lost time I’d say it steals between 60 to 100 hours per month and is a point of perpetual procrastination. No excuses, I like to share. But that’s potentially 2 working weeks per month spent indulged in non-productive escapism. If I only read the articles I used to link to then it could mean a saving of 40 to 80 hours per month on my end. No brainer – Nortypig.com is now the photoblog Take a Walk in my Shoes: photography of Steven Clark.

The effort I’d usually put in to web design seems to have been moving into the realm of photography and design this summer. Escapism may be a part of that, but it’s also my enjoyment of learning and at being able to share something with my family (predominantly artists and designers of one ilk or another). I’m already dreaming of graduating to film cameras, I’m playing with an entry to my first mixed media fine arts competition, and I’ve scored another domain name entirely where I’ll be putting more serious images and work online – part portfolio and part fine art photography. More on that later. In Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody he asks the question about what makes a journalist or a photographer nowdays? That’s a good question.

I also enjoy writing immensely. My background is as a writer not as a web designer or as a photographer. I started writing a graphic novella titled World Harvest but life sort of jumped on me with a roller-coaster of domestic holiday expectation. It’s moving forward, slowly. I enjoy poetry and writing short stories – probably not to everyone’s taste – and that needs a home of it’s own somewhere as well. I plan to do more creative writing during the coming year (and thus less web design).

But I’m interested in web design and when you have a passion for something it’s got to come out like a big boiling pimple. This site is my poultice for web design and IT and business related issues. So it will continue into the indefinate next decade. However, sometimes less is more. When university goes back in late February posts here should drop back to a respectable 2 or 3 per week.

Anyway, if you’re looking for the photography it’s moved over to Nortypig.com and you can grab the Nortypig RSS feed for it if you want the updates. That’s no my reseller account with a lot more bandwidth. Apologies if it’s been an inconvenience – good luck with the new year.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 11:03 am and is filed under business, general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.