Since this is the very first post in my very own blog in my very own domain, I feel some pressure to begin with something weighty. Something profound.
That’s one small step for a blog…
The quality of the User Experience is never strained…
Aqua is to Aero as Pee Wee’s Playhouse is to…
On second thought, rather than do that, here are a few words of explanation of what to expect in these pages. I consider drucker.ca to be my ‘professional blog’. It is to serve as my voice in the User Experience community. I also have a personal blog, called Loud Murmurs, which is where my daily life, the journey my wife and I have made, the observations and stories I wish to tell all go. If you’re curious about me as a human being, by all means, check it out.
Still here? Well then, you’ll (eventually) also find my resumé, a portfolio of some of my work and my ongoing thoughts and observations as they pertain to User Interfaces, Usability, Information Architecture and all of those related topics that often fall under the overall subject ‘User Experience’. This does not mean I’ll cease to be a human being. There will be funny bits, angry rants, and probably everything in between. I don’t think I could write a dry, academic blog. Well, maybe I could, but I wouldn’t like it, and neither would you.
So, in short, my effort to separate my personal and professional lives has ended up producing 2 blogs, on 2 different URLs.
And with that, I offer a test of the Audio player plugin:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
There, now that sounded good to me. How about you?
Oooooh, neat plugin! It has taken a long time for audio to become this easily accessible for users on the web. I hope it’s also easy on the producer side?
Congrats on the new weblog. Having read the first couple of “real” posts, I’d say you made the right choice by separating the professional from the personal.
I trust the ovation is from one of your performances?
Hi Jan,
Thanks for the kudos and following the link here…
The Audio Plugin is so slick, and even adds a tab to the WordPress Dashboard UI so that you can have it work for any audio file(s) you attach to a post, or have it act as an automatic UI to a podcast that parallels a blog. John Bollwitt (along with several other podcasters) uses it for his podcast Radiozoom.
The clapping came from a recital my parents gave years ago. They are retired but had long concert careers as soprano and pianist. I wanted a super-short test sound and the THX sound test would have been a little too much…
Dear David, from your blog, I wandered into your web site, and was interested to contact you. I looked at your Resume– no contact information. Blog– no way to contact you.
Portfolio– no contact information.
Finally I found this. I would have given up before I did, except that I started wanting to tell you that you may be graphical, but you miss the foundational requirements of decent hyperlinked communications by not giving people a chance to act on their impulses to contact the author on each page. People ask me why they need a communications expert. They say that no matter who they show their design for a web site or a poster or whatever, that person always criticizes the design and thinks he/she can improve it. So why bother ? Who do you trust ? Well, it amzes me how many people miss the obvious in search of finer details. Like people who publish a web site intended for their local community and forget that it goes out to the whole world and forget to say where they are located.
Anyway, I’m planning to move back to Canada for the third time. I’m also an expat US, but have not lived in the US since Bush was elected. ( I knew he would be doing these deeds in advance). I am also a composer, who has developed also a “real” career, as a business communications and development consultant. Wouldn’t mind to meet up when I arrive end of March. I will be flying in from Bangkok.
Hi Carl -
Thanks for your comment.
There are some reasons for the lack of contact information on this web site. First of all, there is the technological problem of SPAM harvesting. You may not be aware, but if you leave an email address or similar contact data on any page on a web site, it is almost immediately plucked by SPAM email harvesting programs. Once your address is in their databases, it is very difficult to stop the flood of unwanted emails. A previous address of mine has been inundated with SPAM to the point where it is barely usable. I did not want this same problem to arise with this brand new email address, so I am going slow and making sure that any contact information is effectively hidden from this software.
Also, this site is only about a couple of weeks old, and is far from ‘finished’. Your comment was on the very first test post! I have had time to put up my resumé (and the downloadable MS Word version has all the contact info you would need) but not my portfolio. So this is kind of like arriving at a just-finished building and noting that there are missing numbers on the mailboxes in the lobby. I do need to get to this, so thanks for the reminder.
However, there is a way of making first contact with me, which is this comment system. The fact that I got your comment (and your email, which, as the form says, is not published) is some proof of that. If that feature is not clear enough, I’ll have to revisit the design.
At any rate, thanks for taking the time to look around and make contact. I’ll look forward to meeting you when you arrive in a month or so.