Living With a Nerd

I’ve decided to ditch the Pixel theme we have been using on the main site and on this blog since we moved over to Wordpress.  It has worked really well, but I’m just ready for something different.  Luckily, the same fella that wrote Pixel also has another theme out there that (I think) will work perfectly for our needs.  I’m going to give it a try here on the Blogs first, and if it seems to work well, I’ll end up installing it on the main site as well.  I think it will make the site easier to navigate, and also present the various postings in a much more attractive way. 

I’ve toyed with the idea of just wiping out this blog entirely and leaving only the main site, since this blog has only been updated on average once a month for the past six months or so.  Hmm…will have to think about that.

Things have been crazy around here lately.  Work has been consuming a large portion of my mental capacity, which is why there haven’t been any new articles in quite a while.  I’m going to put some serious time into writing this weekend, to get things back on track.  It’s been a relief not worrying about the website, but it’s time to bring things back to normal.  Starting Monday, our normal posting schedule will resume. 

With her tax return, Brittnie decided to pick up Guitar Hero 5 and an extra guitar for me.  I had only played Guitar Hero a couple of times before, and have never owned a rhythm game, just like Brittnie.  For once, we had a game where our skills were about equal.  In the 5 days since we got it, it’s pretty much all we’ve done at home.  We have both progressed fairly quickly, with myself already getting 95% on “Sweating Bullets” from Megadeth on medium, while Brittnie is getting quite comfortable playing bass for any song on medium (she always plays bass, I play guitar.)  It feels almost like I’m late to the party since I never really got into the whole rhythm game thing when it was big, but whatever…we are enjoying ourselves quite a lot.  The last time we gamed this much together every night in a row was right after we got our Wii.  She picked up World Tour two days ago because of all the classic rock on there, so that has been super fun.  I noticed that World Tour is easier than Guitar Hero 5, although the leap in graphics between World Tour and 5 is immense.  Haven’t unlocked the Tool songs yet, but we are actively working towards doing so.

Hopefully, I’ll get out to the movies this weekend and see either Wolfman or Shutter Island.  Look for a review in the coming days!

Traffic on the main site has positively exploded in the past week.  For the past four days, we have gotten over 120 visitors per day…for the last two days, we have been nearing the 200 mark per day.  Considering up to last week we were getting only 75-100 per week, this is obviously a vast improvement.

Unfortunately, having the main site do so well and requiring more attention has left me fishing for what to write about in this space…after all, what I would normally write about here in a couple hundred words, I now write about on the main page with a few hundred words and more pictures.

Here is a fairly recent graph showing the effect that the new Living With a Nerd layout has had (click for full size):

I use statcounter.com to keep track of visitors.  It works extremely well, and is entirely invisible to people viewing the website/blogs.  I might end up doing a weekly “visitation numbers” post…I know I’m always interested in how many visitors the websites that I visit are getting, so I think this would be a good way to connect to new readers.

Instead of redesigning Living With a Nerd, I decided to just move it to the same publishing software used for this blog.  I can now upload new articles easily no matter where I am, and the amount of time and effort required to do so has been greatly reduced.  In addition, the overall layout is much improved, and articles seem to be generally easier to read and manage.  We have lost the mid-90’s nostalgic feel, but I believe that what was nostalgic for us was part of the reason why no one was visiting the site.  We have only averaged between 75-100 visitors per week…however, since the redesign, we have been averaging between 30-50 visitors per day.  My eventual goal is around 250-300 per day.  While it would be awesome to become some huge thing, I would really prefer it if we managed to maintain a small but loyal group of readers.

Obviously, the quality of the articles and the frequency that they are posted makes a huge difference as well.  I’ve been working on not sounding like a pompous ass when I write (which, in my opinion, I have failed miserably so far).  I have some ideas for interesting articles, I just need to get them put together and up on the site.  Luckily, with the shift to the same publishing software as this blog, creating and uploading new articles is SUPER easy.  I do work full time and have interests which take up a fair amount of my non-work time, but I still want to make sure that there is at least ONE new post per day in there.  There is no way we will get the numbers we are looking for without keeping the content fresh and new.

I think once more articles are posted and there is more history for people to scroll through, more and more people will start coming here on a regular basis.  I’ve also started submitting the “good” articles to Stumbleupon, Digg, etc.  The amount of traffic we get from these submissions isn’t much, but there is definitely an increase in our overall numbers when social bookmarking sites are utilized.  Even though both the main site and these blogs are now using the same software, they will be kept seperate from each other.  Our blogs will remain as they are…a place for personal thoughts or experiences.  However, any movie reviews, opinions about games, etc. that you would normally see on this page, you will instead see on the main site.

Please spread the word about livingwithanerd.com, either by word of mouth, facebook/twitter, digg…any way that you can.  We really want to try to get an active community going, and we need your help to do so.  Also, if you have any suggestions for articles or topics for us to cover, you can reach me here: pojut@livingwithanerd.com  I am also on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pojut

Thanks!

Up until now, Living With a Nerd (excluding the blogs) has been entirely hard coded in notepad.  I believe this is part of the reason for the long delay in between each update…making sure everything lined up properly and was spaced evenly was an absolute nightmare.  I know there are many WYSIWYG editors out there, but I really wanted to hard code everything to fit in with the site’s nostalgia theme.

Well, no more.

I recently was given a copy of Frontpage 2003.  While the overall layout of Living With a Nerd is going to stay the same, it will become much easier to read and navigate.  Over the next week or so, I will be implementing some small tweaks that make things look and run a bit better.  You may encounter some screwy errors or out-of-whack tables in that time, so please bear with us.  The newest article currently posted was written by Brittnie, and although it is short, it marks the beginning of more frequent updates.

While I will definitely miss the challenge of hard-coding the website, using Frontpage instead of “the old fashioned way” should result in a much more fun place to visit.

I recently came to the conclusion that while our blog had a lovely minimalist look to it, navigating the various culture that we post about left much to be desired.  After a quick hop over to the Wordpress website, I decided on the “Pixel” theme.  It’s a fraction more cluttered than what we were using before, but it’s easier to find the oat clusters amongst the bran flakes.  While I wish the text was slightly larger, overall I’m rather impressed with it.  I’m especially happy that the author’s name is displayed prominently above each post, making it much easier to see who owns what.

The ability to view all of the topics that we post about splashed across the top of the page is a vast improvement, and the easily customized message at the top of the right column is an unexpected but welcome addition.

So, the new music project is coming along well.  I have completed two full tracks, am almost done with the third, and have the beginnings of the fourth completed.  The album, titled The Transient Unknown, is a spacey and trippy ambient album that will hopefully have nine tracks once completed.  I’m producing the entire album using nothing but an Axiom 25 MIDI controller, ReBirth 2.0.1, and Reason 4.0.1.  The Thor synth that is built into Reason 4 is PERFECT for doing ambient stuff, as long sweeping sounds are amazingly easy to program.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do once I finish off The Transient Unknown…I would love to do another ambient album, but I find ambient to be surprisingly difficult to create; trying to write a four minute song that has zero beat and is very cerebral that sounds different from the other 8 songs on the album that have zero beat and are very cerebral, while staying within the albums theme…well, you get the point.

In other news, I FINALLY found a way to convert videos in a way that maintains their quality, yet will play on my Creative Zen…and without using the crap software that came with the player.  I have ordered an 8 gig SD card, and intend to fill it to the brim with Internet/TV shows, movies, and stand up video.  Video looks pretty sweet on the Zen, despite the minuscule 320 x 240 resolution.

June is going to be a super busy month for me…I have about 8 articles waiting to be uploaded to the website, which I’m going to do slowly (so regular updates for the next couple of months, at least).  The music project is taking up a lot of my time right now, so that is where my focus is…but I intend to continue working on the site.

A long term goal is to work towards putting together a Living With a Nerd podcast, which will likely just be a mish mash of everything…from gaming, to movies, to music, to just general banter.  Equipment is more of a factor rather than time at this point, but a couple of decent USB microphones, a round table for everyone to sit at, and a couple of decent topics are all that I realistically need.  This is more of a “cool idea in the future” rather than a “dude let’s do this tomorrow” kind of thing.

Eh…update, stagnate, update, stagnate.  It seems to be a horrible pattern with me.  I know I’ve said it before, but I really am gonna try to keep up with this blog.  I really should…it’s a place for my thoughts and happenings (of which I have plenty) and I haven’t done anything with it in a while.

Recent news:  seriously getting back into music production.  I’ve done some stuff here and though, primarily for personal use, but I want to get back into it more than ever before.  With recent hardware (Axiom 25) and software (Reason 4) upgrades, this should be easier than ever.  I’ll post some stuff on here once I have some Internet-worthy tracks laid down.  Until then…

Well, between moving and a bunch of other things happening, this blog and website have gone stagnant (again.)  Hopefully, this will be the start of some new content.  Brittnie and I got engaged!  That’s right, Living With a Nerd has payed off for both of us:-)  No idea about when the wedding will be, but when I know I will post it up on here.

Since the last post that I made a few months ago, I’ve played through a number of games, many of which I will talk about in the next couple of days.  I’ll either expand on this post later today, or write a new one about some of the big games I’ve played since I last gave this site any lovin’.