For those of you who have been reading my blog from the beginning, you know it has been sort of an experiment for me in regards to relating my thoughts and designs to people both within and out of the architecture field.  Now that the site is over six months old, I thought it time to reflect on its successes and failures.

As far as giving me a public outlet for my thoughts, it has certainly been successful. Those who have read it seem to have a much better understanding of my interests within my field, even sending me articles and other items they feel I would enjoy.  I am especially pleased by the interest it has aroused in those around me who have little architectural or design background.

On a less successful note, the blog is not nearly as well read as I would have thought I could achieve, and I am somewhat at a loss as to how to expand its readership at this point.  The site is also not visited outside of potential employers, school colleagues, family, and friends.  However, I feel these particular goals are much more long-term and of much less importance than improving my writing skills and supplementing my visual portfolio with written thought process.  Since I feel my writing has greatly improved (along with my day-to-day speaking abilities) and this supplemental written material has been very  much of interest in my recent interviews with potential employers, this blog is therefore a success.

The online portfolio has acted as a great introduction to potential employers, though I have found it difficult to discuss projects over a computer monitor.   I have had to also create a tangible hard copy version to pour over in interviews.  It simply seems to be more comfortable for all involved, surprisingly myself included.  I imagine this would hold true if pitching yourself in person to a client as well.  So saving paper has not been achieved, although this site’s role as a paperless introduction has been a resounding success.

Thus far this website has garnered me one unsought job interview, a long-term goal which I was delighted to have achieved so early.  It didn’t work out due to location and timing issues, but it was nonetheless extremely encouraging.  I have no doubt this website is and will continue to be very beneficial to me, and therefore a very good, if slightly time-consuming, venture on my part.

Thank you to those who have been supportive of my experiment here.  I do plan to continue it well into the future.  I think it will always be a fabulous place for me to “play” and “think,” especially as I enter the much more serious real world of architecture.  I hope you continue to read and give me feedback, I really do love it.

Recently I was perusing the online blog world and I came across a feature that I plan to install on this site. It’s called FeedBurner. This free online service allows people to subscribe to my blog via email. It also provides me with information such as how many subscribers I have, where they come from, and what they are looking at on my site. All sorts of information that will help me make this site something great and wonderful, hopefully. It also it will help my readers keep up with my thoughts in an incredibly easy way. By subscribing (see box on right), you will receive an email whenever I post a new entry. It’s just that easy.

I plan to post about once a week, on the subjects you see listed to your right. If you do subscribe, please remember to come back and comment. I want this blog to partly be about discussion, so comments are important!

Being a Blogger is much more difficult than I imagined it would be. Particularly when you are trying to go at it in an in-depth level such as what I have attempted this summer, and actually write the code and customize a site to my particular desires. I am learning that although code may be English-based, I still have essentially learned three new languages this summer(html, css, php). And as all my initiatives have been self-taught and motivated, I have to add that this course has kept my room the cleanest it has been in years, and my body in the best shape of my life. I highly recommend both outlets as fantastic frustration-relievers/ procrastination initiatives.

So I’ve finally got this part of the site up and running, after an entire summer of mainly sifting through code manuals and running into many, many dead ends. For those wondering, I ended up running this blog off of Wordpress, an online software program that came free with the new web domain registration (hence why my site moved). I learned php coding and created my own Weblog template in which I am currently still ironing out a few kinks. This is not at all what I would have imagined myself doing with this website originally, but it has been an intriguing journey nonetheless. Despite all this work, I still feel as if I am an amatuer grasping at the edges of a entire world of knowledge. I do plan to continue to tweak and practice my new coding languages upon this blog, but it is time to switch directions and focus on my next step, the portfolio aspect of this site. I will be learning yet another code language for this one, Flash (aka fancy moving graphics). Also, I will still be writing one blog entry per week, so please continue to check back for those, and continue to give me feedback and suggestions on everything.

Thankyou for being supportive!

the admin.