I had a few things I wanted to accomplish:

Setting Flash Aside Momentarily

I’ve built plenty of sites, apps, and other widgets in Flash/ActionScript. And while there are certainly a multitude of ways I could present my online self in Flash, I decided it was time for a new challenge. Combine that with the fact that I wanted an iPhone/iPad friendly site and I decided to jump in to jQuery as my main development framework for the presentation layer. I’ll be keeping my portfolio (once that gets a facelift) in Flash, however, so that my AS3 skills are properly represented here.

Unifying Feeds

Partially inspired by Mr. Daly‘s Flavors.me built site, I realized it was time to start unifying all of my disparate feeds. I use Twitter and this blog for my ramblings, Flickr, Tweetphoto, and TwitPic for my image sharing, LinkedIn for my resumé, and a slew of location based services for my geotracking. Isn’t it about time these all lived in one place. Besides, the site IS called Barely Concealed Narcissism. Maybe there should be more about ME.

Updated Design

I’m not really a designer. I like to think I have some basic design chops, but nothing compared to the art directors I’ve worked with over the years. In a few weeks I begin working towards an MFA in Communication Design, but the focus there will be more theoretical than practical. That said, I wanted to keep the look and feel simple and clean, inspired by my latest obsession (to which Mr. Norton can attest), 60′s style screen prints.

I admit that it took a few weeks of thinking to figure out what this new site would be. It actually came to me in the shower one morning. How’s that for a too-much-information-cliché? I sat down that weekend (the wife was out of town) and cranked this out in 48 hours or so. It took a few hours of tweaks afterwards to clean it up (more on that soon), but here we are.

I’d love to hear your reactions. Naturally, since this is a site about me, I plan on sharing my thoughts. In the interest of attention spans, I’ll take care of that in Part 2.

The bad news is that this site is about me.

This is a place for me to gather and showcase what I do, be it a new site launch, a new video, a solution to a problem I find worth sharing, or just general flotsam and jetsam.

But one cannot provide such miscellany without a hook (or else you have hook-less miscellany, about as good as cheese-less ravioli). As such, I will be establishing a new challenge for myself every month, each revolving around a “self” term:

January: Self Improvement
February: Self Sacrifice
March: Self Preservation
April: Self Affliction
May: Self Indulgence
June: Self Assessment
July: Self Interest
August: Self Contradiction
September: Self Correction
October: Self Control
November: Self Defense
December: Self Reflection

This doesn’t mean every post in that month will revolve around the theme, but hopefully it help keep me in check a bit.

So that’s that. If you have any questions (or recommendations on monthly challenge themes), be sure to bug me here.