Feb 202010
 

My last post, written more than ten months ago, began with the words “It’s certainly been awhile, hasn’t it?” Never could I’ve imagined that those words would mark the start of my longest blogging silence by far since creating this site nearly half a decade earlier.

I’ll bet you all thought I fell off a glacier in Antarctica or something, but in fact I’ve been right here in Los Angeles for (almost) the entire time.

So what’s the deal?

Well, you might recall that the decision to return from China last February (instead of continuing South through Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand) was made to give myself a chance to catch up on a growing list of projects, both personal and professional. It’s that list that’s kept me here all these months, as one thing just seems to keep leading to another.

And although I still have no concrete plans for the next big adventure, I wanted to write to assure you that it’s never been my intention – and still isn’t – to leave this blog out to die. Nor is it my intention to get a regular desk job and abandon my adventuring ways. At least not yet, anyway. I’ve just been on hiatus.

For those who may be interested, I’ll write about some of the things I’ve been up to this past year in a separate post – but first I just wanted to point out the most obvious of the recent projects: a complete and total overhaul to this website! It’s finally Web 2.0 time for Justin-Klein.com πŸ™‚

Although I’ve put loads of time into this site over the years, it was originally started with absolutely zero knowledge of web programming. I managed to teach myself bit by bit as I went along, and although it eventually reached a point where I was satisfied with its functionality, I’ve never been particularly happy with the design. Let’s face it, I’m a programmer, not a designer.

But for someone who funds his life almost entirely through programming it is a bit embarrassing to have my name so strongly attached to a website that looks like it was designed in the early 80’s. I’ve just never had the time to really dig in and redesign everything from scratch. Until now.

Some of the finer details of what’s been changed are listed below, more for my personal reference than anything else – so feel free to skip them if you like. However, any insights, impressions, or bugs reports would be much appreciated – even if it’s something as simple as “I don’t think this banner’s color scheme works” or “such-and-such border is a few pixels off.”

I will briefly mention that this new version is slightly heavier on the javascript than before, and although it’s been tested to work fine on FF2, FF3, IE7, IE8, Opera and Safari, it is quite slow on IE6. Hopefully this doesn’t inconvenience too many readers…I figure 9 years is long enough to support an outdated browser that never really worked properly in the first place πŸ˜‰

So, hello again everyone – after ten long months of silence. I’d be interested to hear who of my original readers still even bothers checking in…and hopefully even those who don’t will drop by sooner or later, in time for my next big adventure which I’ve promised myself will commence well before this year’s out πŸ™‚

See Changes:

  18 Responses to “Justin-Klein.com 2.0”

  1. The new site looks great! Glad to see a break in the silence. Makes me think I should do the same on my blog.

  2. Thanks! πŸ˜€

    I never even knew about jamesvandyne.com actually – just lomohut (your old site?)

  3. Welcome back! I’m a new reader, but I’m looking forward to hearing your stories:)

  4. Well, your hiatus certainly has been difficult for those of us who do our vicarious living through you! The new layout looks fantastic – thank you for making it Safari-friendly. I’ll keep the occasional eye out for updates.

  5. Lis – Welcome! I Always love to hear from new readers, and at a first glance your blog looks pretty on-point with my lifestyle; interesting that you stumbled on my site, can I ask how you found me? πŸ™‚

    Dave: Haha well, as I said I unfortunately don’t have any new one-way tickets to brag about just *yet*…still, better late than never, right? πŸ˜›

  6. And thanks for all your help! You and Peder are by far the best bug-pointer-outers around πŸ™‚

  7. Yup! I found you through Google Alerts for lifestyle design and digital nomad. Good stuff.

  8. That’s crazy – I literally JUST added the terms “digital nomad” to the site a couple hours ago. This whole new design hasn’t even been up for half a day yet! Way to go, Google.

  9. Justin – Yea, it’s my old site. Closed it down about a year ago as I wanted to move to someplace with less history and more new car smell.

  10. I hear ya on the “website with a new car smell!” πŸ˜‰

  11. Been waiting for the εΎ©ζ΄» of this blog for a while! The new design looks great!

  12. Thanks! I’m so glad everyone likes it πŸ™‚

  13. The new design is so easy and pleasing to the eyes. Great work!

  14. Hi, Justin. Glad to see you are back. I just got my plane ticket for annual journey to Kobe Samba.

  15. Herb: Thanx – haha especially since I ripped the Suffusion theme off from you πŸ˜‰

    David: Glad to see you’re back too! You were actually one of the readers I was specifically wondering about (whether you’d return or not), since you’d been here since nearly the beginning πŸ™‚

  16. You can’t get rid of me that easily.

  17. Good! πŸ™‚ The adventures begin again in 3 days…I takeoff for Munich at 7am…

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