When I started my website, CReimer's FPS Design & Portfolio, ten years ago on Geocities, it was supposed to show off my crazy talents as a video game designer when I was working as a QA tester at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari (same company, two different owners, multiple identity crises) for six years.  Working in the video game industry sucked the life out of me that being a video game designer went nowhere.

When my ISP could display web content from my Unix account home directory in 1999, I moved the website over, started honing my skills in HTML and later CSS to build a better web pages, and started posting personal observations on a irregular basis.  I moved the website to its own domain when my ISP offered CPanel web hosting five years ago.  Created a new website design using a PHP template and scripts, added pictures, reviews and other content, and eventually renamed the website as Once Upon An Albatross... after a Wildcat! BBS I ran back in 1995 before the Internet became popular.  Now it's time to make another big change.

Although what I been doing with the website is called blogging, I never accepted the term or embraced the technology.  My website has always been about teaching myself web technology and maintaining an on going programming project while learning computer programming at San Jose City College.  Being able to express myself was a side benefit.  That was then and the focus has now changed.

Since writing is a second full time job when I'm not working as a help desk support specialist to fix broken users and consoling hurt computers, and my five year goal is to become a full time writer, I no longer have the time to maintain the website as an extended programming project.  The website now has to show off my crazy talents as a writer, which means accepting the term and embracing the technology of blogging.

I started looking into content management systems that I could use as a replacement for my website.  A lot of coworkers mentioned Joomla!, and, after playing around with it for a few days, I decided to use that.  Picked up "Joomla! A User's Guide: Building A Succesful Joomla! Powered Website" by Barrie M. North from the bookstore, and spent an afternoon creating a bare bone Joomla! site with a postings for the new year.

Converting ten years of content will take a while.  My plan is to make the subsections available one at a time, and then clean up all the broken links in the old postings.  I'm hoping to wrap that up in a month or two.  Meanwhile, I'll continue to blog away and make changes where necessary to improve the new website.  A commenting system for the postings will be available soon.  (This was a feature that I wanted to program into the old website but didn't have the time to do so.)  I'm very interested in getting feedback from the 80+ readers who view my website every month, and I'm hoping to see something more literate than "wow ur fat" from the Slashdot crowd.  Later this year I might create a custom template design to replace the modified template I'm using now—if I have the time.