Hello World, My Name is Jim

Aaron gave me a [quick introduction](http://blog.panedia.com/2008/03/27/new-panedia-people-jim-whimpey/) yesterday but I want to expand on that a bit.

I’m the guy that does… lots of things. That’s why we’re having trouble giving me a title I can put on my business cards. I’m a web designer, web developer, programmer, [wordpress](http://wordpress.org) lover and wrangler, database designer, UI designer, tester, blogger, server admin and bug hunter, it’s hard to put a banner over all of that. For an example of what I’ve worked on so far there’s [Panedia’s Wallpaper website](http://wallpaper.panedia.com/) which I created from start to finish. There’s this blog too.

As for blogging, I want to primarily write about the things I enjoy reading about at other “business” blogs — my philosophy for writing in general — write for my own taste. When it comes to business blogs, anything behind a product or service, I don’t want to be sold the product, I already like the product, that’s why I’m looking to read more about it at the blog. What I do want to read about is the process, how that product exists and what decisions were made to get there, I want to know about the things you don’t see looking in from the outside.

One of my favourite applications on the Mac, [Things](http://culturedcode.com/things/) has a great example of a product blog. They go into great detail about the motivation and process of new features. One post that particularly stands out was on the [creation of the recurring task UI](http://culturedcode.com/things/blog/2008/02/habemus-dialogum-we-have-a-dialog.html). It includes screenshots of the many layouts they tried before settling on the ideal solution. It’s really interesting stuff that without a blog, you just don’t see.

Aaron and I are constantly going through this process when making decisions and planning new features for the products we work on. The process of making these decisions is extremely interesting to me and so, I’m sure, would be just as interesting to outsiders.

Elsewhere I write, link to and comment on things that interest me at [Valhalla Island](http://valhallaisland.com) and I’m a huge [Twitter](http://twitter.com/jimwhimpey) user.

 

Comments

We were going through the problem of titles for people that encompass pretty much all the skills you mention above.

The general consensus in the class was to list the job as web developer, because it doesn’t tie you down to any one skill, but you have to expand it when asked, which is annoying.

Aaron Spence says:

Thanks Jim, I’m looking forward to hearing about our processes from your POV.

Aaron Spence.