Yes, I Am Still Alive

I know, I know – it’s been a LONG time since I’ve posted anything. The last two months have been way too busy, what with an appendectomy, a rewrite of Teal (my novel), great progress on a new book, way too many video games (God of War, Borderlands, BioShock…), and a couple large side projects that have FINALLY been wrapped up. At any rate, several months of inactivity doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about the site…

On Sharing (Licenses, Copyrights, and Fair Use)

You may not realize this from scanning my site, but I was this close (envision thumb and pointer finger nearly touching) to pursuing a career in intellectual property law.   I even went so far as to take the LSAT, enroll in a pre-law seminar, and participate in a semester-long legal internship.
I’ll spare you the gory [...]

Good-bye Google

I’ll spare you the gory details, but lately I have developed major reservations about Google. I know many of you think Google is the benevolent dictator of the internet – but there is nothing benevolent about them. Google is an enemy to freedom, an enemy to open source, an enemy to free-market competition, and unless people stop turning a blind eye to them they are going to do to the internet what Microsoft did to the OS market – monopolize it, then make it suck. So I’m removing all things Google from this site, starting now…

NEW MUSIC!! Can you believe it?!

My friends, the wait is over. I am FINALLY getting around to updating the music on this site. I know, I know – it’s been (literally) years since I made any updates to my music entries, but in all fairness I’ve been a busy man. Working full-time, writing a 400 page novel, and being married to my best friend all consume a lot of time. But no more excuses! I’ve finished my novel and am currently working on signing up an agent, so with my newfound free time I’m working on updating my poor, forgotten music. Read on to see how this is going to work…

Building a Better Blog

As you may have noticed, things have started looking a lot better around here. I thought it was worth taking a moment to mention some of the new features I’ve been working on – features that should make your experience on tannerhelland.com even better than it already is. This includes a totally revamped site search, iconified links, better downloads, minor aesthetic adjustments, and a whole lotta SEO. Read on for details!

Traffic ‘Round Here (2008)

As you can see from the above chart, the redesigned tannerhelland.com was visited by some 20,000 people in its first five months. One of my goals for 2009 is to double each of these stats. I’d like to see closer to 30,000 unique visitors in 2009, and it’d be great if the number of visits per visitor could get bumped closer to 2.0. Part of the way I plan to accomplish this is with a renewed emphasis on regular posting (which I hope you’ve enjoyed!) and a host of SEO changes, along with the continual addition of content from my old programming and music sites. It’s all a work in progress, but hey – at least it’s progressing! :)

2008: Year in Review

Ah, another year over – and 2008 was a great one (for both me and the site). Read the article to check out some of the highlights.

Happy New Year!

This site is not ugly

Finally, a new look that’s both functional AND good-looking. This theme is built off “The Morning After” theme by Arun Kale – and I can’t begin to describe how much I’m impressed with his work. This is the first WordPress theme I’ve used where the CSS and PHP is reasonably designed and – even more importantly – reasonably commented. A usage and customization sheet is provided for those looking to tailor the theme to their particular needs, and built-in support for several excellent plugins (including WP-Print, one of my new favorites) is just icing on the cake…

Experimenting with themes

My apologies if this site dramatically changes appearance over the next several weeks.  I’m currently in the process of experimenting with a variety of WordPress themes, each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses.
If you have any recommendations for a particular theme – or if you love/hate the way the site looks next time [...]

This site is ugly

It’s no secret.  The design for this site has been through so many iterations that it has drifted far past what this theme was meant to do.  As such, I’m currently working on a new implementation that’s not quite so…ugly.  :)
As such, my posting has dropped off – but never fear.  More exciting articles are [...]