Yeah, Nyman’s back

Yes! I’m back! And let me tell you that I’ve missed you, and I’ve missed writing. There’s something extraordinary about writing blog posts and then get in touch with and make friends with people from all over the world. To have discussions with like-minded people about topics which we share an interest in.

This post will be filled to the brim with various information; from a new feed URL and other changes to what I’ve been doing this summer, so please read on.

In good Castro manner, here’s a picture to prove that this is actually me writing this today!

A picture of me with the New York Times' web site displaying today's date

A summer with Emilia

It has sincerely been special to have had the ability to spend four full months together with my daughter. To have the time to give her all of my attention and to strengthen that special bond that only a parent and a child can have. We have been doing a lot of excursions, going to different beaches a countless number of times and the whole family has also been on a wonderful trip to Sanary in southern France.

I’ve had the fantastic opportunity to see her grow and evolve so much, and I’m truly grateful for that! She now talks a lot and mimics what I’m doing, and many times I don’t know if I should cry or laugh (or both) out of sheer happiness and the feeling of being blessed.

Every moment now that I’m away from her hurts and I don’t feel complete. I know I have to partially let go now that she’s just starting kindergarten and I will soon go back to work (September 1st will be a dark day…), but it is so hard.

Meeting people

I’ve had the opportunity to meet some people for the first time. In June, Chris and his wonderful family were visiting Sweden, and we had a nice evening in Stockholm including soft ice cream, nice Italian dinner and our daughters running around and playing, almost giving us ulcers.

Just the other day I had a great evening out when I, through Phil Sherry, got to meet the lovely April who was in Stockholm for a short visit.

What has happened on the web during my leave?

I thought I’d take the opportunity to bring up a few web-related things that have occurred during my leave:

  • My friend Stuart has accepted a job at Yahoo!. Knowing his talents and his wonderful personality, Yahoo! are definitely the winners out of this deal. Good luck Stuart!
  • Just after I’d gotten on my leave an advertisement in Swedish newspapers annoyed me like hell, so I took the time to co-write a post with Roger, something we’d talked about for some time so I’m happy it finally happened. It’s entitled ONOFF: another failed redesign
  • Chris Mills was kind enough to mention me as a blog he enjoys in his Digital Web Magazine article.
  • Firefox fans created the Firefox Crop Circle. Outstanding! Not sure IE fans (are there any?) would do something like that…
  • W3C and their influence were questioned by Zeldman in An angry fix and followed up by Eric Meyer in Angry Indeed.
  • John C. Dvorak basically condemns CSS in Why CSS Bugs Me. While CSS is far from perfect and definitely has its flaws, all he does in his post is to admit that he’s a CSS amateur and doesn’t know his craft…
  • We had a Geek Meet in June, and Emil did a good write-up of one of the presentations/talks in Current issues with Microformats.

Last, but not least, Shaun Inman said this about ASK – AJAX Source Kit in his comment at Vitamin:

Robert’s ASK seems extremely well done.

He then talks about what we want and expect from a universal resource locator. I agree with him and his concerns, although the way I see it it’s just a matter of accomplishing that with ASK and URL rewrites on the server (it might be harder than it sounds, though, so don’t take this as a guarantee… :-)).

Job offers

Within the first two weeks of my leave I got two really interesting job offers. We’re talking talented people to work with, a real challenge, web standards- and accessibility-awareness while at the same time creating really good web sites.

Then, during the summer, a person working for a huge and well-known international company contacted me and told me that:

They’re always looking for talented people “Nutch Nutch Say no more”

For now, I’ve turned all offers and possibilities down, but I’m not sure what will happen. Only the future can tell.

My muse isn’t visiting me anymore; she mas moved in!

The inspiration I’ve gotten for things to write about has been overwhelming. As soon as had an idea, I wrote it down on a paper with drafts, and let me tell you, that paper is completely filled with topics. My drafts list is very long right now, so as long as you’re interested I have plenty to offer you. 🙂

Upcoming posts will be about web developing and different web services available online, but they will also be about the way I see life and all the little things that affect us everyday. This blog is about me and about life, and I wouldn’t want to waste a 100% of my time on a topic, like, if Atom is better than RSS or not.

New feed URL and full-text feeds

In June I changed the feed URL to use FeedBurner, to more easily be able to check statistics. It also offers ways for you to directly add the posts to del.icio.us or digg directly from your feed reader of choice, and another benefit is that I’ve finally decided to offer full-text feeds.

To begin with, I was a bit reluctant to doing that, wanting everyone to actually visit the site to read the full post and making it easier for me to see who’s reading what I write. However, in the spirit of the new web, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is up to the reader, the end user, to decide how and through what tool (feed reader, web browser etc) you want to read my posts. In practice, you can now read anything I write without ever visiting the web site. A somewhat scary thought, but hey, I do anything to make you happy. 🙂

The new feed URL is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/robertnyman.

New e-mail address

I finally took the step and arranged so that I have a proper e-mail address connected to this domain. The new address to reach me is: robert [at] robertnyman [dot] com, and I hope you can work out how to make that into a valid address… 🙂

 

So, I’m back! I could go on forever like this, but I guess it’s time to stop, for now; I’ve missed you, man! Stay tuned, preferably by subscribing to the RSS feed, and I will do my best to entertain you!

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