Ben Bleikamp's blog about technology and college

I (almost) forgot I had a blog

I’ve been beyond busy lately. I had started the new year with the goal of turning this blog into more of a resource with great, original content. It hasn’t happened (yet) but I still plan on doing a massive redesign and writing more articles and fewer posts.

This post actually will encompass things I’ve done since December because I haven’t posted much at all and the reasons go back to around then.

1. Top secret super cool project
I’ve been working with Surya Yalamanchili on a project involving blogging and college and I am hoping we can finally launch in early March. I also designed Surya’s site in December - it’s one of those designs that I feel like is acceptable but as soon as I can I plan on giving Surya a redesign. I hate releasing work that isn’t my best but Surya needed something fast since his season of The Apprentice was debuting on January 7th.

2. b5media owns me
I’ve been working hard on b5media’s new template - the one that we’re planning on porting to 200 some blogs. It’s actually more of a challenge that I had anticipated. I’m trying to write the CSS/XHTML to be “future proof” so that as b5media evolves they can expand the template to work on any blog and can add or remove features as they need to. It has taught me a lot about CSS and makes Kyle’s CSS tip 100% true. Look for the new template to start rolling out very, very soon.

3. Noah is picky
I agreed to hook Noah up with a new design on his OkDork site free of charge. See, Noah was one of the main people who helped me “get going” when I started taking freelance design seriously this past summer and without the referrals he sent me I’d probably be sitting wondering how to make money doing freelance design. Look for Noah’s new site to launch any day now - Chris is coding it because I couldn’t find time to get it done quickly enough.

4. Working with Fresh
A local “web company” (they do a lot more than just design and a lot more than just web related stuff) agreed to let me work with them on some projects. It’s nice seeing other designrs/web geeks face to face. Right now I’m working on some user interface design with them - I have no idea when the site will launch but I’ll be sure to point to it here when it does launch.

5. I know SEO too
I picked up a small SEO project that I am going to work into my schedule. I’ve actually been doing research on SEO so that I can give the client the best service I can. I plan on posting a few articles that offer a few simple tips on how to make your site play nice with Google.

6. I’m still in college
College is cool and all but the work is getting old. And we’re also getting close to that point where I should start looking for a job when I graduate. So here is a plug: If you’re looking for someone who knows about the web, user interface design, and is a marketing major with some project management experience, get a hold of me in a year or so.