Not many people search for the phrase “Patrick Gillespie”, but those who do find that the first listing is a short little article about Patrick Gillespie failing to register as a sex offender. Once you read it you can see that it’s not about me, however, it kind of sucks to know that that’s what people see when they Google my name. A few girls I’ve dated have even brought it up, usually just to make a joke, but it does solidify my concern that people find information about us by Googling us, and if someone is searching for me, I don’t want their first thought to be “Is this guy a sex offender?”
Today things took an interesting turn and I might be able to unseat that crappy website. I was notified by a fellow commenter at seomoz.org that patrickgillespie.com was available for purchase. This is the first time I’ve ever seen this domain available, in fact it just went back on the market around 30 days ago. I think for the past 10 years or so some realtor has had it, or maybe someone just had it parked, either way, it wasn’t very popular or memorable in its previous form. Part of me wonders if the owner let it expire by accident, but I guess that sucks for them. Though I did leave patrickgillespie.net and patrickgillespie.org available for other Patrick Gillespies to pick up.
My main concern now is, what do I do with patrickgillespie.com? I could have it point here, but I kind of want to do something a little more creative, I’m just not sure what. Here are some ideas I was tossing around in my head:
- Personal Blog: This would be the easiest thing to do. However, I already have a livejournal I don’t update much, and I can’t say much about the work I do at work, so I’d feel like this angle might not be very fruitful.
- Topical Video Blog: Something where I could post videos to get across certain topics. I do a lot of online research, and sometimes I find some interesting videos on sites like youtube. A blog that assembled video information on various topics could be interesting.
- Resume Site: A boring option, and probably something that wouldn’t rank well, but a decent filler idea if I can’t decide on anything.
- A Weird Art Project: Something like this, something that just makes people scratch their heads, however, they explore it further because it’s intriguing.
- Patrick Gillespie Information Center: Some kind of web app that aggregates information on people named Patrick Gillespie.
- Puzzle: Maybe have the page just be a puzzle of some sort. Like a riddle that the user has to solve and if they do they can get some kind of reward.
That list basically makes up the ideas I was able to come up with today. Does anything jump out as a good idea? If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.
Something along the lines of the “weird art project” option, but combined with a resume and portfolio would be cool if you were looking to make extra money I suppose. You could also set it up for Search Engine Optimization, and then have it say something like, “Patrick Gillespie is not a sexual predator.”
Andrew – I think the weird art project idea could be the most interesting. I probably wouldn’t put any reference to the sex offender site though because it might leave a weird impression on the visitor. It doesn’t bother me a lot, I just find it annoying and don’t want that to be the first thing people see when they google me.
What about a photo blog? I dunno what that entails…but it sounds cool, right?
Apparently they pretty popular (based on a google search I did a few seconds ago), however, I suck at taking photos.
Make a conspiracy page…
-Brian
local – Conspiracies are always fun.
Why not combine all of those ideas? Make it completely personal and fun. Leave out any reference to work. Have different sections for different things, plus a link here. I really like the idea of making it a hub for other Patrick Gillespie’s out there.
DeAnn – Thanks for the input. That’s a good idea and I’ll probably aim for something like that. Right now I have a neat idea for an interface, I just have to pin down what exactly I want to be there. It definitely wont be work related though.
This comment is probably a day late and a dollar short but…
Sorry bastard. With a name like that?
I never liked Patrick as a name. I’m also the last Gillespie in a long line of Gillespies (my line). I only have daughters. I joke with my wife – why not change our names. What the hell?
So… have you guessed it? My name is also Patrick Gillespie.
Check out my blog, Patrick.
It’s at http://poemshape.wordpress.com/
If you come up to Vermont, look me up. I’ll buy you a beer. Seriously. What’s your birthday? And we’re probably related…
Patrick,
As like you I used to code aol Progs back in the day and being good friends with HaVok and sk8 it was fun. Now that I am 31yrs and mature with kids of my own, I am wanting to teach my 10yr old nephew how to program. He is very smart and I know he can do this. Its very hard to explain things to him that he may understand,specially since I haven’t coded anything in like 17 years. I pretty far outside the loop for things, heck I can barely remember any API programming. If you have any software or books that we can recommend to me I would greatly appreciate it. I am not looking for him to become the next Kevin, just a good start to lead to a great career later in his future
Thank You
hey Chris,
It depends on what kind of programming you think he’d be interested in. Right now I’m really into scripting languages (JavaScript and Tcl), however, I wouldn’t recommend JavaScript unless you think he wants to do web development and I’m not sure I’d recommend Tcl unless you’d think he’d be interested in gluing together the functionality of various programs.
Flash is a lot of fun, and its ActionScript programming language shares the same core as JavaScript. Back in 2004 I read the official book from MacroMedia and it was really good, but the current version doesn’t have good reviews on Amazon.
Microsoft’s current .NET stuff can be downloaded for free here (I’ve played around with C# a little and it seemed really neat):
http://www.microsoft.com/express/
I don’t know of any good books for it though, since I haven’t gotten around to the new stuff yet.
If you opt to go with JavaScript, my favorite JavaScript book is “ppk on JavaScript”:
http://www.quirksmode.org/book/