My apologies for the extended absence. It seems like the past two years have been a real struggle to keep the blog portion of the site going as I have been devoting my time – where I rightly should – to my family and as I continue the adjustment to my new job.

For those that might still have me in their news feeds or bookmarks and actually stop by from time to time, just after Thanksgiving I started work as the Outreach & Web Assistant at the Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise & Commercialization (CCTEC) at Cornell University. Basically, I’m the webmaster, social media guy, and a support person for the Outreach group in our office. We are the technology transfer office for the university, securing patents for inventions developed by faculty, staff, and students that belong to Cornell and then either licensing those inventions to outside companies or starting companies based on those technologies. Five months in and I’m feeling pretty good about my position. There is still a lot to be learned but it’s a most welcome change from where I was until early January 2011.

With my one-hour commute each way to Ithaca every day, dinner and play time with a two-year-old, and then a couple of hours with my wife before an earlier bedtime than I had been used to, something had to be put on the back burner and the blog was it.

I’ve also put Graphic Talk Radio on hiatus for the time being. I had recorded a number of episodes at once and then had a full schedule through November and December but I haven’t had the chance to record more. I definitely want to return tot he show. It’s been a lot of fun for me and the response I’ve gotten from listeners has been great. I may even start recording shows from my car during my commute, we’ll see.

All of a sudden, projects have been coming in on the freelance side. I am in the middle of a large product photo editing project for an online pharmaceutical distributor in the UK – basically taking their product shots off the background and watermarking them. And they have another large chunk of files waiting in the wings for me after this round is complete.

A writer living in Cape Town, South Africa has a new screenplay she’s going to start shopping around and she is going to have me design a website and some marketing materials for her so she can show it off to potential studios. I’m very excited about this one because the sketches I’ve seen of the design look great and offer a lot of different possibilities.

And even today, I’ve gotten a pair of contacts about photo manipulation projects that might pan out. So, things are starting to move along in positive directions.

I can’t make any promises but I hope to get back into a regular routine of blogging soon, even if it’s with shorter posts only a few times a week. It’s been a labor of love these past (almost) 10  years that I’ve been writing online and I want to keep it going if I can.

So, if you have any ideas for what you would like me to post about or ideas for Graphic Talk Radio episodes, please let me know! In the meantime, I have a post in mind for Friday that might be interesting if you want to stop back and give it a read.