About
Contact Information
Who runs this thing?
Hi, my name is Karl Swedberg! I'm a husband, a father of two beautiful children, and a web developer living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. When I'm not tinkering with this website, I love to spend time with my family, read The New Yorker and novels and non-fiction books, take pictures for fun and profit, play racquetball and practice Okinawan Shorin-ryu.
I also work. This list is a glimpse into my strange, circuitous career path:
- Structure Interactive: I'm currently working as a web developer, doing mostly front-end stuff, using(x)HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and more. I also train people on maintaining their website content using content management systems such as Drupal, Django, and Interwoven's TeamSite.
- Four Friends Coffeehouse: My wife and I and another couple started this coffeehouse in downtown Grand Rapids in the fall of 1994. We owned it for a little over four years and then sold it to two of our managers. I'm pleased to report that it's still going strong. And, yes, we are all still friends.
- Calvin College: On a one-year assignment, I taught written rhetoric and an introduction to literature course.
- Unity Christian High School: My first teaching gig (of two). It was at times exhilarating, frustrating, amusing, and draining—and all the while rewarding enough to keep me going there for six years.
- Microsoft: My first "real" job, back in the early 1990s, when Microsoft was just a small, close-knit group of about 15,000 employees.
I've also done a bunch of freelance work along the way, developing database applications, designing websites, and photographing kids and weddings.
How did the site get here?
This site was born in 1998 when I, a high school English teacher at the time, decided to throw together some resources for my students as they worked on research papers and studied for tests. It also contained an intermittently reliable calendar of upcoming assignments and due dates. Intermittently reliable. Did I just coin an oxymoron?
During those glorious teacher summers, I added pages, bit by bit, and played with a number of designs and "features"—most of which have since been abandoned.
What's in the site now?
You'll find the main weblog featured on the site's home page. I post personal reflections and social commentary there.
There's a Word of the Day section, which is also set up as a weblog, where I used to post a new word every day, and post one every third or fourth or fifth day, whenever I get a chance.
There's also a Writing Guide for people who have questions about English grammar, usage, punctuation, style, or mechanics. Every so often I post a new entry, and people can comment on them.
The photography section has some of my pictures, arranged by date and category. Each one has a little description along with it, and visitors can post comments if they'd like.
The music page consists of a silly little musical bio and a few of my musical relics that you can download for free. At one time I had big plans for this section, but I've since lost interest. Maybe some day I'll get around to it.
The resource pages are a hold-out from my teaching days and, until I created the Writing Guide, the only thing on the site for the many folks who happened by the site through Google searches for "grammer" or some such misspelled word. Each resource page has a cool set of regularly updated links pulled by an RSS feed—from the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, and metacritic.com.
Who helped?
Far too many people to count. I've received numerous tips from a wonderful online community of web designers and developers. For a partial list of people and sites that have influenced, or inspired, or directly contributed to this site, view my credits page.
Where is the site going?
Nobody knows, really. Eventually I'll throw together a little tribute page to my late great-uncle, George Hamilton Green, who has the distinction—some may call it dubious or comical, but I call it hip—of having been at one time the world's greatest xylophone player. I'd also like to put together a few web design pages to add to my dabblings. I'm still playing around with ideas for that one, but if you have any, send them my way.
