Where the hell did the name “Southbound Home” come from?

Well, I like to tell people that it has some deep meaning, such as my being in D.C. looking southbound towards my childhood home. Or some such shit. In all honesty, and don’t tell anybody this, because I don’t want it getting out, the reality is much simpler.

My friends and I are big fans of The Allman Bros. Band, and Southbound is one of their better tunes. So we got into the habit of naming everything “Southbound (blank)”. To give you an idea of what I mean, our fantasy baseball league is “Southbound Fantasy Baseball”. Pretty straightforward, I think. When I began trying to think of names and ideas for the site, when it was still in its infancy, I decided that I wanted to have many sites for my different interests. Once again the names were pretty straightforward. Southbound Music, Southbound Sports, Southbound Design, and I feel like you have to be getting the idea by now. The home page, that connected all of these sites to one another? Southbound Home. Eventually, all of the other sites fell by the wayside, and SBH is what was left.

How many regular visitors does SBH get?

Well, you make one. My mom makes two. Is there anybody reading over your shoulder? The honest answer is that I really don’t know. All I can tell you is that I know my traffic is somewhere between this site’s and Google’s.

Then why do you keep writing?

Well, I said I don’t care THAT much. I didn’t say I don’t care at all. Of course, I’d love for people to read the site, and leave comments telling me how great I am, and continuing to praise me until I am thusly dubbed “THE GREATEST BLOGGER OF ALL TIME”…Wait, what? Really, I enjoy design, and I enjoy using my personal site to practice on, and I also enjoy knowing that I’ll have all of this to look back on one day. Once the fame and fortune subside, of course.

What was it like growing up in Mississippi?

Growing up in Mississippi was wonderful. As I’ve written before, Mississippi is warm and deliberate, the people are friendly, and the barbeque is slow-cooked and delicious. Mississipians are born with an innate sense of pride, an overflowing of respect, and an instinctive knowledge of how their state’s past affects other people’s perception of them. That’s a tough thing to have to deal with sometimes.

That, and growing up without shoes. Both really, really tough.

How come your site looks weird in Internet Explorer?

Because you’re using a shitty browser. Go here and get a new one, and if you’re using a Mac, you can go here
 too.

What tools did you use to build your site?

Southbound Home is written using Dreamweaver MX to code the XHTML and CSS and Wordpress as a content management system. The architecture of the site really isn’t all that complicated. With all of my pictures on Flickr, and Wordpress driving the remainder of the content, there’s not much for me to do but write. So yeah, you’re getting the best out of me. Sorry for the quality.

Oh yeah, the graphics were rendered using Adobe Photoshop CS2, and in some cases Fireworks MX, or some other more talented designer via iStockphoto. All photography on the site was taken by me using a Canon Powershot S200. The site is best viewed with a web browser from Firefox at a screen size of 1024 x 768.

Who hosts your site?

SBH is hosted by the most ass-kicking web host out there, Dreamhost.

How many times have you redesigned your site?

Seven…I think.

One of the biggest regrets that I have in regards to this site is that I haven’t made the effort to keep up with the different transformations that it’s gone through over the past few years. The sites been through hundreds of changes since it started, but since some sort of blogging software has been installed, it’s only had seven “major” re-designs. You can see the past versions that I had the foresight to save below. Anyway, hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with the changes made to the site in the future. I enjoy being able to see my progression as a designer, and the web in general, laid out right in front of me.

Does your mom really read your page? How lame.

Yes. And go fuck yourself. Sorry, mom.