One of the best moments in live internets is when a contextual ad shows up on a page in a way that makes both the page and the ad funny because of juxtaposition. I’ve started collecting these on a new site called not what you meant.

So if you have any examples of such things, please submit them via email to submit at notwhayoumeant dot com.

I was just reading about that shipwreck in the Aegean on Friday. I mean, a terrible thing, to be sure, but it looks like very few people actually got hurt.

But that’s not important right now. The real disaster here was the contextual ad that got served up alongside the article on CBS News. See for yourself.

UPDATE: I couldn’t leave well enough alone.

So, while no one was looking, I launched a web comic. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. It’s called Numaf, and it’s very, very nerdy. I am proud to say it might be the very nerdiest thing I’ve ever done. I would suggest you start reading at the beginning, where all good things begin. The initial story arc is in full swing already.

I know it won’t appeal to everyone (maybe even anyone) but that’s okay. To quote Ricky Gervais, “I’d rather be a small group of people’s favorite thing than millions of people’s ninth favorite thing”. Interestingly, Ricky Gervais also said, “Look, just tell me where that lemon came from and I’ll shut up and go away.” I guess that doesn’t really apply here.

I’m collaborating with Eric Anderson again, but this time, we actually got the comic on the Internet. (Last time, not so much.) I have a lot of ideas about where to go with it and I know Eric does, too. It should be a lot of fun. Eric and I work really well together, despite being on opposite sides of the country.

So yeah, give it a read. Maybe you will like it. Let me know what you think in the comments and whatnot.

So I’ve decided to go back to freelancing. It’s a good move for me, I have a lot of experience and a good network. I’ve already got a few irons in the fire, so to speak, but if you’re in need of that which I do, please feel free to contact me.  To sum up what I do, I am an analyst, developer, engineer, integrator and all-around web ninja. I’ve largely focused on content management systems and community sites. I’m generally interested in finding ways to use technology to bring people together and facilitate communication. While I’m an excellent developer, I advocate integrating existing solutions over building things from scratch. I prefer working with smaller teams on shorter projects. So there you have it.

No matter how hard I try to kill this site, no matter how many times I go for months without updating, no matter what I do or don’t do, Jaybill.com is still getting a boatload of traffic. By “boatload” I certainly don’t mean the six million uniques a month of yore. I mean several hundred unique visitors a day. Most of them repeat visitors. I mean, I’m not even counting the people who come here looking for the thing. I know based on URLs that several hundred of the same people hit the front page of this site every day.

So it would stand to reason that I can pretty much do anything I want here and people will still keep coming. I can’t seem to alienate people, and short of shutting off the site that bears my name (for shame) I can’t think of what else to do.

So, I will keep blogging. I don’t care why you’re here. I’m glad that you are.

Here we go again. I moved servers and decided to take the opportunity to update the ever-loving crap out of the site. Not sure what I’m doing with it this time around, but I assure you that whatever it is, it will be way more frequent. By “way more frequent” I mean “more than once every six months”. I figure if I set low expectations, you’ll all be surprised when I exceed them. If I fail then you can say you told me so.