From late 2000 to 2006, I created and ran a personal blog (with some other "personal site"-ish features attached). Although the site existed strictly for me and some friends, with no client or user goals to design for (except maybe mild amusement), operating it over the years gave me a lot of freedom to practice and experiment with various web design ideas and technologies, and with some community building practices.

The website included my personal weblog, some often-humorous surveys, general information about me, random amusing quotes from me and my friends, and some personalization features for friends who visited regularly. It was a fun experience, but I eventually took the site offline, after graduate school and other responsibilities took priority over maintaining the website.

This was the last major design of spautz.net. I tried to create something which was fun and inviting, yet not silly or tacky. Many of my friends strongly liked this design, and I was urged to keep it as-is for a long time. I was unhappy with the previous version's visual design, but retained most of its functionality and behavior—I completely overhauled the styling, but only altered the functionality slightly. One notable addition was the creation of a separate, more formal and professional design for the webpages dealing with my résumé.

This was an attempt to create something hip and flashy, while also better supporting the ever-growing volume of content. Although not inappropriate for its original context, I think it looks very tacky by today's standards. In addition to the visual overhaul, this redesign introduced many long-lived features: the color-coded sections of the site, the general page layout for blog entries and surveys, and various admin functions.

This was the first general design of my blog (although it went through many small iterations in the very beginning, to refine color and page layout). It started off with very little content—nothing more than a linear sequence of entries—but it eventually outgrew that direct, simplistic design.