My bio page gives you all the dish you need though if you’d like to know more about my profession as a writer, projects and the story of how I left a successful corporate position to pursue writing, please visit my portfolio site, Girl at Play.

alexthegirl.com is simply about making the ordinary, extraordinary. I’m not a fan of fairy dust, of living juicy or obtaining some idea of perfection; I adore reality and it’s simplicity and try to show the use in that. This is also about story telling; taking moments from my every day life and sharing them with you. It is not, however, about sharing what I ate for breakfast, my private bits, rants or the blah blah blah of the everyday. Trust me, brushing my teeth is not interesting enough to note (unless I happen to be shaking my ass whilst doing it). I tend to feel removed from my posts because it really has less to do with me, personally, and more with just life in general. It’s not so much a personal blog as it is a splattering of bits from my point of view. I began using computers in 1986, took a break for awhile during my travelling years and came back with a web site in 1995. I finally purchased a domain of my own, AlextheGirl.com in February 2003. And the rest, as they say, is history.

This really depends on a lot of factors; how much work I have going on and if I feel I have something of benefit to say. I do not live on-line which is important to note. This means that personally a lot might happen but I chose not to share everything – this is only a web page and not a documentary. So please be kind and don’t ask me when I will update or what’s going on if I’m silent for weeks.

Very, very simply. You can see a small history of my previous personal sites and an even smaller history of some professional sites. The common denominator is simplicity; I like a page to load quickly and be pleasant to look at with a focus on content. I’m of the opinion if you have to gussy something up, there’s not much there so I stick to white backgrounds and black font so that when people print out the page, they can actually read the text. I’ve won and been nominated for several design awards (including SXSW Web Awards in 2003 & 2006) and also had write ups done on why my design works. For more of my design, please visit my portfolio. Where do I get inspiration? Everywhere possible. From magazines, to walking down the street to just sitting on the lawn. I like to walk the world wide eyed and pay attention. This helps me to stay creative.

I’ve been using Dreamhost for the past four years and they are web hosting rock stars. For $10/per month I have e-mail, autoresponders, mailing lists, form mails, lots of storage, web hosting and a good support network. I recommend them.

I use a macbook Pro and Apple Cinema23″ Flat Panel Display. I love them and would marry them would it be legally possible. Other hardware I use includes my Canon i9900 Printer, Canon LiDE 80 Scanner and a Wacom Intuos Tablet (all of which I highly recommend).

My software stash includes Adobe Creative Suite Premium (which has Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign & Acrobat) for graphics, Dreamweaver (although I mostly hand-code on TextEdit), and Transmit to FTP it to the web (I recommend Cute FTP for Windows).

The site has run on several web services since 1995 from self-coding to Blogger to MovableType. In August 2008, AlextheGirl.com was converted to WordPress 2.6

No. Please don’t ask.

Prior to March 2004, all photographs were taken with the Nikon 950 – a good camera despite it being only 2mega pixels. After June 2002 all images are taken with a 6.3MP beauty of a camera called the Canon Digital Rebel. This is a beautiful camera that makes me feel all swank when I hear the little clickity-click noise it makes. All photographs on the site are shot by me (unless noted) so please, do not steal them or I’ll whimper greatly.

No and no.