About Page Redux

Updated January 30, 2020

Perishable Press provides high-quality, in-depth articles on web design and development, graphic design, social media, blogging, software, and more. Learn how to use WordPress, PHP, SQL, HTAccess, JavaScript, (X)HTML, and CSS to create beautiful sites that are usable, accessible, and secure.

Good Day Sunshine

[ Photo: Jeff Starr (aka Perishable) ] Perishable Press is the virtual playground of Jeff Starr — visionary, founder and lead developer of Monzilla Media, a small web and graphic design company located in the lush desert oasis of Moses Lake, Washington. Perishable Press features articles and tutorials on many aspects of digital design, and is very much a work in progress. It is where I test code, post discoveries, and share solutions. Perishable Press has been online since 2005 and continues to evolve in terms of content, structure, and design.

Hello! This is an archived version of a previous “About” page. Some of the information no longer is current. For all the current stuff, check out the site’s official About page.

Perishable Press strives toward web standards, usability, and accessibility. The front end of the site is structured with valid XHTML 1.1, styled with plenty of valid CSS, and embellished with juicy snippets of unobtrusive JavaScript. Behind the scenes, the site is powered by Apache, MySQL & PHP, and is hosted at Media Temple on a (dv) server.

Site Focus

On the surface, Perishable Press delivers high-quality articles focusing on digital design and web development — WordPress, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, XML, RSS, (X)HTML, CSS, HTAccess, and many other 1337 acronyms — along with just about anything involving creativity, inspiration, and artistic expression.

The primary thrust of the site focuses on the geekier side of web design and development, with successive thrusts covering everything from digital photography and graphic design to multimedia production and creative writing. I like to imagine a niche where “Modern Creative Media” represents the dynamic intersection between creativity and technology.

Thanks for dropping in to check it out. Feel free to dig around and explore.. as they say, “there’s gold in them thar hills!”

Favorite Things

My favorite things web-related include clean, sophisticated sites; unobtrusive, gracefully degrading implementations; progressively enhanced designs; well-formatted, semantical code; strict standards compliance; separation of structure, presentation, and behavior; as well as simplicity, usability, accessibility, et al.

I am also especially fond of WordPress, which powers the site and is continually modified and tweaked to suit my diabolical development purposes. I also work diligently with graphic design, image editing, vector art, iconography, and typography. I love to sketch, draw, and paint, and thoroughly enjoy diving into artistic realms over a good cup of coffee. Beyond those things, I am also into digital audio mixing, video editing, and digital photography. — “It’s all good.”

Current Projects

In general, I like to keep several projects going at once. Here is a list of my current endeavors:

Perishable Press: Perishable Press serves to define and highlight ideas, consolidate and integrate projects, and organize and express the myriad happenings unfolding throughout my vast creative empire.
Digging into WordPress: Co-author Chris Coyier and I help you get the most out of WordPress with our book, Digging into WordPress, and its official companion site, digwp.com. This project began late 2008 and has helped many people take their WordPress skills to the next level. And it’s a lot of fun too ;)
Monzilla Media: Established in 2007, Monzilla Media is where I do business. From small business sites and personal blogs to WordPress plugins and customized themes, Monzilla Media strives to develop high-quality web and new media solutions.
jQuery Mix: jQuery Mix is a new site that will be kicking into high gear in 2010 with tons of juicy tips, tricks, community resources, and coverage of just about everything jQuery that I can get my hands on. I am currently looking for help with the site, so if you are a jQuery wiz and would like to participate shoot me an email.
Perishable.biz: Thus the goal and purpose of this site is to organize and share these many archive and portfolio pieces with anyone who dares to explore — art, photos, chunks, multimedia content, and much more — all within a well-designed, super-flexible, ultra-organized, comprehensively tagged online infrastructure of digital existence. Like putty in my hands.
Product Reality: Product Reality is a soon-to-launch project designed to expose all of the scams, rip-offs, and crappy products that make everyone’s lives so bloody miserable. At the site, users can upload pictures of their busted deals, fast-food flops, and cheap products using a sleak, ajax-powered interface. Think of it like Flickr for consumers. Coming soon!
AugustKlotz.com: Currently in development, AugustKlotz.com is a site focusing on the study of the Bible, biblical principles, and theological philosophy.
Dead Letter Art: Dead Letter Art (DLa) is an “esoteric, underground art collective” of which I am a member. Established in 2000, the DLa collective collaborates on creative projects, artwork, desktop publishing, printed materials, and just about anything else that strikes our fancy.
mindfeed.org: mindfeed.org is a virtual thoughtstream of open-source ideas and critical thinking. Currently in development, mindfeed.org will explore ideas related to awareness, relativity, learning, open-mindedness, creativity, and inspiration. This will be a monetized effort as well.

Posting Schedule

With myriad online and offline projects, a full-time job working in the local salt mine, part-time job as a web/graphic designer, plus a wife, two children, and a need for a decent seven hours of sleep every night, I am one busy person. Of course, as we all know, remaining productive requires organization and scheduling. This is especially true for blogs, where hungry readers demand a continuous flow of fresh information.

For Perishable Press, I try to post at least three or four relatively significant articles per week, along with a few occasional minor posts (linkage, reviews, rants, etc.) thrown in for good measure. For the time being, my schedule enables me to write and post articles Sunday through Wednesday, although that may change at some point down the road.

For those of you who subscribe to the Official Perishable Press RSS Feed, I would like to thank you. Knowing that you are reading is truly inspiring and encouraging. If you have not yet subscribed, I would of course be honored if you would choose to do so. Either way, thank you for spending a few moments here at Perishable Press!

More Information

For more information about Perishable Press, check out these fine articles:

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Web Developer. Book Author. Secretly Important.