And you thought I was a quitter when I shut down Michael Jacobi's SPIDERSHOPPE ...
Last night I vaporized ExoticFauna.com. It launched in 2000 and had a major overhaul in 2013. After 16 years online, I have deleted all the pages and files. This includes The Tarantula Bibliography, which I created in 2005 and had over a ten year run. I have zero desire, no interest, y nada tiempo to continue to update changes in theraphosid taxonomy. It also includes the digital versions of the seven issues of ARACHNOCULTURE I published between 2005 and 2007. If you hadn't read them by now you weren't likely to.
The new ExoticFauna.com is simple. It has a single, elegant page with links to where I reside in cyberspace. Most importantly, it links to my SmugMug page where my photography lives. I will be uploading hundreds of more photos to this site as time allows. Other links include this blog, my YouTube channel and social media. It also mentions my business website - TriggercontrolTactical.com.
I posted a screenshot of the new single-page site to my Instagram feed moments ago. I won't do that here and instead hope you'll click on the link above and give the new site a visit. It wouldn't take more than five minutes to read the whole page. Minimalistic. Concise. Refined.
Then again maybe you don't give a fuck. I'm not bothered.
All the best, MJ
Showing posts with label exotic fauna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exotic fauna. Show all posts
Friday, July 1, 2016
Thursday, September 18, 2008
The Whirlwind
I have a confirmed third reader.
It has been a website week. The shiny new TARANTULAS.com website I created was launched earlier in the week and I launched my new Exotic Fauna website this morning. Both are state-of-the-art XHTML/CSS thingamajigs. The T.com site is a complete overhaul of a site T.com owner Alex Orleans launched in the mid-90s. Since I am still working with him and T.com, and the designer of the original site has long left this spinning Earth, it was time to create a fresh web presence. As the new site showcases the clean tableless CSS layout that most sites use today and I have been studying, I felt it was time to upgrade the EF site to match. Please visit both sites and shoot me an e-mail at exoticfauna[at]gmail[dot]com if you have any comments.
I won't expound too much today on my magazine and DVD projects and how I let them wither. I have to be brief as I need to shower and shave for my gig at the museum tonight. For now I will just say that I have been thinking of ways to resurrect them for months now and have kicked some ideas around with Billy over the past week.
Suffice it to say that the buggery DVD that wouldn't play in all but MY OWN DVD player has been converted to a QuickTime computer movie. I can't afford to have it professionally mastered for DVD player use, and I want to at least get it out there, especially to those who ordered the faulty original. I was further motivated by my creation of the aforementioned TARANTULAS.com site. I tried to add as much content as possible, focusing on frequently asked questions from beginners. Of course, this was also self-serving as I grow very tired of answering the same questions over and over via email. So, through the process of adding written care information to get the neophyte tarantula keeper headed in the right direction, I decided to add a Care Videos page and I uploaded four excerpts from my DVD project to YouTube and embedded them into the page. The same clips are embedded into the Video page on the Exotic Fauna page. So, I have now started the ball rolling on getting the footage I spent a great deal of time with before I left Nashville out for public gawking.
As for ARACHNOCULTURE magazine, creating the seven print issues was quite an accomplishment. I will always be proud of them and the positive feedback they received worldwide. But producing them was cost-prohibitive and labor-intensive so I am now focused on an E-Zine version that will be available online. I haven't worked out all the details, but it will likely be available as a password-protected download at no cost to my past paying readers and at a nominal fee to new readers. Since the magazine was small format [half page], I am currently laying out the most recent issue as a full page PDF file and will take it from there.
I just realized that this post was actually on-topic; at least about exotic animals if not about kissing large hirsute arachnids. I will have to return to disc-golfing, brewery-touring, movie-going and longing for a canoe and bicycle in my next vomitous blog. See you then, MJ
It has been a website week. The shiny new TARANTULAS.com website I created was launched earlier in the week and I launched my new Exotic Fauna website this morning. Both are state-of-the-art XHTML/CSS thingamajigs. The T.com site is a complete overhaul of a site T.com owner Alex Orleans launched in the mid-90s. Since I am still working with him and T.com, and the designer of the original site has long left this spinning Earth, it was time to create a fresh web presence. As the new site showcases the clean tableless CSS layout that most sites use today and I have been studying, I felt it was time to upgrade the EF site to match. Please visit both sites and shoot me an e-mail at exoticfauna[at]gmail[dot]com if you have any comments.
I won't expound too much today on my magazine and DVD projects and how I let them wither. I have to be brief as I need to shower and shave for my gig at the museum tonight. For now I will just say that I have been thinking of ways to resurrect them for months now and have kicked some ideas around with Billy over the past week.
Suffice it to say that the buggery DVD that wouldn't play in all but MY OWN DVD player has been converted to a QuickTime computer movie. I can't afford to have it professionally mastered for DVD player use, and I want to at least get it out there, especially to those who ordered the faulty original. I was further motivated by my creation of the aforementioned TARANTULAS.com site. I tried to add as much content as possible, focusing on frequently asked questions from beginners. Of course, this was also self-serving as I grow very tired of answering the same questions over and over via email. So, through the process of adding written care information to get the neophyte tarantula keeper headed in the right direction, I decided to add a Care Videos page and I uploaded four excerpts from my DVD project to YouTube and embedded them into the page. The same clips are embedded into the Video page on the Exotic Fauna page. So, I have now started the ball rolling on getting the footage I spent a great deal of time with before I left Nashville out for public gawking.
As for ARACHNOCULTURE magazine, creating the seven print issues was quite an accomplishment. I will always be proud of them and the positive feedback they received worldwide. But producing them was cost-prohibitive and labor-intensive so I am now focused on an E-Zine version that will be available online. I haven't worked out all the details, but it will likely be available as a password-protected download at no cost to my past paying readers and at a nominal fee to new readers. Since the magazine was small format [half page], I am currently laying out the most recent issue as a full page PDF file and will take it from there.
I just realized that this post was actually on-topic; at least about exotic animals if not about kissing large hirsute arachnids. I will have to return to disc-golfing, brewery-touring, movie-going and longing for a canoe and bicycle in my next vomitous blog. See you then, MJ
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The First Act
Kiss my big hairy spider! Really, please do.
I suppose we should begin with the name. It's really just something that came to me one day. A little irreverent, yes, but nothing more than a pseudo-clever statement of attitude all the while drawing attention to a passion. The idea was to 'catch the eye' as the slogan's genesis was my envisioning a bumper sticker suitable for the beater van I was driving at the time. Big, old white cargo van with a vile polluting V8. Cheesy as hell. What better canvas for a bunch of obnoxious bumper stickers? So I had them printed.
Of course, I was, and am, an exotic animal man. Purveyor of creepy crawlies. Having a bunch of glossy black and white stickers displaying the bold "kiss my big hairy spider" sentiment created was not much of a stretch. I immediately saw the marketing aspect. I could sell them and make nothing. Actually, they just seemed like a cool thing to stick in the box when shipping out orders of tarantulas and scorpions and scaly things. The thought that they might be viewed by some geezer at a random suburban intersection certainly had its appeal.
My first batch was distributed. I wondered where they rested. Then the first ArachnoCon occurred. I'm sure I'll expound on ArachnoCon plenty in future blogs, but for now let's leave it as the coolest gathering of arachnid enthusiasts in the US of A - an event that happened twice so far, in July of 2006 and 2007. As I walked through the parking lot of the host San Antonio hotel that first year, I saw a couple of vehicles bearing my silly sticker. The word was being spread. So, for ArachnoCon 2007 I had a second batch of stickers printed, this time with an artsy font and "exoticfauna.com" and "ArachnoCon 2007" in fine print. They were included in each welcome bag along with a possibly cooler official AC sticker and other swag. Maybe you have them.
So, the blog. Did one once a while back and abandoned it. I do that. But I've been meaning to get back to it. I've been playing with creepy crawlies for about 35 years and have loads of stories and lessons to share. That's why I create websites and publish a magazine. I even made an instructional DVD. [Special note: I'll write much more on the 7 issues of Arachnoculture magazine, the interminable hiatus and its future in coming blogs, and even more about this buggery DVD project that if I can't fix soon I will just release as a freakin' free QuickTime movie]. For those who may not know me, surf on over to exoticfauna.com. There's a bio page there. I also handle the sales and website for tarantulas.com [new site to debut soon]. And there's my two web resources: The Tarantula Bibliography [database of tarantula species with bibliographic references] and The World Of Atheris [dedicated to the African bush vipers and kin]. You can visit me on Facebook too.
What I'm going to do with these posts is cover a wide range of topics. I will ramble. I warn you now. Focus will be on arachnids and reptiles, especially tarantulas, geckos, chameleons and snakes with many nature-oriented subjects thrown in and regular off-topic tangents followed with blind ambition and reckless abandon. You can keep your religion and politics, but I may digress about other human interests.
I hope to educate and occasionally entertain. To facilitate the former I hope some of you will email me questions at exoticfauna[at]gmail[dot]com. Subject it "Blog Question" or something like that. I want to answer one or two with each post eventually, and will give preference to those that ask a specific question about keeping and breeding exotic fauna. So, welcome, please return, thanks for reading.
Drive fast and take chances,
Michael Jacobi
I suppose we should begin with the name. It's really just something that came to me one day. A little irreverent, yes, but nothing more than a pseudo-clever statement of attitude all the while drawing attention to a passion. The idea was to 'catch the eye' as the slogan's genesis was my envisioning a bumper sticker suitable for the beater van I was driving at the time. Big, old white cargo van with a vile polluting V8. Cheesy as hell. What better canvas for a bunch of obnoxious bumper stickers? So I had them printed.
Of course, I was, and am, an exotic animal man. Purveyor of creepy crawlies. Having a bunch of glossy black and white stickers displaying the bold "kiss my big hairy spider" sentiment created was not much of a stretch. I immediately saw the marketing aspect. I could sell them and make nothing. Actually, they just seemed like a cool thing to stick in the box when shipping out orders of tarantulas and scorpions and scaly things. The thought that they might be viewed by some geezer at a random suburban intersection certainly had its appeal.
My first batch was distributed. I wondered where they rested. Then the first ArachnoCon occurred. I'm sure I'll expound on ArachnoCon plenty in future blogs, but for now let's leave it as the coolest gathering of arachnid enthusiasts in the US of A - an event that happened twice so far, in July of 2006 and 2007. As I walked through the parking lot of the host San Antonio hotel that first year, I saw a couple of vehicles bearing my silly sticker. The word was being spread. So, for ArachnoCon 2007 I had a second batch of stickers printed, this time with an artsy font and "exoticfauna.com" and "ArachnoCon 2007" in fine print. They were included in each welcome bag along with a possibly cooler official AC sticker and other swag. Maybe you have them.
So, the blog. Did one once a while back and abandoned it. I do that. But I've been meaning to get back to it. I've been playing with creepy crawlies for about 35 years and have loads of stories and lessons to share. That's why I create websites and publish a magazine. I even made an instructional DVD. [Special note: I'll write much more on the 7 issues of Arachnoculture magazine, the interminable hiatus and its future in coming blogs, and even more about this buggery DVD project that if I can't fix soon I will just release as a freakin' free QuickTime movie]. For those who may not know me, surf on over to exoticfauna.com. There's a bio page there. I also handle the sales and website for tarantulas.com [new site to debut soon]. And there's my two web resources: The Tarantula Bibliography [database of tarantula species with bibliographic references] and The World Of Atheris [dedicated to the African bush vipers and kin]. You can visit me on Facebook too.
What I'm going to do with these posts is cover a wide range of topics. I will ramble. I warn you now. Focus will be on arachnids and reptiles, especially tarantulas, geckos, chameleons and snakes with many nature-oriented subjects thrown in and regular off-topic tangents followed with blind ambition and reckless abandon. You can keep your religion and politics, but I may digress about other human interests.
I hope to educate and occasionally entertain. To facilitate the former I hope some of you will email me questions at exoticfauna[at]gmail[dot]com. Subject it "Blog Question" or something like that. I want to answer one or two with each post eventually, and will give preference to those that ask a specific question about keeping and breeding exotic fauna. So, welcome, please return, thanks for reading.
Drive fast and take chances,
Michael Jacobi
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