About Me (2008)

Me in March 2012, taken by Julia

I’m Jay Versluis, and I’m doing all sorts of creative stuff on and off the web since the early nineties.

I currently split my time between two jobs:

  • running my own hosting business WP Hosting – check it out if you want a website just like this one
  • and freelancing in the London Broadcast Industry (read my full Broadcast Resumee here, even though it’s probably outdated)

I’m involved in all these things in no particular order:

  • WordPress Hosting
  • Alternative Photography
  • Satellite Transmissions
  • Transcoding / Encoding
  • Sketching / Digital Paining
  • 3D Animation
  • Editing
  • iOS App Development
  • PHP Coding / WordPress Development
  • Linux (CentOS to be precise)

Oh, and I’ve just passed my exam to be a Certified Parallels Automation Professional, which means I know a thing or two about Plesk Web Hosting and I’ve got a piece of paper to prove it.

So here we are, with the ump-teenth incarnation of this site. Can you believe it’s been up in some shape or form since 1997, and before then it was hosted at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pinkstone – that was way back when 1MB of webspace was a generous donation from my first ISP Compuserve.

I’m glad those days are over 😉

The site is currently running WordPress (naturally) with a Theme based on Chris Pearson’s amazing Thesis framework, amended by myself using the cracked paint on my lounge door. It’s featuring all kinds of funky plugins, but since they keep changing weekly, an attempt to list them all would be out of date by tonight.

You may also notice parts of this site that aren’t working very well – that’s either because I keep using it as a test-bed on occasion, or I’m in the middle of re-writing things.

What’s “Alternative Photography” again?

In short: the courage to explore something you’ve not done before, and to become obsessed with the results. I think I’ll write a whole book about this subject, when the time comes (spare time that is).

[singlepic id=210 w=320 h=240 float=right]For me it means to use photography in ways that aren’t meant to be, or to do it the way current times aren’t doing it. Everybody can take a perfect picture with a mobile phone these days. But to take film (remember film?), expose it beyond its capabilities with something not even resembling a camera and then cross-processing it in home-made chemicals, well that’s out of this world.

Or to use a £5k camera and swing it through the night sky in front of street lights on long exposure, instead of doing a Vogue shoot with it.

Or to put a piece of film into an old shoebox, point it at a subject and pop a hole in the front. Those are good examples of Alternative Photography.

Tell us more about this website…?

[singlepic id=112 w=320 h=240 mode=web20 float=right]Life is complex. So is this website.

It’s about my life, my work, my ideas, my passion, everything that happens. It’s about things that have happened, and it’s about things I’d like to happen, or I’d like to happen to. I’m doing it for me really, not for you – so you don’t really have to understand, judge, question or even like it.

You’ll find plenty of pictures here, some conceptual ideas, some reviews and my thoughts on several subjects. Also things I want to quickly jot down so I don’t forget them. There’s no particular order to any of it. I can’t really explain it; it just “is”.

In that sense, it’s a lot like life. The more I stop asking “why am I doing this” or “what’s the purpose of this”, the more creative I become – and the more I enjoy the process of doing it rather than questioning it.

Life is not about “survival”. Survival means one step up from death – and death will be here sooner than you want to know. I’m not interested in survival, I’ve been doing that for the better part of my life. I’m more interested in “living” rather than dying – and survival is much closer to dying that it is to living.

Final Thoughts

With all that in mind, remember that happiness is in you. Don’t doubt yourself, believe in yourself, and do what you really want to do. Do that, and you’ll find happiness.

And on that note, enjoy your stay here. Don’t take it all too seriously, just enjoy the ride.

I wish you happiness along the way.

🙂