Short answer : Lack of fashion sense!
Long Answer : Well, the art of coming up with the name for your web site isn't an easy one. After thinking about it for a while, I settled on 'blue n grey'....a bit of a running joke amongst friends about the colour of the clothes I tend to wear or buy. Why not?
I have been using the Joomla open source Content Management System to build websites since 2005. I am particularly proud of my own two commercial sites that I ran until selling them in 2011. The NZMac.com website featured in the book "Joomla! A User's Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website" as an example of how to set up a site using Joomla, as well as being mentioned briefly in "Joomla! For Dummies".
I have a background in eLearning, Instructional Design, training and teaching, having taught in both New Zealand and the United Kingdom. I hold a Postgraduate Diploma in Computer Science and completed my Master of Education in Online and Distance Education (with Honours) in 2010, researching the perceptions of staff and students in the use of asynchronous and synchronous tools.
In 2009 I was appointed New Zealand's first Higher Education Adobe Education Leader in recognition of my work in the area of web-conferencing. In 2004 I was appointed as one of 15 inaugural Flexible Learning Leaders in New Zealand, recognising my innovative use of technology in teaching and learning.
I have experience in a number of multimedia and web-authoring products, as well as an absolute passion for all Apple products, notably the Macintosh. From 2002-2007, I wrote the multimedia section of New Zealand's only Macintosh magazine "NZ Macguide". In 2003, I launched NZMac.com, a website dedicated to supporting the New Zealand Macintosh community, and a sister site (NZiPhone.com) in 2008, before selling the sites in 2011.
NZMac.com was the largest Macintosh web site in New Zealand and ran on an open source content management system called Joomla. I am an experienced Joomla user (this site runs on Joomla) and NZMac.com was featured as a case study in a published Joomla book, as well as being mentioned briefly in another.
My expertise and enthusiasm for Apple products lead me to establish the NZMac.com website in 2003, as well as its sister site NZiPhone.com in 2008. At the time of the launch of NZMac.com I was writing for New Zealand Macguide Magazine, which now sadly is no longer published. Writing for the magazine was a great opportunity to review a lot of fantastic Mac software, and the establishment of NZMac.com allowed that to continue, as well as provide a focal point for the vibrant Mac community within New Zealand. The focus of NZMac.com was on community, and I ran both sites in such a way as to involve as many of the users of the sites in reviews and other events as possible. I am exceptionally proud of the work that I did establishing and running the sites, and of the community that the sites built up.
The images below relate to a number of Joomla-base websites that I have built. Below that are some details about the sites and comments from some of the clients I developed the sites for.
This page features images of the previous version of Bluengrey.com, which was all Flash-based and some older websites that I developed using a Content Management System known as Xoops (www.xoops.org), which was the first open source CMS that I used. Xoops was great to use, but I felt it was limited for the needs of clients at the time, so I moved on to Joomla.