Gary BUTTERWORTH Online

I’m Gary.  Hi!

This is my website.

About Me.
About my website.

About Me

If you’re reading this, then chances are you already know me.
If you’re reading this and you don’t know me, then you might be wondering who I am.  Fair enough! 

Really, I’m just some dude with a website where I talk about my life and my interests.  But if you want to know more than that, here’s the gist of my life, working backwards:

• In November, 2006, my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s disease, along with her mobility, took a downturn.   So, I moved in with her in the Philadelphia suburbs of southern New Jersey.  After about five years away, I am now back in the region where I grew up.  I’m still re-adjusting.  On average, I’d say I’m at home with my nana about 21.5 hours per day.  I thought it would start out hard and get easier; I’m finding the opposite is true.  However, things are starting to look up a bit for me.  In November 2007, my old office hired me back part-time.  I still spend five days per week with my grandmom, but now I spend two consecutive days per week working as a TV news producer in Washington, DC.  So far, it is doing wonders for my quality-of-life.
• When it rains, it pours.  Two months after moving up here, my girlfriend of two years and I broke up for some pretty silly reasons.  I’m still getting over this. 
  Incidentally, she is largely responsible for getting me into the great sport of cricket.
• To move up here, I had to quit my job as a television news producer in Washington, DC.  Quitting that sucked.  I worked mainly as a line producer on news magazine shows broadcast to South and West Asia, but I consider myself a jack of all trades.  I mostly lined shows (live and postproduced), but I’d also edit on Final Cut, coordinate postproduction, shoot, fact-check, copy-edit, etc.  I loved it.  If you know anyone who needs a freelancer (TV or print), please let me know!  I’m hoping beyond hope that I will be able to resume my career where I left off when the time comes.
• Prior to my TV job, I held a boring office job for about a year.  The company did some GREAT work in the world of international developement and health, and I worked with some great people, but it just wasn’t for me, unfortunately.  While working there, I volunteered as an ESL teacher.  That was much more rewarding than work was.
• Prior to that, I attended Syracuse University in upstate New York.  I majored in International Relations (focusing on foreign policy), minored in Public Communications Studies, and earned an Undergraduate Certificate in Contemporary Europe.  All in just three years!  I graduated, cum laude, in August of 2004.
• I wanted to major in Broadcast Journalism, but Syracuse had other ideas.  Student TV and my minor sufficed.
• My favorite things about Syracuse were the semester I studied and interned en Strasbourg, France, when I worked as a Residence Advisor, and when I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity in Missouri.  These come up pretty often.
• My least favorite thing at SU was my job: 11pm-3:15am weekends!  Ugh!
• I came very close to attending the US Coast Guard Academy after high school.  Yep, Gary was almost a military man!  And I might still join the reserves someday.
• I like sports, but even more than that, I enjoy the stadiums in which they are played.  One day, I hope to devote a large part of my website to the stadiums and arenas I’ve visited.
• I LOVE travelling.  Especially internationally, and especially for sports.  It’s the best way to experience a culture.
• I have some other interests, too, and they are pretty varied.  You will see lots of them pop up here from time to time.
• Politically, for the most part, I’m socially liberal and fiscally conservative–sorta like a classical liberal or a modern libertarian.  Sorta.  Really, I’m pretty moderate.  But, as a I work in journalistic fields, I generally stay as objective and open-minded as possible. 
• It’s not an act!  I really am as much of an optimist as it seems. 
• But I get down sometimes, too.  Just like everyone else.
• People say I look young for my age.  It’s annoying, but I guess it’s true. 
  I was born February 12, 1983 in Stratford, New Jersey, USA. 
• I lived in South Jersey until I moved to Syracuse for college, and now I’m back.  I was your average nerdy kid up through high school.  Now, I am….what I am?
• The archives of this website go back over four years!  So, you can learn a good deal more about me and my interests, and how they have evolved, simply by browsing.  Specifically, the posts in the category “Garyana” give some tidbits about who I am.
• I LOVE GETTING COMMENTS ABOUT ANYTHING, so feel free to leave as many as you’d like!

About My Website: Version 5.1!

I have been keeping a personal website/blog for over 4 years now.  After ill-fated experiments on AOL, goplay.com, and a false-start at college, my blog really started out on a website I designed myself, which I kept on my student webspace at Syracuse (check it out!  There is still a fair amount of non-blog content there that hasn’t yet migrated over here).  
Then, I reluctantly moved to Xanga.  I didn’t really love Xanga, but it was convenient, and I wasn’t really capable of running a site like I wanted all on my own. 

In April, 2007, I decided it was about time to finally do something I had wanted to do for a while: move to a professional-looking site with a solid Content Management System.  So, I came here to WordPress! 
(Those WordPress smilies look a little demonic, don’t they?!)

After 4 years, I finally have a website that functions the way I have always wanted it to, where I have a lot of admin control, where anyone can comment, and with all of my posts in one place!

Since I’ve been here, I’ve changed my layout once.  As of now, this is the happiest I’ve ever been with my website.
I pretty much plan to stay here at WordPress for good. 
(Unless I move to administering my own WordPress.org install on my own server, which is possible at some point, but even if I do that, you shouldn’t see TOO much of a change.  You will always find my website by typing “garybutterworth.com” into your browser.)

I write mostly for myself.  I don’t really seek out traffic, but it’s cool when I get it.  I especially like it when someone comes here by googling something I’ve written about, especially if it’s a topic about which there isn’t much other information already online.  It makes me feel useful!

I write about my life, my experiences, and my interests.  I also sometimes write reviews and guides.  I think I’m a somewhat interesting guy; hopefully my readers think so, too.

It would be nice to have a regular readership aside from family and friends, but I don’t think I’ll ever get that, and I’m fine with that.  I like that I can bounce from topic to topic and not worry about keeping on one theme for the sake of my readership.

First and foremost, I consider my site a personal hobby. 
I try to proofread and self-edit as much as I can, but it isn’t nearly as polished as anything I write professionally or academically (as a teacher or a student). 
I apologize for any errors, and I truly hope they aren’t substantive.  Please let me know if you see something that needs a correction.

If you’re interested in boring, semi-technical, and mostly obsolete information about the website itself, check out this old “About” page from my Syracuse site.  You might enjoy browsing around the rest of that site, anyway (sorry for the pop-ups!).  As I mentioned, it has some content that hasn’t made it over here yet, and it shows off the limitations of my web skills.

Since the earlier posts on this site were imported from my old websites, you might sometimes see something a mention of a change on the website.  But since these were actually referencing a change on an old website, they don’t make sense anymore.  Still, I’m keeping the full texts of my posts for posterity.  If you’re curious about what they mean, I encourage you to check out my old Syracuse website and my old Xanga site, referenced above.  I wrote that syr.edu site entirely by hand.

Also, when I moved to WordPress, I had to import several hundred posts manually.  In doing so, some of the text formatting of my blog posts got messed up.  Hopefully I’ll get around to fixing that someday!

This page, like the rest of garybutterworth.com, is a work in progress, but hopefully you will enjoy it anyway.  If you have any questions/comments/concerns, feel free to comment on any of my blog posts, or use the form on my contact page.  If you’re not a spambot, I promise I’ll reply to you personally!

Thank you for visiting!

All content at garybutterworth.com is copyright © Gary R. BUTTERWORTH except for pictures containing Gary’s image or where otherwise noted.  All rights reserved.  Link and quote me at your pleasure, but please remember to cite me.