About

jmadigan.net is the personal weblog, or “blog,” for me –Jamie Madigan.

I am an I/O Psychologist, writer, father, husband, video gamer, armature photographer, and appreciator of llamas who lives in an undisclosed location in the Midwest. My wife and I also lived in San Diego and Orange County, California for several years.

I also write and talk about how the psychology behind video games shapes our behavior, manipulates our beliefs, and rigs our purchasing decisions over at www.psychologyofgames.com. I’ve also written a book on that topic, called Getting Gamers: The Psychology of Video Games and Their Impact on the People Who Play Them.

If you’re looking for info about me, here are some links:

I used to go by the online moniker, “Thrrrpptt!” that I somehow picked this up while working at a dot com startup called GameSpy Industries. There I wrote articles, oversaw the creation and maintenance of various web-based products and services, and lots of other stuff. I now work for a large organization doing project management and research to support employment selection systems. I earned a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational psychology in 2000, but the only people I make call me “Dr. Madigan” are my kids.

This website was started in September, 2003 as a means to spray some creative juices and keep track of Geralyn’s pregnancy for friends and family who live far away. Once our first daughter Samantha was born her weekly updates quickly became the cornerstone for the site, and in late 2006 that feature was expanded to include our second daughter. I also publish book reviews, photos, and whatever else I feel like commenting on. An average week brings 2-3 updates.

The website was originally coded by hand, by me, in a basic text editor with Photoshop for the graphics. For its first 7 years or so, the blog, comments, and a few other things are handled by Movable Type, a content management system for bloggers. In November, 2010 it was converted to WordPress, which had become a much superior product. The pictures since December, 2005 have been taken with either my Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT camera or Geralyn’s Canon PowerShot SD45 camera with post-processing in Photoshop. Pictures prior to December, 2005 were taken with vastly inferior cameras. jmadigan.net is hosted by DreamHost, a fine and distinguished distributor of 1s and 0s. If you sign up for an account with them, tell them I sent you.