Filled Pause
Research Center

Filled Pause
Research Center

Filled Pause
Research Center

Investigating 'um' and 'uh' and other hesitation phenomena

Investigating 'um' and 'uh' and other hesitation phenomena

Investigating 'um' and 'uh' and other hesitation phenomena

October 9th, 2020

FPRC renewal!

The Filled Pause Research Center has been renewed! This is something I've actually been working on for a long time, but could not get done until just recently. But first, a bit of background.

FPRC renewal screenshot (2020)

Those who know of the FPRC from the earliest days know that I launched the first version of the site in 1998 when it made a modest splash at the time, appearing on a few people's "favorites" lists, including that of Kim Komando. If you'd like to see an archival version of the site, you can access it here with all it's glorious 1990's kitsch, including blinking gifs!

FPRC original site (1998) screenshot

It migrated around a little bit from 1999-2012 as I changed my affiliation and didn't have access to the same hosting arrangements continuously. But after I settled into my current job, I found the time and resources to make a permanent home for the FPRC and re-built the site from the bottom up. In 2012, I re-launched the site at a new cool url: filledpause.com. At the time, .org was not available.

The site served me for several years, but I got a bit distracted from about 2015 or so and hadn't been able to make many updates. During the following years, https became a standard as well as mobile-first design and the responsiveness necessity that goes with that. In response to this, I started working on a new design in the summer of 2018. But life still kept getting in the way and I just couldn't get things together.

Finally, this past summer, the planets aligned just right as planet Um happened to pass through the constellation Pause and I could finally get the site together. And so what you're looking at now is the new release and re-design. It's responsive and is easy to view on both mobile and desktop devices. Also, it now defaults to https, and I managed to get the filledpause.org domain. Since FPRC isn't a commercial operation, it makes sense to host the site under .org rather than .com, so all links now forward automatically to the .org domain (though I'll still maintain control of the .com domain).

There are still a couple of minor bugs to work out, but I'm happy with the overall simplicity and usability of the site now. Furthermore, there are a couple of new key features of the web site that I'm hoping will be useful to filled pause fanatics -- both amateurs and professionals alike. But I'll describe those in some upcoming posts.

For now, I just invite you to browse around the site and find something that interests you about my two favorite words: um and uh.