Every so often I feel the necessity to write a little ditty here to tell you about what's happened and what we have planed, despite the fact that it goes most of the blogging directives that I subscribe to. Alas. I still feel like we need to do it from time to time. So here it goes.
We've added Peter McCabe as a contributor; you saw his post I'm sure. His perspective and dynamic will really enhance the site as we have it now, and I'm really looking forward to what he'll come up with in the coming weeks and months. I'm also on the look out for another Teal Artist person, but I have fairly specific requirements, so the search is slow, but eventually I'd like to add another person here. If anyone's interested, I'd like to hear from you, but I'm being picky with this, so don't take any rejections personally.
A long time ago, we added a fourth skin (before the site dump), and I don't think I ever posted about that. I'm finally pretty happy with what I see in or selection of designs, there's a fifth skin hanging around somewhere, but it's not perfect yet, so it'll be a little while until we see that kind of design development, but I think what we have now is sufficient, and I really don't like that aspect of web design very much at all, so it left up to the free time in Chris' schedule. I wouldn't hold your breath.
Commenting on the TealArt blog has been restored. Sometime when I have more than half a brain and I'm in the mood to do some coding, I'll write up a page so that you all can register. Registration makes commenting easier, and you'll be able to edit your words without needing divine intervention. Enjoy, and we really thrive on knowing that there are people out there are paying attention to shouts into the night.
I think we referenced "the auxiliary site" at one point, and that disserves a little explanation. Chris bought a domain and installed b2, and proceeded to double all of his TealArt posts onto his website along with some other more random things, like poetry and quick rants, but for the most part it was a quick and sloppy thing without a direction to speak of. So during a late night IM conversation that was meandering through the dark caves of nothingness, Chris comments that it might be kind fun if we posted our IM transcripts at the end of every week. It was wacky, and it was just weird enough that it might work. TealArt didn't quite seem like the right place for such foolishness, wiped Chris' site clean, whipped up a design that was mostly stolen from a free blog template site, and started posting.
The idea was to have a site where we were removed from what passes for our real personas, and would thus be able to say anything without it being connected to what readers of this site or of CollectiveArts might think. I'm not going to tell you the URL, and I bet you won't guess it. It was to be fast, campy, zany, honest, blunt, and for the most part completely removed from our real lives. We even post under false names, mostly for kicks. It's a great idea and I don't know how it'll turn out. We're considering transitioning that site into a "TealArt Notebook" that would take the aux site's place, but ultimately that's not my decision, so we'll see.
CollectiveArts is getting close to the fabled re-launch, though I'm waiting on a couple more profiles. I think it's going to be really cool, but we'll see how things fall once it's really live. For a while we had our name's linked to our CollectiveArts profiles but I think ultimately that doesn't represent the kind of work that we're doing here at TealArt, so I think sometime soon we're going to write up better ëabout' pages for your enjoyment. For me, at least, a good about page can make or break a blog, and it's been on my list for a really long time, so maybe we'll finally get around to it.
There are a host of other personal updates, but I'll keep my own stuff out of the "Site Update" save that for tomorrow. Cheers!