Topic: Update

I've been tweaking the site for a few weeks off and on. Busy schedule and what not. A while back I made a list of things that needed to change: updated links, clearer sidebar, better system for the "mini blog" (coda), and different interior page designs, and every few weeks I've gone through and changed something, until now, when I think I've done enough to warrant a small post about these changes.

In the right column I took all the menus and put them in little "JavaScript" toggles, so that they take up much less room, but when you click on one of the links in the "menu box" above the menus expand for your viewing pleasure. I also did some cleaning up of the links list, and have expanded the list of sites that I'm linking to. I like giving the "real content," a lot more attention, while still keeping all the "sidebar" content accessible when possible.

The second big part of this revamp was to create a more customized "home page" for the site that displayed content productively and clearly, without and endless overload of content that word-press can provide if you're a) wordy like me; b) not careful. Basically I now have a bunch of custom "loops/queries" to pull the right kind of content onto the home page, and I can append "recent articles" lists, to provide access to the content without displaying all of it. On the essays, I even use a toggle script for a couple of entries for some added punch.

The final piece--this last weekends work--has been to change the "interior" page so that when you go to see a specific article the page is much less cluttered. I've also started using disqus for comments, and with some CSS magic I've gotten pretty satisfied with how this works. I really like having unique interior pages.

If something doesn't work on your browser, or you have additional suggestions, I'm all ears. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Dear Readers,

I'm both really excited and really scared of this change that I'm going to announce in this post. From my journal entry, you can probably tell that I've been busy and having something of a rough time. I'm coping, and I'm not writing this as a plea of any sort, just it's been... interesting. I've been sort of distracted, and running back and forth between my home town and where my grandmother is (3.5 hours away) a lot, and a thousand other things.

One thing, of note is that today (by your clock) is the 9th Yarzeit of my grandfather's death, which is hitting me a bit harder than it has in years past. Yeah. Weird. I don't know what else to say.

In any case, I've done some tweaking to the site including some cool JavaScript visibility toggles. I'm still using Wordpress, because I'm still making pretty heavy use of the post scheduling, and there are other projects that demand my attention. Someday soon. My intention with the design changes is to make the content a bit more prominent and minimize menus as much as possible. Because content is important and menus are boring. (Really, I get paid to help people with the internet. Amazing.)

I'm also going to change my publishing schedule.

I'm going to post essays, in the form that you've grown accustomed to on Tuesday's and Thursdays, and then, try and post something to coda once or twice a day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday's. I'm reading a lot of other blogs, and I feel like I've gotten worse about referencing some of the really cool stuff I've been reading. And I'd like to concentrate on writing for other projects, getting Critical Futures (also redesigned) back on it's feet. If you read the site via the feed coda posts and essay posts all look the same. Notifications for all posts make it onto twitter and identi.ca, and I bet that despite the change the amount of content in general is going to be about the same. It's just a different mindset, and I think that's what I need the most at the moment. We'll see how it works.

I've also, in recent times taken to modifying the way the home page renders, so that there are only a few entries on the home page, and lists of "recent entries," in both essay and coda categories. I might do a bit more tweaking here, but the general template with "less stuff on any given page" and links to other content, satisfies my desire for minimalism and a wealth of content. Note to self: write a post about the "blog" trope and the amount of content on pages.

That's about all I have for you this time. Thanks for reading, and I'll be back tomorrow with some sort of an essay.

Cheers, tycho

So soon, probably during the end of this post or somewhere in tomorrow's post, I'm going to pass the half-million word mark on tychoish.com. This is a bit inflated because I incorporated the posts from tealart a couple of years ago, and some of that material includes quotes and links that I don't think should count toward the site's word count odometer. But there you have it, and in any case this is a milestone, that's worth commemorating.

There's a quote out there along the lines of "everyone has a million words of crap in them before they get to the good stuff." If we count the writing I do here, this means I'm getting close. If we count blog posts and academic writing, I think I'm probably well into the "good stuff." I suppose some of that is up to you.

I wrote a "journal"-type post about myself and what I was up to beyond what I blog about here (and a few of my posts since then have veered in that direction, alas). While these used to be the "easy posts" that I would just sort of blather out a year ago, [1] I don't feel like I miss them.

I'm doing well. I have a lot on my plate, and a lot of "loose ends" floating around that are causing some stress, but I really can't complain. Just for grins the things I'm working on right now:

• Fiction Writing

• Station Keeping, Season 2 (about 5 thousand more words to go).

• The Novel, (half done, 4-5 more months till first draft; leaving 3 months for rewrites, and a podcast launch in August.)

• Trailing Edge. (Hibernating. 3k more words, and then scores of edits).

• Open Source Research

  I'm working on turning the research project that's been sort of sputtering along into something more coherent on a number of different levels. I'm not ready to announce this exactly but it involves:

  • Writing lots of emails. Lots of emails.
  • Turn a fairly linear paper into a wiki.
  • Collect a more complete bibliography file.

  • Website things
  • Get Critical Futures back on track.

• Tychoish.com Redesign project. Not to mention writing for the site like I do.

• Something for the open source project described above.

• Life things

• I probably have half a dozen small/midsized trips this year. Knitting things, dancing things, work things, science fiction things. That's a lot of stress there.

• I'm going to be moving this summer.

• For someone who views himself as being a shut-in mostly, I do a lot of stuff "out:" dancing 3 times a week, singing from time to time, and so forth.

• Knitting things

• The grandmother shawl, plus two other lace shawls in progress.

• My Starmore cable sweater. I'm 20% done with it. That's not very much.

• The color-work sweater that just needs another sleeve.

So that's what's on my plate. I really need to start knocking this stuff out.

Will this blog be around in another half million words? I figure that that means that I'd have to keep up doing this for another three or three and a half years, at my current rate. It could happen. It could definitely happen.

I'll see you on the other side.

[1]	It was a dark time. I'm better now. Mostly.

As of 11 am Thursday, 19 December 2002 I was finished with the work and all the exams for this semester are completed. Thank God. Also it's really nice that I don't have to go back to school until the 6th of January. I need the time to rest, recuperate, and recharge, and also to do some of the things that I haven't been able to do for the past few months. Writing, reading, computer coding, and staying up and going to bed really late are all fairly high on my list.

I've also been working with Amy to get TealArt converted to the new Quarto CMS. It's going really well, and I have two files that I need to create, one that needs to be fixed and two functions that aren't working the way they should. The file that doesn't work is a related problem to the functions that aren't working, I think; but my knowledge of such things is somewhat limited as anyone who's ever helped me with PHP will attest to. In a few days we'll get there.

One of the things that Amy said in her weblog at one point that I'll probably talk about more latter is that she "saves the present and future for herself and writes about the past for her site" (a rough paraphrase, I'll get the entry at some point.) This really struck me, and I think its something that might separate a good weblog from a lousy one (the term is used loosely). This should be the prime directive of blogging. Go Forth, he said, and Write only about the Past. So there.

Here is the whole scoop. The server's been gone for a few days and there really hasn't been an explanation, and now the pages aren't quite right, and plus the archives have disappeared, and I'm sure you want to know what happened. Right? I mean if there's anyone reading this after all that is happened.

Some how sometime the server crashed or something. I haven't gotten a good explanation for what happened, but it was fairly clear early on that things were gone and that they weren't coming back; but for some unknown reason our email was still working. Sort of: Mary Beth was having some problems and in retro spec my email was sporadic at best. Finally that gave out too, and so I arranged other hosting and as a result we've moved into much more spacious and equipped digs and I only had backups for the files but not the databases where all of the important things were. I managed to zap some life into this instillation of b2 and everything works as well as it might, sans data. (And for some reason things aren't being pushed off the index page as they should which is part of the reason for this post.)

In any case I remembered that Amy of Domesticat.net offered to let me have a go at her new (and really fab Content Management system). It's a little buggy now, but I'm told that there's already an update on the way, and I really like it, the main problem is that Amy hasn't yet posted (she's making good progress on this one too) the PHP functions necessary for display. Given my knowledge of PHP I could probably write the functions myself, but I'm not really up for that right now so I'm biding my time and currently have b2 and Quarto until the display functions start to work. Thankfully though, Amy's functions will work perfectly for me given that the idea for most of my code features come from things I've seen used on her site. When we switch over in addition to all the things you've grown used to, we're going to try to add a surfing diary/link list as well as a really neat category system.

On a more personal note, Chris (but we call him Andy) has been done with school until next semester for about a week, and I'm free as of this Thursday at 11 o'clock. I'm hoping to get a sizeable chunk done on the book, as well as a few other writing and web project work. It's going to be an interesting break, and I really can't wait for the freedom, again. I just need to get done with this semester. I have two more papers to finish up and then its home free.

More later, I should get back to work; and I'm sure there are tons of typos so just lay off.

Something unfortunate has happened dear readers. The entire databases for this site as well as CollectiveArts were lost. When all, or most, of the content of a site is stored in a mySQL database, site management becomes really easy and the file structure becomes clean and logically arranged: it's great. When you're old hosts sever craps out and you must move to a nicer facility with out a database dump: it's a pain in the ass.

Nothing's changed, and everything works as it should, unfortunately, all of that old content is here. I should be moping around and fighting like hell to get a fairly recent backup of the database, but I'm not. Its ok, and Chris and I will be able to move forward. After all a fresh start that clears out all of that start that I've started to get a little embarrassed about is an okay thing. I'm not celebrating it, but it's not a bad thing. I've posted two of the entries from my personal archive that I'm rather proud of (and I did postdate one), and we'll continue from here.

After a month of not having a working website, I'd think that it's good to be back.