As the story goes, I got bored with the site design again — and in this case, with the site as a whole. I wanted more of a very simple homepage that very quickly gives visitors a quick look at who I am rather than focusing on the largely out of date blog posts.
So that’s what this new revision brings. Simplicity. The ‘blog’ link on the right brings you to the most recent blog post and you can continue through older posts from there, if you desire. If not, well, so be it. I write for myself, for the most part anyway. As such, the blog design isn’t perfect. There are some display quarks that I haven’t worked out yet — and might not — because I can’t seem to figure out how to get it to work with my intended look. But for the most part, it works.
There you have it. Simplicity and function.
~ fin ~
Yesterday I was having an issue with the DNS A-Record for a sub domain on my hosting account. [To technical for you? Don't worry, that's all the techno-babble for this post.] I knew the solution had to be simple but I couldn’t figure it out. So I searched the Dreamhost Support Forums which proved to be less then fruitful. Knowing I couldn’t possibly be the only person with this issue, I searched Google. Again, strangely, I didn’t come up with anything very informative. So I decided to use the Dreamhost ticket system and send in an email.
In this system you can assign a priority status to your message. I chose the third option of five, pretty middle of the road. It basically said I can’t really do anything until you respond, so please respond ASAP. And they did. Within five minutes Seohee S responded with a clear answer and instructions on how to implement it. To put it into perspective, the automated response that came promising a response from a customer service agent came four minutes AFTER the response arrived. Don’t believe me? Check it out:
Needless to say I was impressed. Granted, my problem wasn’t very complicated and pretty simple to solve, but to respond so quickly that late at night was pretty cool. It’s nice to see a company respond in such a timely and effect manor.
Cheers Dreamhost.
~ fin ~
Today is my one year Twitterversery. I had this really cool idea to celebrate by loading my complete Twitter stream and then get a giant screen capture and post it here. But as is usually the case, Murphy showed up and prevented any such thing. I couldn’t load the entire stream — Twitter stopped my efforts around last July — and then what I did capture couldn’t be compressed into a graphic small enough to actually post. So yeah, big fail.
Just like everything else here, this picture has nothing to do with anything.
So, instead of just letting 3,360 tweets go by without fanfare I decided to change things completely and launch a new site design. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other, but what do you expect from me? Like the Twitterversery I had a whole post planned out to show off the new features this theme brings, like threaded comments. I was going to title it “Change You Can Believe In” and launch it on June 1st to tie in with Conan O’Brien taking over the Tonight Show — see what I did there? Instead, I decided to throw all that out and just say here it is. It’s called Limb Kulers and derives it’s name and colors from guvilla’s Kuler set. Other credit is due and can be found in the CSS stylesheet, if you’re into that sort of thing.
In light of the completely unconnected nature of this post, I’m not going to end it by asking for your take on the new design. No, instead I’m going to close by asking what is a change that you can believe in? Let me know in the comments.
~ fin ~
Starting today the copyright which has been sitting at the bottom of each page on this site for the last eight years is changing. Beginning today, all of the text contained on this website are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. In plain english that means that I’m now granting people to freely copy the text here as long as they link back to me and give me credit for actually writing it. The site design and original graphics will continue to hold a full “you can’t use it anywhere” copyright. For more details about the new licensing, or the other things that you agree to just by visiting this site, check out the Site Policies.
So why the change? What’s the point? When I first opened Sunken Treasure I noticed that the entire book was licensed under the very same Creative Commons license that this site now shares. I thought there was something very strangely cool about that. Maybe it’s a geeky thing, I don’t know. Either way, I figured if Wil Wheaton could grant these rights to owners of his book, why couldn’t I do it with my site? I mean, obviously no ones going to want to copy my words, but on the off chance someone does, it’s not granted here. Pretty cool right?
~ fin ~
I keep meticulous logs on this site. Ok, I don’t actually do anything, Mint keeps all the records and does everything for me. But I do spend an awful lot undisclosed amount of time looking at them. I find it interesting how people find this place and what they actually find once they get here. You are being watched when you visit this site, it’s all laid out in the policies. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Anyway, I was looking through the logs to see if there were any interesting search terms being used when it came to my attention that just about every single one was an interesting search term. Check this out (and beware of excessive of narcissistic adulation):
The first search, female nude male gaze, and the second to last search, objectification alba, both lead to Female Roles and the Male Gaze. It’s actually an essay I wrote while in college about the use of the male gaze in film. I posted it as a response to an article I read on some website. I guess a lot of people do research on the male gaze or are looking for easy ways to finish a paper because this is the most “found” article on my site. Maybe people just like Jessica Alba.
The fact that someone searched for snuggie drives some to drink is pretty funny in and of itself. But when you add that it results in my thoughts on the Snuggie as the number one result, well that’s downright hilarious. Maybe if they pop in some Polyphonic Spree they’ll feel better.
There was a time that Shannon’s review of the final episode of Dawson’s Creek was the most visited page on this site; it still has more comments than anything else nearly six years later. While it’s popularity has died off quite a bit, there are still some people out there interested in Joey and Pacey, as evidenced in someone searching for who does joey end up with in dawson’s creek. So who did Joey end up with after all? Answer: Tom Cruise.
The search for fallout 3 ending continue is another popular one. The Fallout Ending Controversy is probably the second most “found” post here. Evidently people aren’t very happy with not being able to continue playing after completing the Fallout 3 storyline. Maybe once the final download content is released this post will fade into obscurity.
One thing I find interesting is that while some of these pages, namely the Fallout and the Male Gaze ones, receive a ton of search engine traffic, no one leaves a comment. They’re practically response free. It’s a little odd. Maybe I’ll ponder that one some day. Or maybe people are afraid I’ll make fun of them again. Who knows. What do you think about that?
~ fin ~
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