Category: Site News

This website is very old. It’s been with me for many years. There are plenty of articles which are useful both for myself and the rest of the world. Bit by bit, word by word, link by link, image by image, this site was filled and filled over the years. Technologies changed. Some new techniques and concepts came up. Some old ones faded away. Spending as much time as I possible can (after everything else) on this site, sometimes I manage to introduce big changes – like a new bit of functionality or a totally different look. Not to confuse and scare everyone, I try to be open about the changes that were made. When something big is changed I post a description of what it was and why I felt the change was needed. These updates are published in this category.

I like to move it, move it!

Some of you know the reasons why I have been more than quiet recently. But for the rest of you, here it goes – I like to move it, move it!

Firstly, the company that I am working for is currently relocating to the new premises. A brand new building up in Agios Sylas (on the way from Limassol to Paphos, pass General hospital, take Agios Sylas exit and go over the highway towards the mountains for about 10 minutes). The new office has much more space, modern design (at least inside), free lunch, faster Internet connection, and more goodies. And being a part of the IT team I was very much involved with the actual move of all the people and equipment.

Secondly, because the new office is so much further from my home and because my mother is coming to live in Cyprus, we’ve been looking for a new home. Yesterday we finally signed a lease contract for a three bedroom house in Zakaki (behind Orphanides supermarket). We are packing, cleaning up our flat, and moving to the new home slowly. Roughly by Wednesday this week we should be completely there.

Needless to say, with two such big moves I am a bit tied on time. And more to that – my Internet connection is going to be rather shaky in the next few days. So, if you don’t hear from me for too long, you know why.

The Great Silence. Once again.

I’ve been quite silent on this blog recently. That’s because I was away on vacations. I travelled to Germany and Belgium for lots of excellent food, beers, and music.

I am currently sorting through about 700 pictures that I took, as well as going through my Twitter notes to blog the experience. Wait a bit and it will all come online.

In the meantime, you can browse through my Twitter updates, which will give you an idea of what it was like for me. By the way, I will also enable daily tweet digest, cause I have a feeling that a lot of them get lost, while there is too much silence on the blog.

Stay tuned…

Upcoming content move

Since most of the preparations in the new blog have been finished, it’s time to move the worthy content from the old site and into this database. As I mentioned before, I don’t want to just copy things over, but edit, update, and fix them a bit. Because of that, I won’t be moving 4,000+ posts in one go, but rather in large chunks of a few dozens or hundreds at a time. Posts that will be moved to the new database will be deleted (as in “permanently removed”) from the old site. I hope my redirections will handle it all properly.

Anyway, I am totally ready to do the first chunk of the posts. These will be my movie reviews. And I am thinking of moving them during the end of this week (think Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday).

There are two side effects to these batch moves.

Firstly, the RSS feed will get quite polluted. So if you can’t handle many posts at once or hate seeing content that you have been through before, then you might want to temporarily unsubscribe from the RSS feed of this site.

Secondly, there is no sane way for me to distribute these posts over dates, so I’ll probably publish them all under the same date or so.

Once the content is moved and re-organized I will have more control over it and will be able to place it better. If that will be needed or not at all is remained to be seen.

With that I apologize for all inconvenience caused and ask you to bare with me during this bumpy ride.

Partial restore of the old content

To my huge surprise, I just came across a partial backup of my old blog. Most of the content is there, however the WordPress part of it is broken, and there are some misbehaviours in categories, tags, and comments.

Since many of the posts in that blog are linked from all over the web, I decided to put them back online. However, I locked the old blog and it will not accept any new comments, links, or registrations. They will be no new posts. And there is a large red box on top of every page, sending people to this blog.

I don’t think it makes any sense to fix anything else about that blog, nor do I think that merging the old one and the new one is a good idea – it will just create more work and will not sort out any mess.

Instead, I will gradually move content into this new blog. I will only move the important articles, and I will edit them to fit the site, as well as update any outdated materials.

… at least not everything is lost forever. These are good news and I am happy again.

One blog to rule them all …

Since I lost all my archives and had to start over from scratch, I kept thinking a lot about what’s best – create several blogs, one for each of my major interests, or post everything in one blog. Each has its benefits and pitfalls.

Having content in several blogs helps audience targeting and search engine optimization. It’s easier for visitors to understand what the blog is all about. Navigation is simpler, and niche-specific customizations are easier to do. For example, just before I lost my WordPress archives I experimented with taxonomies for movies data – genres, directors, actors, etc.

On the other hand, keeping track of several blogs is way much more work. Cross-topic posts don’t work to well. And there is always this chance of a hobby change or priority shift. If I have an interest in pink flying elephants and a separate blog devoted to just them, and then my interest dies out a couple of years later, I end up with a blog which has a bunch of interesting stuff “from before”, but never gets updated anymore. And then it dies out and disappears.

And with all that data gone recently, I hate to hear anything about “disappears”. Plus I miss huge archives spanning a few years and “this day in previous years” on the sidebar of my site. So, I decided to keep everything in one place. I’ll try my best to keep it well organized with categories and tags. Especially now that I know better how to use them together (not as in say pre-2000, when tags weren’t widely used yet and sub-categories were poorly supported).

So, movie reviews will be posted to this blog under the category “Movies”. Also, movie rating system will be simplified. In stead of following IMDB‘s notation of “from 1 to 10, with fractions“, I’ll use “an integer from 1 to 5“. It should be something along the lines of:

Avoid at all costs. Negative experience, possibly with consequences.
Time-waster. Watch it only if you ran out of choices, or studying bad examples for your new project.
Average. Nothing special, unoriginal, boring.
Pretty good. Worth going to the movies for or maybe even buying a DVD.
Excellent. Perfect. Masterpiece. Must see. Highly recommended.

I’ll also use tags to highlight people, who participated in the making of the movie.

Another upcoming change is for Technology. I work with some tools more than I do with others. Those, which I think are important to me, will get a sub-category under Technology. One of these tools will be WordPress. I used to have a side project WordPress Bits some time ago. It’s been a long while since I abandoned it. But my interest is always somewhere nearby. And I see there is lots of interest around that project, since it still gets comments, questions, and pointers to updated information. I’ll resurrect it and move it over here.

These are the upcoming changes, as I see them now.