Hey there, folks! See anything different? Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this site and trying to figure out why I’ve become so uninterested in it. Aside from a self-inflicted feeling that if it wasn’t perfect it wasn’t worth posting, the entire process of posting a new entry was simply too much of a pain. From downloading a few files, editing them, renaming them, uploading them again, it became a real hassle. During a time when I have so much stuff to do, this process is sometimes prohibitive.

Thanks to specialized blog software, I can update this site anywhere I have web access. If a random thought crosses my mind while at work, I can simply login and update. If I think of something worth mentioning while at school, I can walk up to any terminal and post about it. It’s going to make things so much easier, more spontaneous and much more fun for me.

And that brings me to the other changes you’ll be seeing around here. Traditionally this website has been a series of long-form articles, sometimes two or three pages long. While you’ll still see these types of entries, hopefully more often than you have been, you’ll also find that I’ll be posting shorter entries as well. More random thoughts, more links to interesting websites, thoughts on culture, society, and life that don’t necessarily require three pages of rambling, poorly-written text to explain. You’ll even see a return of the movie journal. And if you ever feel like revisiting the old site, the entries are still readily available by clicking the link to the left called, “Old SMX Entries” and read to your heart’s content.

Now to explain how things work around here.

At the left you’ll see a few buttons. “Search” will allow you to search through all my entries written from this point on. Forget which entry it was that I wrote about a certain topic? Simply type a keyword into the blank, hit “Go”, and it’ll show you all of the entries where I wrote about that topic. Pretty cool, huh?

Whenever you come to this site, you can read every entry I’ve written to-date in chronological order. No need to click any buttons or anything. However, these entries will also be organized into “Categories”. So if you want to only read the Movie Journal entries, simply click on that link and that’s all you’ll see on the screen. If you only want to see what’s going on in my life, click “Personal News”. You’ll see other categories as time goes on, I’m sure.

You’ll also notice that there is a listing for “Archives”. You’ll see the month there so if you want to catch up on what’s been going on easily, just click on the month and read all my entries from that month.

There are also “Links”, which are some sites that I recommend checking out. Some are the websites of friends, some are SMX-related, some are just my favorite sites. Enjoy and if you have any recommendations, let me know.

Finally, you can now leave comments on any entry. Simply click the “Comments” link at the bottom of the entry, fill in the form and submit it. I moderate comments, but I’ll be happy to post your thoughts and would love to hear from you.

So there you have it, the new SMX website. I think you’ll find that this is going to be a very different site from now on, so check back often for all kinds of fun stuff. And thanks again for your continued support over the years. I hope you like this new direction that I’m taking the site.

Space Monkey X