A new toy

As you can see, we’ve made some changes here at BTN, including a webhost move and a switch to Chyrp for blogging. Old content should be reappearing over the next few days, though old URLs may be unreliable.

UPDATE: Comments didn’t all import properly, and I still have some theme (look-and-feel) work to do, but otherwise a smooth move.

FINAL UPDATE: All comments now successfully imported.

Back, but not really

So, how about that LSU game I was so looking forward to the last time I posted here?

Life moves on. The last time I posted here, I was waiting for a job offer. Well, I got it… in Charlottesville. And we bought a house. (And got a mortgage.) And the job beats my brains in enough that when I come home, the last thing I care to do is put together a well-thought-out blog entry.

As some of you have figured out, you’re better off reading my Twitter feed at this point, 140 characters being about the longest coherent thought I can muster. Plus, that format allows approximately 400% more snark, particularly helpful in a month where every day is more fun than the last if you hate WVU fans.

So there are going to be some changes to this site, in order to make it look less like a pathetically abandoned blog and more like a portal to the places I do occasionally update. I may put together the odd column from time to time, and the archives will remain up, but regular posting in blog format is probably a thing of the past at this point.

I’d say the reformat is “coming soon,” but really, that would just insult your intelligence at this point, wouldn’t it?

Becoming A Twit

You may notice a new section over there on the left (if you’re on the main page). It’s called Twitter, and what it does is display my latest update from the remarkably similarly-named Twitter, the microblogging/social networking site that appears to be the latest craze on the Internets. I can post a one-liner (140 characters or less) to Twitter, and therefore to this section, via just about any means of electronic communication around, the most handy being a text message. If you want to follow my posts there, click “follow me”, and if you’re a Twitter user, you can add me to your follow list; if not, you can find a feed there to add to your RSS reader. (You are using an RSS reader by now, right?)

If you use Facebook, this is awfully similar to its status function, only without the slightly-restrictive “name is…” formatting. And, of course, it doesn’t require you to be logged in to Facebook in order to read it.

The common name for an individual Twitter post appears to be “tweet.” I guess that leaves “twit” to refer to the users, then?

Construction next 5 miles days

We’re building a better BTN, complete with comprehensible, self-written CSS and coherent-looking individual and archive pages.

So things may be a little bumpy for a while. Go look at my Columbus photoset while you’re waiting. The aim is to have things here completed on a slightly faster schedule than your average VDOT project, and well ahead of Metro to Dulles.

UPDATE: Interesting discovery: for at least the past month, I’ve had a botnet DoSing the crap out of my politics archive. Thankfully, my webhost is (a) strong and (b) rather slack on load restriction enforcement. Time to rename that category and delete the old pages… apologies to anyone live who gets 404’d and finds their way here.

Public Service Announcement

Russian spammers attacked this morning. This has forced an upgrade of the software that runs BTN to a version that’ll give me a chance at stopping that sort of thing. BTN may look a bit odd for a few days until I get the quirks of MT 3.2 straightened out; your patience is appreciated.

This entry was going to disappear when the BTN upgrade was finished. But the commenters made it worth keeping anyway… which should tell you where the real good stuff comes from on this blog.