Waileia in 2009: A New Year Brings New Focus

Waileia’s been around since 2003, and the number of posts has dropped cataclysmically since then.  It’s particularly embarrassing to note that I had exactly two posts in 2008 (this is one of them), yet paid DreamHost over $125 for the privilege of keeping this blog up and running.

In 2009, I’m going to try something new—and I refuse to make it a new year’s resolution, because those are so easy to break.  In the past, my focus seems to have been writing about current news from the perspective of technology, and occasionally other topics.

Many people in my life have told me that I have a gift for teaching—perhaps more specifically, for explaining tough technology concepts in a detailed, all-encompassing way, but in a fashion that’s easy for them to grasp.  I take this as high praise, especially since my profession doesn’t involve much of this on a day-to-day basis.

In 2009, my vision is to turn Waileia into a resource, taking tech concepts that aren’t understood very well and explaining them in a way that makes sense.  I’m no longer under any delusions of grandeur—I don’t expect any human being to read this the week it comes out, for example—but perhaps one day, you, gentle reader, will have stumbled along from Google or the next big search engine with the goal to understand a problem you’re dealing with a little better.  I hope Waileia will be of service.

Waileia Re-Launches

After a nearly one-year hiatus, I’m pleased to announce that Waileia has officially re-launched. Welcome back! The world hasn’t stopped changing since my last post in February, 2005, so there’s clearly a lot of catch-up work to be done.

I’m excited to announce that after many months of debating, designing, and coding, I’ve officially switched to WordPress, an open-source weblog engine that I think will provide me with more flexibility in getting my thoughts from my brain to the world.

Unfortunately, few changes come without downsides, and this is no exception. If you’re one of the many incredibly cool people that have linked to me through a previous permalink, you’ll want to update the link to the new format. It’s not too difficult to do – just delete any zeros in front of the file name and erase the “.html” extension at the end. If you do use an old link, I’ll provide a direct link to the new location in the 404 error message. (I may decide to make this a permanent redirect, but for the moment, it’s not.) As long as you’re using a recent version of a mainstream feed reader, you’ll have no problems with the new RSS 2.0 feed – I’ve set up permanent redirects on the old feed URLs to make it easy to find.

Thanks to all of you for your support of Waileia over the years. It’s truly you that motivates me to share this journal with the world.

Semi-annual Time Gripes

I think I’m going to make these semi-annual gripes about daylight saving time a Waileia tradition. I forgot to set Movable Type back to Nome time to compensate for the rest of the United States (except for those smart Hoosiers in Indiana and a few places in Arizona) jumping an hour into the future. Thanks for the reminder, Dean.

Elsewhere:

  • Slashdot had a poll, with the haters far outnumbering the lovers. One of the more interesting threads to emerge talks about the potential impact on cron jobs.
  • Two NBA players were benched for not making a morning practice due to daylight saving time change.

Home Sweet Home

The server that hosts Waileia is now settled in its new home (and what a home it is). The total downtime was about three hours. Stuff seems a little slow now, but I’m sure that’s due to the rush of people checking on their web sites. I figure that it will pass by tomorrow.

Thanks, VO. You guys (and girls) rock :)!