So From The Ashes got a bit of an overhaul, partly in preparation for the new direction, partly in celebration of the new year, and partly because it's cheaper than botox for yours truly. If you haven't already noticed, there has been some functionality changes you may or may not care about. A few things were bothering me about the blog, and I found that an update in the Blogger template provided a whole host of fixes that were exactly what I was hoping to accomplish.
First, the list of blogs I'm currently following has been (in process as I write this) slightly updated. I took the opportunity to refine the list a little, and dropped a couple of sites that either published too infrequently or didn't pan out to be very interesting or entertaining. In my opinion. Even better, now the blogs are arranged in order of when they were last updated, so you can just go ahead and navigate, or not, to another site based on when they last published.
Second, I've added a "Labels" category, showing links back to all the posts on a variety of subjects. If you want to get a little edumacated and check out my "Health" and "HIV" posts, now they are all in one easy-peasy tab. Also, if you want to find out why the hell "I Hate PETA" so much or wonder (like I do) at what it says about me that my largest post subject is "work". Or, as so many of you discovered already, you can just go right to all the posts labeled "adult" "men" or "sex" and have at it. I swear, if I wasn't getting any traffic from people searching for "Robbie Williams Naked" or "Janet Jackson's Tit", I wouldn't get any hits at all. It took me weeks to label all the posts going back to the beginning (good thing I have no job), and it's hardly perfect, what with no label for all the postings I did about crystal meth addicts, but I will further refine it when I have time.
I also took the opportunity to upload a template that organized my archives by the year. Since I started publishing this here blog thingy way back in 2003, which practically makes me a blog grandpa or at least a daddy (ha!), I found that archives on a monthly basis going back 6 years made for quite the long list. This year's posts will still be archived monthly, and if you want to go back and read and see what I was like when I was still drinking you can go ahead and dig that up.
Finally, there's some sort of a rating system at the bottom of each post, which I didn't add and quite frankly I don't care about. I suppose I could get rid of it but it doesn't bother me either way, so I'll leave it. Comments are still being hosted by Haloscan, as I've been pretty happy and comfortable with the way they let me track, moderate and (occasionally) ban commenters.
About the new banner picture. It's a cropped photo I took of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. I intended to go with a gray and maroon-ish color scheme originally but when I found this template it had the black/orange/yellow thing that I ended up thinking is pretty easy on the eyes for reading and makes the photos pop a bit better. I still think the picture kind of works and I feel like it evokes a mixture of melancholy and hope for the future, which is how I've been feeling lately and what prompted the design changes.
I will finish the list of blog links today or tomorrow, and I may tweak some of the settings and add some extra functionality if the mood strikes, but the bulk of the work is done. Hope you enjoy reading my not so crazy ramblings and stick with me for some exciting developments. Soon.
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