State of the Irre(x2): September 2010

Lots of changes afoot around here (then again, there have been a lot of changes already). This is both an update to the previous State of the Irre(x2) and an update in general.

1. The Twitter and Tumblr mirrors for this blog are going bye-bye. And soon (truth be told, the Tumblr mirror is already gone). So the very few of you who read this place via those microblogs need to switch your subscription method.

2. Genwi has changed their business model, which means that blog mirror is gone forever.

3. For the one LiveJournal subscriber I had... no, I won't be opening that mirror again. That goes for the TypePad microblog mirror (and its one subscriber), as well.

4. The MySpace mirror isn't really what I'd hoped it would be (it's really just an RSS feed application), so that's gone private (MySpace friends only). Ditto for the Windows Live mirror.

5. The Facebook "Notes" mirror is gone, but the Facebook-based Networked Blogs mirror is still active (obviously). I think "friends" were hiding me because of my notes/status updates. Jerks.

6. There's been strong consideration given to creating a WordPress mirror (or moving to WordPress outright), but Blogger's recent explosion of new features has more than convinced me to stick around. Like, seriously... awesome job, Blogger team. Still not sure why you limit "Pages" to ten, though, since they're essentially just undated blog posts... which are, to my knowledge, unlimited.

7. Irrewinds, though (in my opinion) a valiant experiment, will be discontinued at the end of the year. As I've come to understand the general reading habits of blog readers, I'm convinced that things like Irrewinds are futile and useless (as are the page tabs at the top, but those require little effort on my part). That stated, I'll still do an occasional "Table of Contents" (since those came into being by request) and "Index" (since those are more for my own benefit).

8. Those of you who read my Theme Thursday rant the other day and have noticed that I'm still participating in Theme Thursday might be wondering why, since it seems a bit hypocritical. Well, I'll tell you: I'm one of those who "kindly offered suggestions" on how to keep the place going, and since they're trying many of those suggestions, I'd feel like an asshole if I didn't stick around. Yes, those who dislike the changes should feel free to berate me. I won't care. But I do laugh at those who ripped "Oh, it's 'Theme Week' now" criticisms, since it's always been "Theme Week." Or didn't you notice the themes used to be posted on Sundays and dozens of participants would post early? Even when they held back the link system until "Thursday," it was really Wednesday for most of us. So... yeah... your naysaying logic sucks.

9. You've no doubt noticed the redesigns here. More are coming, but learning how to read the CSS coding in the new Blogger templates is a little more difficult for me than learning how to read the CSS coding in the old Blogger templates was. But I'm on it!

And that's all for this pathetic excuse of an entry.