Hi all! I’m sorry to

Hi all!

I’m sorry to see Durbin’s decission. He had brought it up a few times already and finally cut the knot, as we say.. However, I totally understand his decission. The past while nobody has been really active, except for Durbin. I appreciate his effort in keeping the blog up and posting regularly for the visitors. I in return, have totally not posted any messages in the past while and I really am sorry for that. I have been extremely busy with things in my working and private life and did not always feel the motivation to keep posting, most likely because there was not much motivation from the other posters, except ofcourse… Durbin

So, what is currently on my mind about all this? I definitely do want to keep this blog up, but there are a lot of changes required here. I need to make some management decissions about the structure and content of the blog and most of all: who will be the bloggers..

As most of you probably know: there’s four things I like to see here as much as possible:

- Movies
- Funny things
- Pictures
- Experiences

But for most of these things, I find it a waste to dedicate a complete post to saying “Hey all, check out this site or this file!” or “I just watched this movie, I think its worth 8/10″. So, how to solve it? Well, what I wanted to get done a long time ago is creating a new layout for the website. One that allows me to put some kewl stuff on the front page like “Last 10 watched movies by our bloggers” (like is already here but not working properly yet ), “Last 10 kewl websites”, “New added albums/pictures” and ofcourse our normal “experience posts”. Clicking either of these “Latest Addition” categories would either bring you to a personal “sub-site” with that content or you can click the archive to see the complete list, sortable by whatever you prefer as the user.

As you can see, the blog HAS been on my mind, but my mind had to be in a lot of other places as well. So that’s what I will explain in this post. I want to continue supporting this blog, but there’s a lot of changes required. I cant stand the way Blogger works right now. Yeah, it’s perfect for multiple people to maintain your website, but there’s a lot things that I want but are not there, like allowing the visitors to submit small replies to a post as well. And I would like the website to be accessible through it’s own domain as well, with approx 10 bloggers, to ensure more content for the visitors.

I will work on motivating the designer (Darkwing) to start designing this new layout for me, so we can get the website up as soon as possible. This is my new year’s resolution to get it up and extremely active by this summer. So stay put.. You aint seen nothing yet!

Oops, almost forget to mention: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Wishing you all the best for 2003!

Ok, so what has kept ME busy for the past few months? I’ve gotten my job of course, and been extremely busy with that. In November I went to Baltimore to attend the SC2002 conference and in December I was in Hong Kong to conduct a training in Grid Computing. Yep, yep! I’ve been traveling! Then right after this, APSTC was launched and I had to create the website for this! I’ve managed the design of the layout and logo (design done by Darkwing) and started the coding behind the website. So, take a look at it! I hope you all like it!

Besides this, I’ve been fasting during the month of Ramadan and celebrated the month of Hari Raya with my gf’s family. A wonderful time and a great experience, that’s for sure. But your mind is with different things and I’ve spent too little attention for the blog. Sorry for that! I will try and be more active and see whether we can get this blog up and running!

I’m currently having a flu so I should get some sleep! I’ve got a meeting tomorrow and on Friday and Saturday I’m interviewing some candidates for the APSTC center!

So, blog you later!