Well, time for the recent silence to end.

Welcome to Code Ronin 2.0. A new look, a new blog engine, a new structure, and a new raison d’etre. Let me address each of these, in turns.

The new look is the biggest visible change. The last redesign wasn’t particularly successful, ending up looking very crowded. So I cleaned it, providing a “menu” on the top, links and info along the side, and the juicy content you all love in the center.

The previous version of coderonin ran on Movable-Type, a well know and popular blog engine (it currently drives the wonderful BoingBoing). It was a great engine, easily customizable. My only issue with it? Well between Version 2.7 that I ran on, and Version 3, MovableType went commercial. A single author, 3 blog licensed install was available for free, but to expand passed that would cost $100 US, and that was for non-commercial usage.

So I turned my eye to WordPress, another popular blog base. It caught my eye as having another of “pros”:

• Free
• Dynamically generated (no stored files, pages are created on the fly, and yes I am aware MovableType supported this, but it lost out on point 1
• Hierarchical structure (categories with subcategories … and again, MovableType has it, but, again, point 1).
• Gives me a chance to learn PHP.

The move did not go smoothly. Importing the content went well, but when time came to apply the new look and feel, well … I learned a lot about CSS as I tried to make the blog fit in a standard size. My hate for Microsoft “features” grows; had to apply an interesting work around for their lack of support for the max-width property. The news that they will be expanding the RSS format makes me ill in the stomach.

But it is done, and I like it. And I want to start helping the engine’s development. Namely, introducing multi-blog support, and the ability for the engine to run outside the main service.

Like I said, a new structure applies to a lot of areas on the site. First, feeds are now being supplied by feedburner. They massage the feed to include other data, and provide stats tracking. I also opened a flickr account so I can moblog. But the biggest change is probably the new categories.

They are broken down into three categories. Coder deals with my primary source of income, my life as a developer. Here I will post what’ve I learned and what’ve I done in technology. Writer covers what I would love to make a living as, a creator of entertaining worlds, like LUUUUCCAAAASSSS!!!! Ahem. Ronin is the personal stuff about me; where am I, how am I, what have I bought (I expect lots of comments from my mother on entries in that section).

The category changes (and the moving of all previous content to a hidden Version 1.0 category, accessible by the archives), reflect the new philosophy behind this blog. A couple of months back, Warren Ellis mentioned how one of his darlings was tired of the blog scene. Of course, the rush to have blogs has run its course, and since then we’ve had podcasts, with tribes/social networks looking to make a comeback. But why blog? Especially if all your blog consists of are links to other blogs that link to a news article.

This is something I mentioned before, that I said I would avoid, and failed miserably at. And because I failed, I again got tired and lazy about maintaining this blog.

Warren’s answer to what a blog could (not should) be about is the author himself or herself. A dump of who, what, where, why they are all about at time of entry publication. This covers creative works as well; what you fashion speaks about your state of mind. Unless you are any iteration of Brittnery Spears.

This was brewing in my head when I saw a recent documentary on the great God Emperor Hugh Hefner. His life is wonderful, and we all know why. But the program revealed something about him that struck a chord with me. Hef maintains an archive on his life. Each year captured in a binder collecting photos, notes, what ever mish mash that was “him” in that year.

Hef was the first blogger!

And the purpose behind his archive is now my purpose for my blog. A tracker of who I am and where I am going. Projects and thoughts, all my own. Logging my day to day activities. And I am sorry to say, it won’t be for you. It will be for me, for when my conciousness is uploaded into a nano-bot foglet, and needs to remember where did it come from.

Still, I hope you stick around for the ride. Because, you know what? My life IS interesting. Like right now I am in San Francisco on the eve of JAVAOne, which I will be live-blogging the sights and sounds of the conference and the city it takes place in. Even when I get back, fun is to be had. I live in the vibrant Montreal, I am driving an important change in how we use JAVA server at my work, I am setting up a consulting service on the side, and I will get around to publishing something this year. Or next. But it will be done.

So come along everybody! And let’s beat up the fundies!