Samuel's Blog

Thank you and farewell

April 9th, 2008 at 11:31pm

I am writing this to inform you that I have decided to close this blog, mainly because I no longer have time to adequately maintain it. I have been considering this for some time and I have finally come to the conclusion that it is the right decision.

To briefly summarise my reasons, I have lately had an ever-decreasing amount of free time to dedicate to this site, or my other tasks which have a higher priority. The list of things I want to write about is almost longer than my arm, most of it now irrelevant due to the “moment” for most of it passing. I’m struggling to keep up with the regular (eg, weekly and monthly) posts, let alone the standard day-to-day posts which make this blog worth reading. There are a number of things I would like to do with this blog, but they would take even more time than the time I can’t allocate for the current list of tasks.

This doesn’t even take in to account the time required to produce podcasts…something I would love to do more of, but just have absolutely no time for.

One of my main plans for this year was coverage and analysis of the ACT election. As much as I would like to provide a very intense coverage of the election, and the people and issues surrounding it, I just won’t have enough time to even come close to doing it justice.

Ultimately, the only fair things for me as the author of this blog, and you, as a reader who comes here expecting to see something, is for me to draw a line in the sand, and close the blog.

The decision has not come easily. I have enjoyed blogging and podcasting for the last three years (OK, so I’m a couple weeks short of the three year mark) and I had a number of plans for at least the next year, and I also recognise that I have been very fortunate with the number of people who read and contribute to this blog, a number far in excess of most personal blogs. I have also had the good fortune of a good Google Pagerank. Closing this blog will effectively mean losing both of these, something which will be quite detrimental if I ever decide to start again. I recognise that this decision is one I can’t really reverse, the effects are permanent even if I do resume blogging at some stage down the track.

I would like to thank you for your support over the last three years. A very small number of you have been here right from the beginning, the majority of you joined me more recently. Either way, you have all helped to make this blog what it is. I appreciate your support, I doubt that I would have made it this far without you.

For something that started as a journal of my time at Linux.Conf.Au in 2005 and evolved in to a personal blog, the level of interest has been staggering. Admittedly I had some (not always welcome) help in the form of publicity from other websites, many of which no longer exist, and most of the readers of those websites didn’t read this blog more than once, but the number of people who have stuck around is still pleasantly surprising.

I will leave this site online for a little while. All the posts and pages will be available via their current URLs, and the site will remain navigable via the category, calendar, archive and other links. In that regard, nothing will change for a while.

In the coming days I will replace this “dynamic” database driven version of the website with a static HTML version, with any luck you won’t notice a difference. The reason for the replacement version is that whilst this site continues to run on a dynamic version, any security flaw in WordPress (of which I am currently using a slightly outdated version, and do not wish to upgrade) could result in data loss. The static version will be a complete archive of the site, allowing me to keep a backup copy for posterity. It will also allow me to provide a downloadable copy, in case anybody actually wants a copy.

I haven’t quite worked out what I’m going to do with the site after that. At this stage I think I will probably continue to update the photo gallery periodically, I will probably take this website down and just leave the downloadable version. What I will replace it with is something I haven’t decided.

I’m sure that I will have some form of online presence to replace this one at some stage. I hope that some of you will find it of some use or interest.

Once again I would like to thank all of you for reading and contributing to this site over the last few years. I’ve enjoyed most of it and I hope I have been able to provide you with some entertainment and something to think about. A number of us have failed to eye-to-eye on a number of occasions and I’m sure that I will miss some of the debates which ensued, although my sanity, keyboard, desk and head will probably be thankful for a lack of debates.

Many thanks for your interest over the last few years, hopefully I will be able to stay in contact with some of you. Best of luck to all of you.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
(samuel@samuelgordonstewart.com)

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