Blog Not Needed

Over the past month I’ve been working like crazy writing a whole new Diysearch.com. That’s right, a total re-write, and i have to say I absolutely love this. I’m so excited to get this finished and see it working. Basically take everything you’ve ever known about this site and toss it out the window. Diysearch is finally coming into its own.

This new version will be much more focused on user participation and will incorporate more community-friendly features. Features like tagging, commenting, and rating mean that users will have much more control over how diysearch presents content then ever before.

Development is nearing completion, approximately 2-3 more weeks of coding and then private testing will commence. So I figure another 6 weeks before we are ready to deploy.

not only am i finding my 312th wind with diysearch, i’ve just completed a migration to a much better server, up to date operating system (CentOS 5), dual core AMD chip, more memory, bigger disk, more bandwidth and everything is fresh and new.

i will also have other news, like an entirely re-written web site, with a new much cleaner and easier user interface, better features (commenting, tagging etc.) i’m working on this thing almost every moment i have (and with a recording project and a new xbox in my apartment, you have to appreciate the amount of will and dedication it takes to do this!)

stay tuned for more information and updates.

Life has been very difficult lately, and made more difficult by the fact that I’ve been fighting a major depressive disorder that has me all out of sorts and between doctoring, day jobs and dealing with everything that just leaves me overwhelmed, I have noticed that my “deadline” for launching autonomic has come and gone, and come and gone again.

I’m going to make it easier on myself from now on, and just say, that autonomic, and following that, the new diysearch, will be launched when I finish them. I can say that autonomic will be finished “soon” meaning, not “in a while.” I really am not comfortable giving myself a solid date, but more like a time period. So, I’m saying “spring time” for autonomic, and “summer” for the new diysearch.

I am happy to see that diysearch has made it back to page 2 on Google. What a drag that was, seeing it way back on page 10. Yuck.

I’ve been busy with other things as well, such as my solo music project. Just released a 3-song CD EP with a 6-song 12″ (and CD) in the works. I don’t have firm dates on that either, but if you like weird, melancholy, synth-pop-ish electronic post-rock instrumental stuff, then you might want to check it out. Or not, I’m not doing this to  move units, become a vacant rock star or to even make a dent in the indie rock world. This music project of mine is something of therapy for me… keeps me sane, gives me something to look forward to. It helps with the depression. Its a vehicle, pure and simple, and if someone else finds that they like it, well, that’s just icing on the cake.

In closing this post, I just want to ask those who still read and follow what goes on with this little insignificant project, to bear with me here whilst i get things sorted out. Thank you.

so, its the 22nd. Of January. 2008.

and no, Autonomic is not ready

I tried like hell to finish it, but it still needs work. I’d hate to release a half-assed piece of shit, so i slipped the deadline instead. the less not-good option in this scenario.

I think what I need to do is just push the deadline 30 days. I just want to make sure everything is tested, and that when it does come out, there will be bugs, but it won’t be like, “um wow, this is terrible.”

meanwhile, i have to contend with day job, day life, being a newly diagnosed autistic (asperger’s syndrome) and battling a pretty major case of depression (major depressive disorder ftmfw yo). i’m trying.

I’ve been posting about it here and there for the better part of this year, and with life and day-job getting in the way, I’m finally in a position to set a date, one which I can stick to.

So, coming this January, the 22nd, in the foul year of our lord, twenty-aught-eight, the.autonomic.us will launch.

What’s all this anyway, you may ask? Let me tell you a little story. Back in the heady days of the start of this century, diysearch had a huge feature bloat, by the name of PHP-Nuke, an open source portal system. I hacked together the search engine and stuck it into this god-awful mess of a framework and released it. It gave me more troubles (security and otherwise) than I will ever fully remember, but there was a feature people really loved. The ability to post news/announcements and other pieces of content.

Well, I really liked that too, and when I re-wrote diysearch in late 2005, and stripped it back to its bare-bones i ditched all of that stuff, with the promise (to myself) that at some point, those types of features would come back.

As time went on, i decided i didn’t want to really “muck” up the search engine with a lot of content, i mean, lets keep the search engine doing what it does best, providing the directory of links, along with a few “web two-oh” tricks (link popularity tabulation for example, which is controlled completely by the user). But darn it all! I wanted the ability for people to submit actual content! This idea was hatched to launch a sister site. Bing! problem solved. The two sites will be tightly integrated (yet loosely coupled) so that the experience will be (hopefully) pretty smooth and while each site will look and function differently, it will be such that no learning curve will be required.

The sister site called, The Autonomic Us, is going to be the Digg of the underground DIY world and culture (I hope). Hell, for all I know it might be a miserable failure (defined as no one using it), but that isn’t going to stop me from trying!

Mark your calendars, and get ready! (or not)