Blog Not Needed

I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately, and things in my life haven’t been turning out as I had planned, so I need to start making some radical changes, to try to right this ship that is my life.

One of those changes, I believe is, closing the book on DIYSearch. I’ve owned this site since 1996, that’s 12 years. In that time, there has been so much of my life absorbed in trying to make this thing work that I think it is now time to say, I’m not up to the task.

I don’t just want to close the doors, and pretend this didn’t happen. What I’d like to do is sell the site, the data and all the code to someone or organization that could possibly realize the real value I think this site, this community has to offer. I’m just the wrong person to do that. I thought for a long time I was, but after doing this soul searching, I have to face facts, look at the past and realize that the best thing I could do is let this go.

This DOES NOT mean I’m not going to continue to approve links, and make sure the site is running. Hell, I got it back on page 1 of Google (keyword: DIY), from page 14. That’s not too bad.

So, if you know of an organization or someone who is serious, I’d love to talk to them. The domain doesn’t expire for another year, so there isn’t any panic, there isn’t any urgency and nothing is going away. I just have come to the realization that I have to start backing away, and let someone else realize the greatness that I think is in here, hiding.

I feel like a failure, and writing this is difficult. This is not easy for me. But its a rare case when doing the right thing is easy.

I’ve seen two long term relationships fail in the time I’ve run this site, I’ve seen jobs come and go, and cities come and go, I’ve seen the death of my mother, so much history and baggage is tied up in this site for me, and I don’t want it to be like that. I’m pretty much hitting the bottom of a very long trip down and if I’m going to climb up, I have to cut off some weight. I believe this is one of those things.

I feel sorry for those who have been there all along, I promise that this site isn’t going to just go away. Even if I don’t find a buyer (which I find highly likely) I will find a way to back away from this so I can start over, but also not abandon those who have put a lot of faith in this site and this community. I don’t know how exactly I’m going to do this, but again, I’m not in a hurry.

So, that’s pretty much it. I know I talked about having a sister site launched (Autonomic) and believe it or not, I am still working on that. Will that be scrapped? No, I honestly don’t think so. I’d like to finish it, get it launched and then have that go with its big brother. I even have designs for a DIYSearch re-design that I’d like to share with who ever takes it over, so there is a lot here, its just something I don’t think I can faithfully execute.

I’m going to wrap up this entry with a request for help. If you have ideas, I want to hear them. Please help.

Aside from life being pretty difficult and nothing going quite to plan, I’ve been working on a record for my solo project, and keeping a blog documenting the process. I also post rough mixes and other tid bits that may or may not be interesting.

I also post full mixes and links to get some of my other musics. Its just something I do to help me keep sane. I’m not out to move units, or break my way into the music industry (like that’s worth doing anyway).

The music? Yeah its a mixture of moody, melancholy synth-pop post-rock stuff, all instrumental. I record and produce it in my stupid little home studio. Its really nothing, but I thought I’d share.

I know its been forever and a day since I’ve posted. I feel bad about that. But life, work, more life has gotten in the way of this project, yet again. Heh, if some kind soul who loved diysearch, and had a massive amount of money and resources would be kind enough to pay the bill, I’d happily do this as my day job. But alas, that is as likely to happen as I am to become a world renowned theoretical physicist.

I know I was supposed to have finished work on a lot of projects, but those efforts took a seriously back seat to my ridiculously busy job (I run the development/engineering team for a highly visible public website that shall remain namelss).

So, that’s the score. I, like every apologist post, want to get back into making things work around here. Thanks if you are still around.

It has been a remarkably long time since I’ve posted anything here. I have my excuses, like my day job completely sucking every last bit of energy I have, and only have just enough left over for my real life. I work as a software engineer and consultant for a fast growing consultancy in Boston, and the work has just been coming in fast and furious, and the deadlines have been, well let me just say that they haven’t been entirely realistic (and usually sprung on me while the project is rolling, not before).

Anyway, here I am. I have some breathing room right now, which is why I’m posting. Diysearch has been churning a long quite nicely, no problems, well except for the email server lost all of its account information. So, if you tried to email me or the editor, you most likely got your message bounced back. I’m sorry about that. I fixed the problem last night. I just had to restart the SMTP service, restore the old user database and got it back to a working state.

There are a bunch of new features that I want to get working on, like the ability to watch categories, so that you can get notifications if a particular category you are interested in gets any new links, or links get updated. I want to get the content management system rolled into production. You won’t notice anything with this, it’ll just make life easier on us when we want to modify the “static” content on the site. There are also a bunch of other administration features I need to get implemented to make life easier on the editor (she has a hard enough job, I don’t have to make it harder by not having tools in place to add/remove categories for example).

Diyshare. Ugh. I haven’t touched the code in 3 weeks. Man, I feel really terrible about that. I want so badly to finish that project and get it rolled out in that there really aren’t any shared news/social-networking sights available just for those of us who participate in DIY projects. Yeah, you can do similar things on other sites, but again, its about the focus, not getting lost in the shuffle.

Well, I should be posting more, and actually getting back to working on this project, now that I’ve finished a high-tension project here at work and will have some more energy left over for this stuff. One can hope.