Yes, there’s been a lull in blogs, thankfully for all the right reasons. It’s called work.

There’s been a few things I’ve been juggling regarding my world domination foto work. I have a couple of shoots coming up before we enter 2010, and once ‘10 kicks in, there’s a big ol’ project coming up that’s required some extensive work indeed.

I’d like to spill the beans (tell you) what’s coming up, but that would be telling, now wouldn’t it? :-p

Seriously though, I’ll be covering the upcoming work in great detail in seperate blogs over December, I felt it would be a little more…fluid… to do it all at once instead of just snippets as I went.

Just letting you all know I’m still alive (be it by blog or by breath), and, you know, I’m thinking of you all.

While the last couple of site builds (versions) were functioning and able, a good amount of user feedback (and visitor statistics) indicated that further work was necessary. Also on my end, I was unhappy with much of how things were working both as a contributer and reader, so that sealed the deal on renovations.

So what’s a boy to do? I basically spent the summer learning about website design, Wordpress (the ‘instant’ blog system powering this site), and scouring the Web for tips and fixes on how to build a better website. I modestly hope I’ve succeeded…

Although there’s definately still more features and areas to be added over the first couple of weeks of October, the main chunk of work is finished.

Biggest changes include:

• Serious design cleanup and fixing of layout issues.
• Fixed comments so leaving a few words could not be easier (via Facebook, Twitter, etc).
• Moving away from serving (getting) my fotos on flickr.
• Setting up NextGEN Gallery as my main foto viewer.
• Adding NextGEN widgets for ‘10 Random Fotos’ as well as ‘6 Recent Fotos’. Neat huh?
• Major overhaul of the Foto Sets, again thanks to NextGEN.
• Search box now (mostly) supports foto searches by tags.
• Easier to find me via Facebook, flickr, other social networks.
• Pulled many old Foto blogs/posts since they don’t fit in the new flow of things.

With all that done, you’d think I’d be kicking back and firing up my Playstation for some overdue Wipeout, no? I wish!

Still to come:

• A ‘QuickTour’ area for those who simply wish a express view of my main works.
• Reboot of the ‘Tibetans in India’ project form my visit to India in early ‘09.
• Foto Shop. A place to buy foto prints for your very own.
• Foto and words, foto and words, fotos and words…
• A very special mini-project in 2010.

Back to work for me, I think we can all agree those ’still to come’ features deserve some virtual sweat n’ push.

It gives me a serious amount of joy to share this fact:

Up until today, my website has often upset me.

Not the reaching out through the Web, the content itself, or the basics of what the site *did* (and how it did it), but the fact that limitations in my web-making skills and flickr were starting to add up.

(Spoiler: That time is over now.)

So, over summer I hit the books and learned a few things, reasearched my mind to breaking point finding the best system to interate fotos into the site, and lost many a night to getting it all to work together and play nice.

Ta Da.

Since it’s 4am and I would very much like sleep now, I just wanted to have a late-night ‘yay’ and say thanks once more to all peoples who check in often, hope you dig the changes.

There’s still more to come and a few bugs to fix, but over the weekend I’ll starting up with overdue blogging, as well as putting all the Foto Sets online.

… And that’s not counting both my last project on TIbetans in India, nor some very special stuff in future.