Rodent Regatta

Since January of 2002 this weblog has accumulated 4683 entries, posts, essays or articles. The terminology varies depending upon who you talk to about weblogs.

With some design improvements and structural changes expected in the next few months, it was time to review those articles and make some decisions. Interesting by-products resulted:

• 23 entry titles begin with the word “so”
• 32 entry titles begin with the word “there”
• 34 entry titles begin with the word “if”
• 41 entry titles begin with a numeral or a special character
• 58 entry titles begin with the word “another”
• 65 entry titles begin with the word “it”
• 84 entry titles begin with the word “I” or “I’m”
• 195 entry titles begin with the word “a”
• 288 entry titles begin with the word “the”

That accounts for 820 entry titles or 17.5% of all I wrote for the past 1703 days. These numbers also show that my early (experimental) blogging days were multi-post days. With multi-week gaps in writing of late, I’m still averaging 2.75 entries per day!

What about entry titles that begin with questions?

• Who? 19
• What? 121
• When? 44
• Where? 40
• How? 74
• Why? 29
• Which? 8

Those questions produced another 335 titles or 7.2% of the entire crop. This means that you might conclude that the other 3528 entries began more imaginatively. You would be wrong. Plenty of the entries from those experimental years were names of people I was quoting or admonitions to “please avoid Voicestream.” (They were a particularly disgusting predecessor to what is now T-Mobile.)

What changes can readers expect?

First, I’ll do better with the titles. Second, a major revision of Textpattern is just around the corner. That will provide some new behind-the-scenes features. Anticipate a switch to a strict doctype. Expect some improved accessibility.

If I’m successful at locating a designer who wants to help with the clean-up, paint-up and fix-up, there will be some new photos in the header rotation and some improved color schemes here and there. Archives and searching will be better along with the possibility of tags as replacements for categories.

Textpattern plugins may give way to native features – again, depending upon the kind of help I’m able to procure. I’m not crazy about the way my comments feature behaves or looks, so that’s probably due for a makeover. Links from Ma.gnolia may find their way into the site as well.

It all begins the instant I find a Textpattern-savvy collaborator who is willing to add to what has already been built without proposing a tear-down-and-rebuild. I’m looking for an architect who likes to add a room or two and tear out a wall here and there – not a McMansion designer!

Bottom line? Things will get better here over the next six months!