Yes, I know it's been rather slow here. Truth be told, I haven't had anything to update with. I still need to finish off my to-do list (yes, I'm slacking, sorry!), but other than that, I have nothing new to update. However, I am working on a new layout, one that I hope will be a bit better and eaiser on the eyes. And, hopefully, will last for a long time. I guess you could say this site is in hiatus, which is kinda true. I've not given up on it, but with nothing to add, it's more or less static. Still, if you want to know when something is added, make use of the RSS feed, or come back in a month or so when I have the new layout up, and I'll have a twitter feed up as well. Which, actually, has some amusing possibilites. ^_^;

If you're seeing this, then you're seeing the replacement for Blogger. There's lots of options out there, but since the gwg is on it's own server, it took me a while to find an option that works on both. Enter b2evolution, which works pretty much how I want it to. Still have some formatting to do, but it's looking good so far.

I also got the old updates moved over, so I'll have a PROPER update archive finally! Look for that one soon as I can get it formated. Whee!

Blogger announced recently that they were terminating the ability to publish to a blog via FTP. Which is how I've been making news posts here for the past 9 years, as well as to the gwg, jade/graphics, and even the little FFXI character blog that I started. Basicly, they're saying that to continue using Blogger, you either have to use their free hosting, blogspot.com, or point a custom domain to their servers. Which means all content on your blog must be on their servers. Aside from the problems I have with what basicly amounts to forcing all their users to store information on their servers, (thus, placing it completly under Google's control), my site basicly only uses Blogger for the news posts. Nothing else. Everything else on my sites is maintained by me, on the server that I pay for (and this site has a crap-load of stuff!!). I would not be allowed to upload said items to Google's server. I would also not be allowed to use my own scripts, such as linking new graphics and new content below.

In short, I, and many other Blogger users, are getting screwed. Now, Blogger says that only .05% of users actually use FTP, which I don't doubt is valid. But I have a feeling that almost ALL of those .05% of users are actual bloggers, whereas a lot of the blogs I see on blogspot are just spam pools. I somehow don't think this will benift Google, since almost all of the people that chimed in on their announcement blog have said they're leaving. And many of those have very large blogs. Will that make a difference? Probally not. At this stage, I honestly don't have any faith that Blogger will reinstate FTP usage. Will I stop using Google enterily? No, actually, I won't. I don't really use my gmail account for anything, but I still love and use Google Docs (though, I will spend my free time this week backing up everything from there, just in case).

I honestly don't expect this post to even be noticed, knowing how few people actually see these posts. But, it was something that needed saying, so if there are some odd testing posts over the next couple of months, you'll know why.