Terhech.de 3.0

As you might have realized by now (if you aren't a feed reader, that is), Terhech.de has been updated in a significant way. First and foremost the site presents itself in a new design. Not only the layout, but also the logo, claim and colorset recieved bold changes. My personal understanding is that this site vaguely reprents my personal image online. Not in a CV or Biography type of way, but rather the type of image one would recieve if being friends with me. This can easily be set into context when reading the various topics I adress on here. Thus, just as I mature and olden, this site needs to change respectingly. During the past two years I internalized a broad accumulation of experiences, each being interconnected in the one or other way with my study and insofar highly valuable. This means that my pace of change has been seriously accelerated and today I differ perceptibly from who I was just two years ago. The old terhech.de claimed to be 'on fire'; a description far from true today, I settled and rather than being enthusiastic, on fire or jumpy I'd describe me as thoughtfull today; taking time, rethinking decisions.

So the rather limited colorset just as well as the slight variations in layout relate to that. Another important change (for me anyway) is the new claim 'Much Ado About Blogging', a play / pun on Shakespeare's well-known piece 'Much Ado About Nothing'. As the wide array of scientific papers I had to read for study raised my awe for other people's intellectual creations, I put my own position into (much smaller) perspective. The new claim plays just along these lines, adhering to the repositioning of the 'blogosphere' within the recent year. Once hailed as a omnipotent tool, inheriting the potential to save democracy and manking, it too failed to hold up to these artificial expectations as soon as it gained more users and in line with that less quality and less impact.

But not only the aesthetical side of this site changed, the same is true of the technical side, by means of a complete new system. Terhech.de 1 and 2 were based on my own piece of software. It served its purpose well, and was, in a way, my own foray into unknown territory, learning about the technical basics behind blogging, like for example rss. However, the progress of time played against my little application, and now, almost for years after I wrote it, it's old, hard-to-use, buggy, not expandable and very insecure. I had long been playing with the idea of switching to WordPress, but during previous usages in various of different projects, I'd always found annoying tidbits which kept me from switching. However, the new WordPress 2.5 changed all that, and finally offers everything I'd like my blog to do (and much more). So some of the new features one can see now are based on the switch to WordPress.

There is another very important change, one that can partly be traced back to the WordPress switch. My old software only allowed to write posts by means of a sidebar-plugin for Mozilla-Browsers, which enforced the necessity to use Firefox for blogging. Back in 2004 and 2005, when I was still heavily using Firefox on Linux, that seemed to be the right idea. I could leave the sidebar open all the time, and blog whenever I stumbled upon something vaguely interesting. However, since I started to use MacOSX, my Firefox usage diminished rapidly. Firefox on Mac OS X is rather slow (Firefox 3 changed this, though) and earlier versions lacked native integration. Thus Safari (and in between Camino) became my browser of choice. This led to the problem, that everytime I wanted to blog, I had to fire up FireFox and wait for it to boot. This annoyance was one of the reasons why I stopped to blog regulary. The other reason was, that I could not find a good topic to write about. I learned so many interesting things in the past two years, but most of them could not be reduced to a small posting, and wouldn't be understandable without the bigger context. However my above-mentioned transition wouldn't allow for more Beach-Party, Kindergarten or Vacation-Postings. I didn't want to do that anymore. I wanted to write about serious, interesting topics, in a witty and thoughtfull way. But the old terhech.de didn't allow for that.

So with the change of topic, and the change of software, chances are that I will revive this blog in a new and more meaningfull way. Thanks to my friends and fellow readers, for staying with me so long. I'll try to add more value from now on.