After 8 years I decided to switch to Octopress. Being a server-less framework, it allows my web site to scale better, and, the most important thing for me, reduces expences on administring an active server (less active components to update). An additional bonus is that it reduces requirements for a web site host, which allows me to be more flexible when selecting a hosting company. All old links are supposed to work as they used to be redirecting to new URLs.

Recently I looked at the stats of my web site. DreamHost provides Analog 6.0. I supplemented it with awstats. Plus there are some other means to analyze the traffic. Let’s put it this way: I know my average reader. I thought I did. Anyway I found a few surprises. The country list includes 77 countries. Out of 193. Not bad for a personal blog. Practically all Eurasian countries, and countries of both Americas are in the list.

I am running new Django cache code now. If you notice any problems with it (e.g., error messages), please drop me a line at once. My email is at the bottom of the page.

Finally I added RSS 2.0 using Django’s facilities. Default RSS feed is for my blog. Categories have two versions of RSS feed: exclusively for documents of the category, and documents for the category and its children. (I hope it is not news anymore: I have hierarchical categories.)

New design is here. Well, some elements of it. I had bigger ideas, but CSS didn’t work reliably, and JavaScript option was in debugging mode. So I decided to update this site now and add other planned stuff later. One reason I postponed JavaScript thingy is I want to try Dojo. It looks like a good foundation for widgets. I am going to create a couple of them at least. If it works okay, I’ll be using it in other projects as well.

New design is coming along nicely. Thank heaven for Photoshop, POV-Ray, and digital cameras! I need to work out a few quirks and I’ll be ready to create Django templates. Additionally I’ll create some custom tags to handle non-traditional formats.

As you can see blog is already operational. I am planning to add to it Comments, Trackbacks, and RSS/Atom support. Main page will be redesigned so it would include snippets from other applications and external sources. I am planning to change look and feel of this web site. Obviously what I have now is temporary. Upcoming applications: Lunch Box 3.0, picture gallery, personal news integrator.