Since I first launched the website, I have been hard at work making it run better. For many of you, this tidbit of information may be the only thing in this post you care to read. While the content has been unfortunately stagnant (as in my About Me page), the behind-the-scenes scripting has undergone some major housekeeping and renovations.

Here is a sampling of the changes you probably did not notice.

• The blog section now has an RSS 2.0 feed. You can now subscribe to the blog in your RSS reader and automatically receive updates on new postings.
• Page loading has been vastly improved thanks to an updated Twitter engine. Twitter results are now cached on my server so that I no longer have to reach out and touch Twitter every time you load a page.
• The loading of blog pages should also be improved through the simplification of the code. The version of the blog which you used at launch required 19 or more database calls to render the homepage, and that number would increase with more posts. The new version requires just 4 queries.
• I have added support for new, shorter URLs. Rather than typing in http://williamflake.com/eportfolio/math_science_and_technology/, you can now get to the same page by typing http://williamflake.com/M http://williamflake.com/s/M. For Twitter users retweeting urls, you now have much more room in which to type your own thoughts.
• Finally, in the grand tradition of Apple's release notes, "Bug Fixes."

While most of these changes should not directly affect you, I hope that they will make your visits snappier and more enjoyable