Let me preface this short post by warning all those who really don't care about the inner workings of my blog that this post will bore you. If you want something more fun to do, check out Armor Games' Achievement Unlocked.

Today, I did the unimaginable. I rejiggered the layout of this page to make it look correct in nearly all browsers, including the should-have-been-dead-by-now Internet Explorer 6. Up to this point, IE7 looked a bit strange, and IE6 was fed a simpler, uglier, and less useful version of some pages. This vast improvement is not the only cause of my celebration, though. All browsers are using the same style sheet, with no browser-specific hacks or hand-holding.

As part of this minor redesign, printouts of the pages do not look correct, and Unfinished Thoughts Mobile has some major issues, but these should be sorted out once I get some sleep.

To all of my loyal readers: I apologize for the lack of updates recently. I am not, in fact, dead, but am working on the back end some more, trying in vain to squash new bugs which I have found.

In an effort to allow my pages to finally validate properly, I have set the character encoding to UTF8. If you don't know what that means, don't worry, I only barely do. The downside to this action is that many of the special characters I had used in posts on this blog and in my tweets now show up as complete garbage. I've been working to find a solution to this problem quickly, but the "quickly" part has not been going so well. Neither has the "finding a solution" part.

In addition to this programming nightmare, I have been working on developing a new About Me section, featuring more information, more ways to contact me, and on the whole, fewer placeholders. Unfortunately, progress on this update is, quite frankly, almost nonexistent. It'll be up soon. Ish. I hope.

In general, I thank you again for putting up with all of these delays, and I hope to resume a more regular posting schedule shortly. I hope that you are not upset, and if you are, here's a picture of a bunny with a pancake on its head.

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

It's been a surprisingly long time coming, but this website, as I'm sure you are currently noticing, is finally live. Well, it's partially live, but I'll explain in a moment.

I have been working quite hard to make this blog a solid platform on which to express my yet-to-be-completed thoughts. After many weeks, I think that I've made a good start. If you've frequented blogs in recent years, I hope that the features I've included will seem entirely natural to you. Each post will be tagged with relevant keywords so you can easily filter down results. Posts are also sortable by date. At the bottom of each post is a section for comments. I sincerely hope that we can turn my personal rantings and ravings into a meaningful conversation. (Or perhaps I am overestimating the abilities of the internet.)

If you feel like venturing beyond the blog, you can check out my Clemson ePortfolio and further information about me, although I must warn you that these sections are still under construction. Explore at your own risk.

In all, I have had a great time working in secret on this site, and I hope to continue making it useful to all of you, my "loyal" readers. If you have and problems or suggestions, feel free to email me at wflake@williamflake.com.