Tag: admin

The beginnings of The Big Move

A little change in plans for The Big Move: the new design for what is now Rant Roulette isn’t ready yet. But, I finally got tired of waiting for myself to get in a designing mood, and moved it anyway.

The redesign will probably launch soon. I am shooting for, at the absolute latest, sometime in 2010 January. It’s a question of when I’m ready to get into a designing mood and put something together with one of the logos I’ve already made. I will probably be working on the new shawnkquinn.com first, however; right now that entire domain just redirects over here. That will change, soon, to just the old URLs redirecting here, and the main page going through to the still-under-construction portal based on Drupal 6. I already have working RSS pullers for all three blogs and a cron job running on my PC here to work around the lack of cron on my Web host (an annoyance that should be resolved soon).

You’ll see a few more posts here now that this blog is its own entity, and not the nominal flagship of my personal brand (yes, it did make certain types of posts a bit more awkward than I’d prefer). I’ll go into detail about what the future brings as we get closer to the end of 2009 (it will probably be a scheduled post for New Year’s Eve around noon that will be written out ahead of time).

About the only thing that I have not successfully taken care of is the URL on NetworkedBlogs and other similar sites. I need a few people to vouch for the fact that someone’s not playing shenanigans on me, that yes, the move is legitimate. I’m going around to all the other sites, one by one, as time allows to see exactly what I need to do. It’s not that much different than when someone goes from a wordpress.com or blogspot.com address to their own domain, with the exception being I already had my own domain that needed to be repurposed.

The Big Move, and other stuff

We’re rapidly approaching the end of 2009. And with it, comes The Big Move.

What is The Big Move, you ask? In a nutshell, this blog will be moving to a new home within the next week or so: rantroulette.com. If you’re seeing this on the new domain already then The Big Move is a success.

With the move will come an all-new design. I have the logo done already; it’s just a question of the theme. The close friends that got to follow the evolution of the graphic design for Quinn’s Big City from start to finish will already know this so I’m going to have to tell the rest of you from experience: the logo is the easy part. I may not even necessarily be able to use this logo as is, and I may not keep the first design or the first logo. (I did change the font on the QBC logo once prior to soft launch.)

I mention this now because after the change shawnkquinn.com will become a portal-like site about me and all my efforts, encompassing not just my personally maintained blogs, but my participation on other sites. So if you arrive at that instead of the usual expected diatribe on the news story that has my blood boiling this week, that’s what happened. I’ll keep a notice up for a short while on the main page to get everyone used to going to the new home of the blog if that’s what they are looking for.

Anyway, the reason for the change is simple. As my fame increases, I will need a place to announce public appearances and press conferences, and post press releases that specifically have to do with me versus one of my other efforts. In the beginning of course, I will be writing most of my own press releases and handling most of my own media relations; eventually, of course, that’s the kind of thing I hire others to do. I have an idea of who I trust to fulfill that position; if I reach the point where my first choice is infeasible I’ll ask for recommendations, first from close friends, then from a wider audience.

2010 will be a big year. For that matter, so will 2011 and 2012 building on the foundations laid in 2010. (I live life by the Roman calendar, not the Mayan calendar, so I think life will go on just fine after 2012.) I’ve always gravitated towards the limelight, unhappy being just a nobody. There are people out there who felt it in their best interests to try and keep me out of the limelight, that think I should quietly resign myself to being a nobody and keep my social activities to the handful of close friends and maybe a few dozen casual acquaintances I already have. They do this because that’s what is most convenient for them.

They may be right about one thing: the limelight may not be big for both me and the highest-profile person/people in that group. I’ve played a bunch of games during my life, including chess, backgammon, and poker. Nobody ever won a game of chess or backgammon by resigning. Nobody ever won a hand of poker by folding. While I think it is unfortunate that my unwillingness to back down will frighten, alarm, annoy, and terrify certain people out there, I stand behind my course of action, and offer one word of advice: Deal.

Shortly before or possibly shortly after The Big Move (as I am calling it), I will be posting a series of posts from Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. I’ve looked, and some of these it looks like I may not be able to do, but I’ll do as many as I can.